Illustration by Lauren Tamaki
"Julie Taymor can still recall the day nearly 30 years ago when she saw M. Butterfly for the first time. She’d heard about “this fabulous new play by this Asian-American wonderful writer” that was based on a snippet of a true story: A French diplomat in 1960s China, ultimately convicted of espionage, had become entwined in an affair with a Beijing opera singer who wasn’t quite who she appeared to be. Taymor thought the playwright, David Henry Hwang, “had a healthy anger — he had something strong to say about how America treats the East and China in particular. I liked it very much, and that was the end of that."
Read the article at Vulture.com