Shanghai censors close stage production of M. Butterfly

Note: The censors also closed down Handel's Messiah in Shanghai but apparently will allow A Christmas Carol so that noone will be able to say Bah Humbug to the authorities.

High drama as M. Butterfly is closed down by police

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/expat/josephinemcdermott/10136117/high-drama-as-m-butterfly-is-closed-down-by-police/ By Chelsea Girl in China November 27, 2009This evening ( Friday November 27) Shanghai witnessed perhaps its most dramatic moment of English theatre this century.  The cast of M.Butterfly take their bows, oblivious to what was coming nextZuloo Theatre Production’s M. Butterfly – a play centred around homosexuality and the Cultural Revolution, both taboo subjects in China – was closed down by police.The show starring local jazz star Coco Zhao premiered in Shanghai on Wednesday and was due to close tomorrow night. It played to a mainly expatriate crowd of 150 this evening (by which I mean Friday in Shanghai). Policemen arrived at the Ke Center for Contemporary Art in Kai Xuan Road, Shanghai, before the interval, and said that the show was being performed without a licence and should therefore cease.Daniel Roy Connelly, the play's director, explains why his Butterfly has had such a brief lifeDaniel Roy Connelly, M. Butterfly’s  director and Zuloo Theatre Production’s artistic director,  delivered the news at the end of the performance once the oblivious cast members had taken their bows. He announced: “The police have asked us to cancel our matinee and evening performances tomorrow. They were gracious enough to allow us to continue with this evening’s performance. We will refund tickets tomorrow at Bali Bistro.”The play starred Mark Richard Edwards as Rene Gallimard, a French diplomat who has an affair with a Peking Opera singer masquerading as a woman. Zhao was superbly cast as ‘Butterfly’, the mysterious singer who betrays Gallimard by informing on him to the Red Army.   “We are all prisoners of our own place and time” says Gallimard in the first half of the play and these words could not have been more poignant when news of the police’s visit was delivered.Perhaps in 20 years’ time the abrupt ending of the premiere run of M. Butterfly will be studied by undergraduates in China. But until then, all theatre companies like Zuloo can do is aim to push boundaries as far as they are allowed to.