David Henry Hwang’s play M. Butterfly re-emerges at a relevant moment in our history as the show delves into politics, gender identity and cultural stereotyping of the East by the West. Featuring some new material written in by Hwang to update it, the Broadway revival, the first since its original 1988-1990 run, was directed by Julie Taymor (of Spider-Man and Lion King fame), who is known for large, lavish productions.
Scaling Things Down a Bit
Interestingly enough, instead of taking the grander scenic approach that the original production did, she effectively scaled down her version by using a series of onstage panels that are 12 feet high by six feet wide. Scenic designer Paul Steinberg has them slide, turn and rotate to create different scenery.
This is a more old-school direction than taken by many current Broadway shows which track on-set pieces through automation. While some furniture is brought on for key scenes, the panels here are slid on, turned around and folded in and out through the efforts of crew and cast members.
The play begins in a Paris jail cell as incarcerated and disgraced French diplomat Rene Gallimard (Clive Owen) tells the story of his fall from grace after his affair with Chinese opera singer Song Liling (Jin Ha) turned into a political scandal. From this starting point, the minimalistic, metallic looking prison opens into scenes from his past that play out in different configurations, some more open and wide, others more closed in.
“The idea grew from experimenting with different vocabularies of moving panels, first on wheels and glides and evolving to the final system,” explains Steinberg. “There was always the overreaching idea of something small opening in surprising ways to reveal different pictures with the ability to retract into the prison cell.”
While the panels helped to reduce the need for many set pieces, the apartment of the opera singer was an important location to create.
“I’d say that for Julie and me finding the right way to define Song’s apartment within the language of our panel system was the most difficult design issue,” says Steinberg. “It’s meant to be the most real and specific place and also a contrast to the other places that are more abstract.”
Steinberg observes that the biggest scenic challenge for M. Butterfly was “trying to express the epic nature of the story telling in a small theater with almost no wing space.” They also did not know which theatre they would be playing in until they were already months into the design process.
%20beguiles%20Rene%20during her performance%20of%20Madama%20Butterfly.jpg)
Scenic Choreography
“The design may appear simple, but figuring out the moves and reusing of the panels was a long process. Every inch of off-stage space was filled with stacks of panels or quick-change booths or props storage.”
The panels were a key element for keeping the scene changes moving. They created the different spaces, including Song’s apartment, Rene’s apartment that he shares with his wife, a French embassy office, a performance hall, a backstage area, a courtroom and a public square. One sequence invoked propaganda poster art. “The actors and stage crew took to moving the panels remarkably quickly and with incredible grace and skill,” says Steinberg.
Hudson Scenic created the panels, each of which, according to Hudson’s Frank Swann, is attached to a metal rod that is part of a carrier that runs on a track. The steel rods are bolted or welded onto the panels, depending upon how each panel is constructed. The steel rods lead up to tracks below the lighting grid, but a small pin on the bottom of each panel slides into a guide track in the deck to help keep the panel straight.
“Getting the panels to move well took a lot of work from the engineering team as well as several test demos to refine the concepts,” elaborates Swann. “Some of the panels were easier to get working than others. For example, the panels with just paint or prints on them are quite lightweight and pretty easily move on their tracks. In fact, the biggest challenge on those was figuring out how to keep them from turning when people walked by. Other panels though, like the bi-folds with metal facing, are rather heavy and required a caster in the corner to help take the load when they are opened up.”
Kudos to the Crew
Swann says that aligning the panels from scene to scene was a major challenge of the production, and he praises the “amazing” crew. “There are literally hundreds of spike marks that indicate the layout of the panels,” he explains. “The crew has memorized them all and make the mind-boggling job of getting everything where it needs to be look easy. Julie also worked tirelessly with the crew and technical team to figure out the order panels had to enter, how they needed to spin, and where they needed to stop in order to form the visuals the team was looking for. And then, everyone did a whole lot of practice to perfect the movement. It’s traditional scenery in many ways. No automation. Just creativity and hardworking people.”
There are 42 panels in total, some of which are bi-fold units that hold more than one. There are 17 tracks on stage grouped across six trusses. Some of the tracks have only one panel, others have four or five. The clever “bi-fold” concept allows many of panels to open up, as Swann notes, like giant 12-foot-tall books. There are different types of surfaces: painted, wallpapered, even reflective.
“When [a panel is] closed you see the ‘cover,’ which is one type of paint or metal or design, but when you open it up there is a whole new design inside,” says Swann. “These are opened by either stagehands or actors and work just like opening a book. Considering their size, you might be surprised at how easy it is to open them up. Some of these panels have special custom-made 360-degree hinges that allow them to essentially turn inside out.”
Swann adds that other panels called “flippers” have a top section that folds down to reveal a new design underneath. “This is accomplished by realizing a small pin that holds the top flipper piece in place until it’s released,” he says. “These utilize a cloth hinge so all the surface area can be painted.”
A Suction Cup Solution
During tech rehearsals Swann and his team learned how to make the most effective use of the panels. For those that were lighter, they had to go to the top of each pipe and increase the friction of the rotation point. “We also figured out lots of tricks to make it easier for the crew to move the panels,” he adds. “Probably the most effect thing we use are super strong suction cups that suck onto the metal and give the crew a big handle to move the panels around, and they can come right off without anyone seeing them. We also tried lots of different strategies to keep the bi-folds closed and the flippers up, which also allowed for smooth and easy release.
Ultimately, we ended up making special locking pins for the bi-folds and a custom release mechanism for the flippers that specifically meet the show’s needs.”
While the panel concept was new to the show, the thematic and cultural material was actually somewhat familiar to Steinberg, which gave him an advantage in working on this production. This may have been his first time designing M. Butterfly, but he has twice before designed Puccini’s opera Madama Butterfly, the inspirational jumping off point for this play, and feels he has a close connection to that piece. He often gives it as a design project to his students at NYU’s Tisch School Of The Arts. He has also designed a production of Puccini’s “Chinese” opera, Turandot. All of this previous experience naturally dovetailed nicely into working on this project and bringing certain artistic touches to the panel art.
“Preparing these operas meant doing a lot of intense research into both cultures,” explains Steinberg. “However, the most useful thing was the part of my research in both cases that had to do with investigating Western attitudes of Japan and China during the period of colonial expansion in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This was a useful foundation for preparing for M. Butterfly.”
