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Abstract
This study surveys selected plays and their contemporary theatrical production from a Jungian and post-Jungian perspective. Criteria for inclusion in this study are mythic narrative content which includes dreams and visions, production in New York that was a commercial and critical success, and subsequent adaptations into other performance media. Plays examined include A Midsummer Night's Dream, M. Butterfly, and Kiss of the Spider Woman. The first play offers the presence of archetypes before the development of the science of psychology. In addition, Peter Brook's 1972 production of this play is considered to be a transition between modernist and postmodern Shakespearean performance. David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly (1988) deconstructs cultural stereotypes and archetypal projection. Puig's novel Kiss the Spider Woman (1976) serves as the antecedent of his adaptation of the novel into a stage play (1979). This study also examines the screenplay by Leonard Schrader (1985) and the musical by Terrence McNally (1993) based on Puig's novel. Archetypes evolve in each of these genres, tracing shifts in cultural and historical contexts and in the personal perspectives of the artists involved with each adaptation. This study incorporates post-Jungian gender and archetypal theories in order to derive a postmodern archetypal interpretation of drama and its theatrical production.
