East of West: Cross-cultural Performance and the Staging of Difference (review) (original) (raw)
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From the Rest to the West: Staging Differences and Redefining Intercultural Performances
2016
Intercultural theatre has seen a significant increase recently on the world stage; however, many well-known contemporary intercultural productions are built on Western traditions incorporating elements from other cultures mostly as exotic embellishment to enrich the original plays without reorienting cultural position and significance. The focus of this research is on
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Performance Making and the Archive, 2021
Performance, its archive and historicity: notes on intercultural critique 'Intercultural theatre', which came to be known as a form of performance during the postcolonial period, is one of those rare performance genres that dwells between binaries of partisanship and loathe within theatre scholarship even today. This form, which invariably includes the work of 'western' theatre practitioners, borrows from theatrical, ritualistic or performative traditions that are usually not from their own continent (performances that borrow from traditions within the same continent although different cultures are not usually called 'intercultural theatre'). 1 One of the main criticisms against this form has been its failure to comprehend or rather ignore the cultural and historical context to which the 'source' form belongs. 'Intercultural theatre' has been accused of appropriation or wrongfully taking away that which can also be called 'stealing' 2. Rustom Bharucha one of the critics of this form goes to the extent of saying that it emptied 'source culture'-s like India of its cultural tradition while filling the 'target culture', which in this case to him is the 'west'. This paper tries to understand the dynamics of such 'appropriation' or
Towards a Topography of Cross-cultural Theatre Praxis
TDR, 2002
In this essay we attempt to map out a conceptual framework for analyzing a cluster of related practices subsumed under the broad banner of "cross-cultural theatre." For the purposes of our discussion, cross-cultural theatre encompasses resources at the level of narrative content, performance aesthetics, production processes, and/or reception by an interpretive community.
Performance Paradigm, 2014
Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast.-Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet I have often found myself rephrasing the quote above by the modernist American-Lebanese artist and poet Kahlil Gibran in order to argue that 'traditions' should not be an anchor that secures us to a nostalgic or idealised past. This has been especially useful in conversations about theatre or creative practice in the Middle East, where conservative and essentialist sentiments might often valorise the need to stick to 'our traditions' or 'our culture', in arguments often pitted against progressive practices, ideas, or politics. Given the impact of Western cultural and political imperialism that is generally perceived as an ongoing project in the Middle East, it has often been important to argue that, rather than holding us back, traditions should carry us forward, helping us to engage rather than disengage from others and the world. These sentiments and Gibran's nautical metaphor also resonate with the main currents underlying the wonderfully engaging publication Theatre and Performance in the Asia-Pacific, which charts the impact of globalisation in the region and maps the flow of economies, culture and the arts beyond defined geopolitical borders of the nation state.
Performance Paradigm:, 2014
Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast.—Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet I have often found myself rephrasing the quote above by the modernist American-Lebanese artist and poet Kahlil Gibran in order to argue that ‘traditions’ should not be an anchor that secures us to a nostalgic or idealised past. This has been especially useful in conversations about theatre or creative practice in the Middle East, where conservative and essentialist sentiments might often valorise the need to stick to ‘our traditions’ or ‘our culture’, in arguments often pitted against progressive practices, ideas, or politics. Given the impact of Western cultural and political imperialism that is generally perceived as an ongoing project in the Middle East, it has often been important to argue that, rather than holding us back, traditions should carry us forward, helping us to engage rather than disengage from others and the world. These sentiments and Gibran’s nautical metaphor also resonate with the main currents underlying the wonderfully engaging publication Theatre and Performance in the Asia-Pacific, which charts the impact of globalisation in the region and maps the flow of economies, culture and the arts beyond defined geopolitical borders of the nation state.
Re-Playing Shakespeare: Performance in Asian Theatre Forms, 2010
In an era when readers and texts travel far and wide and when theatre works are often sponsored by multinational organizations and toured to multiple countries, how are artists rethinking the meaning of the local? What does a local interpretation of Shakespeare entail when the production is designed for a communal audience? How do theatre artists and audiences interact with familiar or unfamiliar local cultures embedded within performances in relation to what is often presented as universal truth in Shakespeare's plays? This chapter explores Shakespeare performance in the liminal space constructed by dialect-speaking artists working in a provincial marketplace in rural China and urban Taiwan. Though in some instances "provincial" can carry a pejorative charge of narrow mindedness or lacking the polish of urban culture, it is used here neutrally to signal a conscious move to carve a market that thrives on communal rather than international audiences in such a way that the conventionalized terms such as the local and the global cannot adequately capture.