About the author: Dr. Mira Wiegmann teaches at Concordia University in Nebraska where she has directed and produced theatre since 1986. She has also served as dramaturge for productions of On the Verge, M. Butterfly, and The Tempest at the Nebraska Repertory Theatre Company, and presented papers at the Directing Symposium of the Mid-American Theatre Conference.
2003 0-7734-6891-9 This study employs Jungian and post-Jungian hermeneutics to address psychological, social and political perspectives in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, M. Butterfly, and Kiss of the Spider Woman. These plays and their Broadway productions contain mythic narratives and dreams that Jung described as visionary drama. Peter Brooks’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream stages Jungian archetypes that bridge modern and postmodern production sensibilities and aesthetics. David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly deconstructs patriarchal personae and stages projection and introjection. Terrence McNally’s Kiss of the Spider Woman, an adaptation of Manuel Puig’s novel, demonstrates the fluidity of meaning in postmodern archetypes. This book will engage theatre scholars and practitioners as well as scholars of popular culture and interdisciplinary studies. It models archetypal hermeneutics as a useful analytical tool for postmodern performance criticism. Illustrated with production photographs.