Staged Reading of The Butterfly Agreement

This play is a contemporary reimagining of the classic Chinese folk romance The Butterfly Lovers. In a world where marriage comes with a price tag, self-branding has become a means of survival, and ideals are quietly shaped by capital, the story of Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai takes root again in Shanghai and New York in 2026.

To escape a marriage arranged by the Ma family, Zhu Yingtai assumes a false identity and leaves for the United States, where she meets Liang Shanbo, a struggling scholar kicked out of his lab and now working as an Uber driver. Both hiding behind carefully constructed personas and both measured by the world around them, they enter into a marriage under “The Butterfly Agreement,” trading a green card for research funding, only to discover a feeling that cannot be calculated or measured.