Since the dawn of time, theatrical creatives have coaxed audiences out of reality and into fantastic worlds with gripping stories through the magic of stagecraft. In order to help the audience suspend their disbelief and get caught up in a story, theater-makers use symbols that represent the real world.

A symbol is something that stands in for something else in the real world. A symbol can be a flag that represents a nation, or a stoplight that is a stand-in for commands, or a dove that represents peace. On stage, a costume is a great symbol that helps give you clues about who a character is. Set pieces are symbols that can help represent entire universes.

In our world of make-believe, part of our job is to use symbols that are congruent with the audience’s understanding of their lived environment. If we want an audience to believe the story is taking place in the woods, the symbolic cardboard cut outs must evoke “woods” to an audience. Over time, compounded by other works of art set in similar places, and even across other creative genres, symbols become powerful tools to communicate shared ideas with audiences. If we repeat certain symbols enough, they become reinforced into archetypes within our collective understanding.

Archetypes are recurring symbols, reinforced so many times that they become a model or stand-in for something larger than itself. Common character archetypes include “the Knight in Shining Armor,” “The Magician,” or “The Mermaid.” The tension with the archetype of “The Geisha” lies in that it is both a manufactured Western fantasy archetype, while also being a real occupation with a specific tradition and place in Japanese culture.

Once creatives and audiences have established a shared reality, we collectively become accustomed to these symbols that the creative team has chosen to put on stage. A pagoda-roofed building means the story is set in the Far East. Cornfields and wagon wheels suggest the American West. However, archetypes can become over-reinforced to the point of cliché: not every opera singer is an overbearing woman with a horned helmet.

When re-staging a work from the European canon anew, for the sake of suggesting a certain race or a sense of place unfamiliar to the European territory, the chosen symbols often don’t match the lived experiences of people from those places and cultures, and this can even become cultural appropriation. As our audiences continue to grow more diverse, these few yet commonly repeated symbols have become so big that they are stand-ins for entire cultures. This quickly becomes problematic. In previous Butterfly Process discussions, we’ve learned how Madama Butterfly changed historically when being interpreted and produced by Japanese creatives, and how it continues to change as the audience expands to include native Japanese people as well as Japanese Americans. Questioning the symbols and archetypes that have been passed down is not only a good way to keep canonic works fresh, but critically important when working to include people from the cultures represented—both on-stage and behind the scenes.

In addition to examining cultural symbols, it is also important to consider Madama Butterfly’s role in influencing the ever-prevalent stereotypes of Asian women in the United States. In many of Puccini’s operas, the female characters live and die by love, each possessing a fatal flaw that leads to their demise. While Puccini’s European women are seen as individual characters — the abundant exposure of European audiences to actual European women and their stories — the same luxury cannot be afforded to his exotic Oriental women. Cio-Cio San and Turandot have come to define the two ways most Asian women are seen in our broader society — either an archetypical “Dragon Lady” or a “Submissive Geisha” (or chrysanthemum, lotus, or some other delicate flower).

As creatives who want to continue to perform these characters, it is worth taking a closer look at the baggage surrounding these archetypes and the symbols we choose when reviving Madama Butterfly. To that end, we invited multi- and interdisciplinary creator-performer Teiya Kasahara, Korean American soprano Yunah Lee, who sang Cio-Cio San in BLO’s production of Madama Butterfly in 2012, and Theatre and Opera director Giselle Ty to discuss their reactions to the opera, and the creative decisions made around performing these archetypal fantasies.

Yunah pointed out the combined impact of the frequent choices of reoccurring symbols in Madama Butterfly resonate with a lot of contemporary audience members because there are many truths contained within them about Japan. Ritual honor suicides, the geisha archetype, and a passive sexuality, all help make Madama Butterfly a believable fantasy. Including some universal emotional expressions also helps to make the story more relatable and feel truer, namely: humility, sacrifice, hope, love, commitment, as well as the complexities of cross-cultural relationships. The combination of these archetypes reinforces a familiar narrative for Butterfly audiences, making the tragedy feel human and relatable.

We see this dynamic play out specifically with the archetype of the Geisha. It is so powerful in the Western imagination due to works like Madame Butterfly that their perceived traits have become a subconscious signifier for all Asian women. Giselle brought up that while geishas are defined as “someone who is the master of their own work,” the way that Cio-Cio San is treated as a character is far beneath that level of dignity. She is seen by Pinkerton as an object to own (as illustrated in his refrain of “You’re mine,” in contrast to her “You belong to me,” in the libretto). Across other Western visual and performing art forms including paintings and ballet, Asian or “Oriental” women are frequently depicted as being commodified and/or objectified.

The panel unanimously agreed that the impact of this dynamic has lived consequences for Asian women. The archetypes feed stereotypes that impact real world situations like sexual slavery and sexual tourism, the treatment of female captives during wartime, and even mail-order brides. And the cycle repeats itself; a single narrative about an Asian woman, is reinforced into stereotype by larger social truths, which feeds a dynamic that makes us assume certain characteristics of Asian women are not only true, but ubiquitous, without questioning our assumptions with as much nuance and empathy as we should.

The panelists agreed that the biggest issue within the high repetition of remounting Madama Butterfly is the creative direction. They felt productions often lack imagination and rely on using common clichés within the interpretation and staging of the opera. Yunah mentioned non-Asian directors have asked her to exaggerate bowing mannerisms and other “Oriental” movements and gestures. Teiya also recalled requests for stereotyped hand gestures and diminutive postures in order not to look taller than the tenor, which resulted in them compromising their technique as a singer. Giselle offered potential solutions to these issues, including improving education for creatives seeking to do this work and facilitating collaborations with cultural insiders.

Asian creatives, like Giselle, often face a dilemma as to whether they should take on work that depicts a long history of orientalist stereotypes and cultural appropriation, or just stay away entirely and focus on other creative projects. On one hand, there is the burden on Asian artists to work on the Orientalist canon to help “get it right,” which pigeonholes them to only that repertoire; while on the other hand, if they don’t, someone else will “get it wrong” without them. If the Orientalist repertory remains a popular part of the Western canon, this responsibility will always weigh down Asian creatives and singers with this dilemma.

This burden may present a unique dilemma for Asian artists compared to other non-European artists in opera specifically. Of the topmost performed European operas, there are fewer representations of Black/African, Latin, or Native American characters, compared to Asian characters. With generations of successful Black and Hispanic opera singers that have excelled in colorblind productions as European characters, Asian singers largely still are pigeonholed—stuck—exclusively in the orientalist repertory; Yunah mentioned she has sung Cio-Cio San over 170 times in her career. Once she started singing Butterfly, it was near impossible for her to be considered for other repertory. (I can easily imagine a Black artist similarly relegated to an exclusively Aida and Porgy and Bess career, hopefully that is changing too).

To facilitate the shift towards a multicultural approach of producing opera, the solution lies in a critical examination of the chosen symbols that represent diverse cultures and racial groups. What were some of the real-life implications of the archetypes that are part of the established repertory?

Yunah made a plea: “Accept me as Mimi, as you would accept a white person singing Cio-Cio San.” With that kind of equity in the field, racial casting might not matter as much, and we then can appreciate the best vocalists for the role, Orientalist repertory or not.

Giselle suggested avoiding works that are not rooted or inspired by one’s own cultural tradition, and instead try to create broader fantasies that are less culturally specific. These stories allow artists more creative liberty without being constrained by preconceived notions—like agreed-upon cultural symbols. For her, the emotional value is so much more complex while manifesting something magical. Personally, I love the creative freedom available in telling these kinds of stories.

Teiya questioned the overall structure of support, or lack of it, for artists to have this conversation like BLO’s Butterfly Process has established. Institutions often take a back seat to these conversations, without the courage or even knowledge of how to lead. BLO’s newest Artistic Advisor Nina Yoshida Nelsen pointed out the need for this to be done right, because what we see in the media and on stage often translates to real life. She stressed the need for institutions and their administrations to listen to people with lived experiences from the cultures they are seeking to portray. Gaining this deeper understanding requires a dedication of time and resources, previously not considered part of the usual creative process. Teiya emphasized that this integration needs to happen from the top down, which seems to pose the question — should a similar Butterfly Process model be adopted by other opera companies when producing canonical European works and wanting to respectfully look beyond its own cultural borders?