STAGE : Life Since ‘M. Butterfly’ : David Henry Hwang’s 1988 Tony winner and his role in the ‘Miss Saigon’ flap have led to a closer look at race relations

NEW YORK —  David Henry Hwang’s sleek penthouse duplex on Manhattan’s Upper Westside betrays little about the playwright of “M. Butterfly.” With its contemporary leather deco furniture and dizzying views, it well might be the dream habitat of any of the ambitious Asian-Americans who populate some of his earlier plays.

One gathers that the posh pad is a reward of the international success of “M. Butterfly” and the numerous film and opera commissions that have come in its wake. Yet, while his home reeks of money and power, Hwang himself appears unprepossessing. He is as slight and soft-spoken as his plays are muscular and commanding. But anyone who has seen that work knows how deceiving appearances can be.

That, of course, is the basic lesson of “M. Butterfly,” the 1988 Tony Award-winning drama that finally arrives in Los Angeles Wednesday at the Wilshire Theatre on its first national tour. In the play, Gallimard, a French diplomat, insists he did not know that Song, his Chinese mistress of 20 years and purportedly the mother of his child, was, in reality, a man. He makes this claim at a treason trial where he is charged with giving state secrets to Song, a Beijing Opera “actress” and Communist spy, before and during the American involvement in Vietnam.

On the face of it, the premise appears to depend far too heavily on the theater’s “suspension of disbelief.” Yet, it is based on real characters and events. Hwang read accounts of the 1986 trial and spun it into a meditation on the imperialist nature of sex, the racist and condescending attitudes of the West toward the “inscrutable” East, and the irresistible pull of self-delusion.

Originally directed by the late John Dexter, the drama scores these points with an inverted interpretation of Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly.” Here, Gallimard’s Pinkerton becomes impaled on his own chauvinist arrogance; Song’s submissive Butterfly metamorphosises into a stinging wasp. To the playwright’s own disbelief, the play, so bizarre and seemingly uncommercial, struck a nerve. And in the four years since Hwang wrote “M. Butterfly,” social and political developments appear to have made its themes even more resonant.

“What has become more intensified are those issues in the play which can be broadly labeled ‘multicultural,’ ” Hwang says. “We are moving into an era where different groups are asserting themselves and their right to be perceived as they wish. To the extent that the play deals with how stereotyping victimizes the stereotyper as much as the one who’s stereotyped, then I think it is becoming more relevant.”

In “M. Butterfly,” Gallimard’s victimization neatly parallels America’s defeat in Southeast Asia--both are blinded by a belief in an inherent superiority that can force any opposition to kowtow. One wonders if that potent political metaphor has since been clouded by a Persian Gulf triumph which, President Bush claims, has allowed this country “to kick the Vietnam syndrome.”

“If he’s right,” Hwang says, “then it’s very dangerous for the country. Passing on the moral question for a second, the Vietnam mentality turned out to be very useful for us in the Persian Gulf war. It taught us to overestimate the enemy, allowing us to plan the whole thing better. Now if we decide, having ‘kicked the Vietnam syndrome,’ that all these countries are submissive again, then it does not bode well for the next military encounter.”

Despite the epic historical sweep of “M. Butterfly,” Hwang maintains that, for him, writing has always been more a case of personal rather than political exploration. His curiosity regarding the events in “M. Butterfly” is the same as everyone’s: How was it possible for this man to be so self-deluded for so long? But his emotional response is provocative: “As a man, I identify with Gallimard,” he says. “As an Asian, I identify with Song.”

Hwang’s identification with Song began early, as soon as he could fathom that the Anglo world at large appeared to treat him with a certain degree of exoticism, if not condescension. The son of a Shanghai-born banker and a Chinese pianist raised in the Phil-ippines, Hwang says that for him, playwriting began as an avenue through which to discover the meaning of what it meant to be born “Chinese-American.”

Raised in affluent San Gabriel, he says he was brought up “with a nice sense of self,” but that he was taught to regard his Asian roots as a “minor detail, like having red hair.” His Americanized parents placed no special value on the traditions they had left behind, setting up a contradiction of sorts within their son that persists to this day.

“I feel very American and yet I’m often perceived as a foreigner,” he says. “It’s almost as if one’s features give off the wrong information. It’s the way people choose to process that information that misleads them and we often pay the price for it one way or another.”

As examples, Hwang cites the case of Chinese-American Vincent Chin, murdered by American auto workers who thought he was Japanese, and the Vietnam veteran who opened fire on a Stockton schoolyard thinking that the children were Viet Cong. “The associations people make don’t correspond to reality,” he says.

At Stanford University, inspired by playwrights like Sam Shepard, Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard and Ntozake Shange, Hwang decided to explore on stage the conflicts and experiences of Asians trying to fit into the American equation. His first play, “FOB” (“Fresh Off the Boat”), eventually made its way to New York’s Public Theatre and critical acclaim--as did, in rapid succession, three more plays (“The Dance and the Railroad,” “Family Devotions” and “Sound and Beauty”). Redressing a paucity of plays about a long-neglected minority, Hwang in his early 20s suddenly found himself hailed as the Great Yellow Hope.

Not everyone, however, joined in the chorus of praise. Playwright and essayist Frank Chin (“Chickencoop Chinaman”) questioned the legitimacy of that mantle, accusing his younger colleague of toadying to the white establishment. “He hates me,” Hwang says of the man whom he nonetheless cites as an influence.

Describing Chin as the “Ayatollah of Asia America,” Hwang says: “He concentrates on a ‘yellower-than-thou’ ideology so that a lot of us--Amy Tan, Wayne Wang--are not really pure in his eyes. I suppose you could argue, as he does, that I’m too much of a white man, but then the distinctions become a little obtuse. The way I see the world comes out of a particular experience--growing up Chinese-American in a relatively multicultural environment in a relatively affluent family. Now if you’re telling me that’s not valid because it’s somehow ‘too white,’ well I would say, ‘Go write your own play.’ ”

While Hwang acknowledges that he got a lot of mileage out of writing about Chinese-Americans early in his career, he also says that it relegated him to the second-class rut of “ethnic writer,” a moniker he sought to escape with his 1986 play, “Rich Relations.” The absurdist farce about rich Anglo Southern Californians and mystical fundamentalism was panned. But he says his first flop served to energize his career, even though it came on the heels of a two-year-long writer’s block. “Up to that point, my commitment as a writer had not been challenged by bad reviews,” Hwang says. “Ironically, after ‘Rich Relations,’ I became more comfortable writing characters who weren’t specifically Asian.”

He would do this in his next play, “M. Butterfly,” and the success of that work has proved to be every bit as intimidating as the failure of “Rich Relations” had been liberating. Hwang says that he has dealt with those heightened expectations largely by concentrating on film writing in recent years, working on a screen adaptation of his hit play, as well as one of Dostoyevsky’s “The Idiot” for director Martin Scorsese (updated and set in New York). He also has finished a screenplay for a film, “Golden Gate,” which he intends to direct himself about an FBI agent who falls in love with the daughter of a Chinese-American whom he hounded to death during the Communist purges of the ‘50s. While Asian characters figure in each project, Hwang says he felt under no obligation to include them.

Then, too, there have been the collaborations with composer Philip Glass. In 1988, the mixed-media performance art piece “1,000 Airplanes on the Roof” pondered the real or imagined abductions of a young person by space aliens. And the team recently finished an opera, “The Voyage,” a commission from the Metropolitan Opera to coincide with next year’s 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ encounter with the New World. Reluctant to divulge much about the work, he admits his research uncovered a rather “rich” relationship between Queen Isabella and the explorer. Does that mean he’s back to sexual politics?

“I guess we are,” he says. “It certainly has to do with the relationship between sex and imperialism, the basic power struggle that goes on between sexual partners is expressed on a larger scale with the desire of one country to dominate the people of another. While I think that Columbus certainly facilitated the horrible things that went on, I have a lot more problems with Isabella. The wiping out of the Jews in Spain and the wiping out of the Indians in the New World are a piece to me. I think of Columbus as a bit of a pawn.”

One wonders if Hwang didn’t feel like a pawn himself last spring when a bitter firestorm of controversy exploded over the casting of “Miss Saigon.” It started when Hwang and B. D. Wong (who created the role of Song) wrote a letter to Actors Equity. They asked the union to reject producer Cameron Mackintosh’s request that Jonathan Pryce be allowed to recreate his London role of the Eurasian engineer on Broadway. They thought the role should go to an Asian-American actor. When Equity concurred, Mackintosh cancelled the production, and the union was forced to back down. Angry protests by Asian-American groups continued outside the theater.

“I don’t think I felt like a pawn,” he says. “There were people who took positions on my side which I didn’t agree with, but when sides are so polarized, it doesn’t allow for much complexity. What I discovered was that it’s really a tinderbox out there, a depth of anger and resentment on both sides: We minorities feel that we’ve been passed over for years and the (Anglo) community feels they’ve paid enough dues. Everybody feels ripped off. What I didn’t realize was that there were enough fumes in the air so that once I lit a match, everything just blew.”

Hwang says that he processed the turbulent episode in the only way he knows how: at the typewriter. He has recently completed a draft of his first play since “M. Butterfly,” a farce tentatively titled “Face Value.” While Hwang says it is not about the “Miss Saigon” fracas per se, it was an opportunity “to work through a lot of conflicting emotions” from the events of last spring.

Some of those feelings stem from interracial love, a topic he has been exploring of late not only in “Face Value,” but also in a couple of one-acts he is writing in collaboration with Suzan-Lori Parks, an African-American writer. The theme also figures in his screenplays for both “The Idiot” and “Golden Gate.” And, of course, “M. Butterfly” is all about an interracial relationship and the tragedy that occurs when Gallimard proves incapable of transcending fantasy to true intimacy.

Hwang knows what he writes. Since the breakup of his three-year marriage to an Asian-Canadian in 1988, the playwright has been dating an Anglo actress. While he shies away from talking about the specifics of their involvement, there is no question that his observations about interracial relationships are drawn from personal experience.

Hwang compares to astrology the emotional baggage that couples sometimes bring to mixed-race unions, depending on how simplistically they buy into society’s cruder stereotypical messages. “If you know someone’s a Virgo, they’re supposed to act in a certain way,” he says. “If I’m dating a black woman, that means x, y and z is going to happen. And if I’m dating an Asian man, then I supposedly already know certain things about him. That’s rarely the case.”

At some point, if a relationship is to grow, he adds, the particular superficialities must yield to a more profound bond. “As in any relationship, that depends on good communication skills and keeping an open dialogue,” he says. It is for that reason he sees interracial relationships as a microcosm for the frank discussions that must occur in society if there is to be any real social progress.

“One of the things I learned during ‘Saigon’ was that there is so much defensiveness on both sides that it was impossible for an honest exchange to take place,” he says. “I kept asking myself, ‘How do we get past this?’ And I think it has to do with a certain intimacy between the races. The most perfect purveyor would be a romantic relationship. When they go well, it’s a metaphor for how we all have to learn to trust.

“That’s the big challenge,” he adds, “for us to be able to have an intimate dialogue with one another to determine what the future of this country is going to be. I’m not sure I know how to achieve that. But I have the feeling a good deal of my life and future work will be in trying to find some answers.”