Meet Joey and Gabs. This is a show about how a 1904 opera almost broke them up.

A Japanese stewardess and a British pilot walk onto a plane. 25 years later, their son Joey is thinking of ending things with his Italian boyfriend.

Turning to his parents’ interracial relationship for guidance, he embarks on a journey to connect with his roots.

But as Joey learns more about his family, a pattern begins to emerge: the notes of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly underscore a century of Asian misrepresentation, orientalism, and exoticisation.

Connecting Milan to Nagasaki, Hong Kong to London, THE BUTTERFLY PROJECT is an irreverent look at the stories that shape us, whether we like it or not.
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Madama Butterfly is a racist opera.

White performers still use yellow face to make themselves look Asian and misrepresent Japanese culture.

Hong Kong/Japanese/British theatre maker, Joey Jepps, together with Italian boyfriend Gabriele Uboldi, created THE BUTTERFLY PROJECT as a response.

The two write and perform, dissecting the opera and their own relationship onstage, asking what it is like to be in an interracial relationship when their respective cultural backgrounds clash in Puccini’s misrepresentation of Japan.

Employing verbatim interviews in Japanese and English, live projection and original music, Joey and Gabriele draw parallels between Madama Butterfly, Joey’s parents’ interracial relationship and their own.