The Power of Fantasy

Abstract

The present thesis aims to demonstrate how the self-representation of theatre appears in a modern play, Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) and in a postmodern play, David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly (1988). I argue that the theatricality is thematized by the main characters ―Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire and Song Liling and Rene Gallimard in M. Butterfly― taking on roles and functions inevitably linked with a theatrical production, namely the playwright, the actor, the audience and the director.