ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the play through a range of textual, sonic, and visual tools, including the publication of the 1988 and 2017 versions, the video recording of the play housed in the New York Public Library's Theater and Film Archive, and the 1998 audio recording of the play produced by L. A. Theater Works. David Henry Hwang has had a longstanding interest in producing theatrical dissonance for political ends. In studies of M. Butterfly, scholars often connect Hwang's dramatic techniques to the influential work of Brecht, German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet, a critical move that seems even more appropriate given the connection between Brechtian theater and Chinese theater. The intersectional politics and form of the play still register as uneasy and uncertain, and they resist catharsis and closure in ways that make it particularly fitting for the 21st-century classroom.
