The Theatre of Punishment: David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly and Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish

The Theatre of Punishment: David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly and Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish KA THR YN REMEN It's an enchanted space I occupy.I Mainstream American drama generally allows its audiences to slip into a passive role. With the exception of experimental theaters, such as the Living Theater , that rely directly on audience involvement and participation, dramatic productions tend to encourage their audiences to sit back and observe. Particularlyon the Broadway stage, an audience comes with the expectation of entertainment without undue effort. The unsaid intention is to learn from the story, to watch and gather information about the characters, the plot, the themes, and to leave the theater with some distilled understanding, moral, or catharsis. If we apply Foucault's analysis of the prison system from his book Discipline and Punish, we begin to see that the theater and the prison operate in similar fashions with similar purposes: they are both "[architectures] ... built ... to render visible those who are inside ... [architectures] that [operate] to transform individuals.,,2 Both observational theater and punishment rely on a psychoanalytic privileging of knowledge. As members of the audience, we assume that we can gather enough information from the actions of the entrapped figure to come away with a better understanding of the internal workings of people.3 In this .fashion, both the theater and the modern prison system attempt to "[function] ... as an apparatus of knowledge" (Foucault, 126). Both institutions "[distribute ] individuals in a space in which one might isolate them and map them" (144). The structure of the stage and the use of spot lighting isolate M. Butterfly 's main character, Rene Gallimard, and allow the audience to "map" him without distractions. In such a situation, the only activity that the audience in the theater need perform is a close observation. They remain distant and removed, literally in the darkened house while the actors, the specimens of study, are under light. M. Butteifly begins with this observational system. In many ways the play employs conservative theatrical elements that come from such mainstream Modern Drama, 37 (1994) 391 392 KATHRYN REMEN modern dramatists as Tennessee Williams, Thornton Wilder, and Arthur Miller. Like Tennessee William's The Glass Menagerie, M. Buttelfly is a memory play with themes of illusion and reality, continual references to confinement , dramatic lighting and musical motifs for the characters; as in Thornton Wilder's Our Town, and Arthur Miller's After the Fall, our narrator steps in and out of the action of the play, commenting on scenes and playing different characters. Rather than inferring that these similar elements are merely following in a tradition established by Hwang's predecessors, we can see them as intentionally deceptive devices. As an audience, we are lulled into passivity by seeing a form that is familiar. We believe that this will be a drama in which we know our role: we are in the theater to watch. Even if the audience is not aware of the subject matter of the play, as soon as we open the program we find the following: A former French diplomat and a Chinese opera singer have been sentenced to six years in jail for spying for China after a two-day trial that traced a story of clandestine love and mistaken sexual identity.... Mr. Bouriscot was accused of passing information to China after he fell in love with Mr. Shi, whom he believed for twenty years to be a woman. NY Times, May 1I, 1986. This notice informs us of an atypical content (especially when compared to the earlier mentioned plays), but any residual anxiety about the form following the subject matter and straying from traditional boundaries disappears as the play begins. Tom in The Glass Menagel'ie announces to the audience,"I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion."4 He establishes the playas one that comes from his memories, in which he is the narrator who wi11 introduce us to the other characters and point out significant passages. Similarly, Rene Gallimard tells us, "Alone in this cell, I sit night...