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Mar. 4th, 2011 11:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsAs I mentioned yesterday, I have read some plays recently! Both recommended by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
schiarire in a massive recommendation list she gave me . . . over a year ago which I am still working through. (Someday I will get all the way through it! And then I confidently expect she will give me more recommendations.)
Brian Friel's Translations I read longer ago and it's less fresh in my mind. Set in 1830's Ireland, it focuses on the arrival of an English survey team to map the area and, in the doing, provide English 'official' place names. Brian Friel would have you know that this is "a play about language and only about language," apparently, but Brian Friel is pretty clearly being kind of disingenuous there. It is indeed about language - and thus very personally relevant to my interests, as I love work that deals with language and communication and how those do and don't go together - and also about the way that language ties into colonization and into memory. I feel like I ought to have more to say about this, but I don't really, except that I enjoyed reading it and I'm glad I did.
So I liked Translations, but I really ridiculously loved David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly, which even aside from Ji's recommendation I've been meaning to read for years. M. Butterfly is grounded in Madame Butterfly, which most of you probably know is the opera that launched a thousand Orientalist stereotypes about tragic pining Asian women and the manly white jerks they love. M. Butterfly is about a wimpy French diplomat who dreams of being that manly white jerk, and thinks he has his chance when he's posted to China and starts an affair with Song Liling, a singer in the opera. Then, of course, everything is mocked, subverted and deconstructed to hell and back with a central conceit that is a.) based on a true story and b.) . . . may be a spoiler? The play is pretty famous so I don't know if it's a spoiler to anyone anymore! Song Liling is a.) a spy for the Chinese government and b.) male. Rene prooobably suspects the former by the time he is on trial for passing sensitive documents to the Chinese government, but the latter comes as kind of a shock, and allows for a lot of really fascinating commentary on race and gender and intersectionality.
I desperately would like to see either of these plays staged; both of them have elements and effects that I know I can only partially appreciate by reading the script. I also know there's a film version of M. Butterfly - has anyone seen it? Is it worth it?
schiarire in a massive recommendation list she gave me . . . over a year ago which I am still working through. (Someday I will get all the way through it! And then I confidently expect she will give me more recommendations.)Brian Friel's Translations I read longer ago and it's less fresh in my mind. Set in 1830's Ireland, it focuses on the arrival of an English survey team to map the area and, in the doing, provide English 'official' place names. Brian Friel would have you know that this is "a play about language and only about language," apparently, but Brian Friel is pretty clearly being kind of disingenuous there. It is indeed about language - and thus very personally relevant to my interests, as I love work that deals with language and communication and how those do and don't go together - and also about the way that language ties into colonization and into memory. I feel like I ought to have more to say about this, but I don't really, except that I enjoyed reading it and I'm glad I did.
So I liked Translations, but I really ridiculously loved David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly, which even aside from Ji's recommendation I've been meaning to read for years. M. Butterfly is grounded in Madame Butterfly, which most of you probably know is the opera that launched a thousand Orientalist stereotypes about tragic pining Asian women and the manly white jerks they love. M. Butterfly is about a wimpy French diplomat who dreams of being that manly white jerk, and thinks he has his chance when he's posted to China and starts an affair with Song Liling, a singer in the opera. Then, of course, everything is mocked, subverted and deconstructed to hell and back with a central conceit that is a.) based on a true story and b.) . . . may be a spoiler? The play is pretty famous so I don't know if it's a spoiler to anyone anymore! Song Liling is a.) a spy for the Chinese government and b.) male. Rene prooobably suspects the former by the time he is on trial for passing sensitive documents to the Chinese government, but the latter comes as kind of a shock, and allows for a lot of really fascinating commentary on race and gender and intersectionality.
I desperately would like to see either of these plays staged; both of them have elements and effects that I know I can only partially appreciate by reading the script. I also know there's a film version of M. Butterfly - has anyone seen it? Is it worth it?
