ASIAN THEATRE JOURNAL最新文献

Abstract:

Dancers with disabilities are increasingly participating in performances throughout Asia. In this article, based on long-term research, I provide an analysis of changeABLE cohesion, a mixed-abled, intercultural performance co-created by Sri Lankan dancers and Gerda König, choreographer of the renowned German DIN A13 dance company. The article focuses on the experiences and interpretations of the dancers, analyzing the creative process they employed as well as the long-term impacts that participation in changeABLE cohesion had on their lives and work. By providing the perspectives of multiple actors, the article seeks to demonstrate how an expansive ethnographic approach can enrich our understanding of disability and intercultural performances and provide the means to more accurately address the many thorny ethical questions they raise.

Abstract:

This article is a scholarly expansion of my previous public writing in HowlRound entitled “Iranian Blackface Clowns are Racist, No Matter How You Sugarcoat Them in Obscure Archaic Mythology.” In the essay, I argue siāh-bāzi, an Iranian form of popular entertainment that features a main character in blackface, is indeed a racialized mockery of the African slaves who were brought to Iran from the sixteenth to early twentieth centuries. In the present article, I delve deeper into the history of slavery in Iran as a context for sāh-bāzi. I also analyze the embodiment techniques in siāh-bāzi to demonstrate its racial connotations.

Abstract:

This article analyzes the transformation of xiqu (traditional Chinese theatre) performance space in Republican China (1912–1949), focusing on the performances in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province. It investigates the institutional and habitus differences compared to larger urban areas, and changes in admission rules, particularly the implementation of ticketed admission, which transformed temples into commercial theatres. Disputes over ticketed admission, involving local officials, residents, and Japanese, emerged due to the new admission rules, which differentiated between audience and non-audience members and regulated entry into the performance space. This monetization strategy contributed to the reorganization of the local entertainment market and was followed by the conversion of temples into commercial theatres during the 1930s. This article argues that an alternative “modernization” process and spatial politics rooted in the aspiration to build a modern state was nurtured by cultural interactions but also emerged from the local context, which profoundly influenced the local spatial understanding and local society. This process was closely linked to, yet distinct from, colonial modernization. The development of cities modernized by colonization had become one of the main driving forces behind the development of the cities within their radius.

Abstract:

Although many Sinhala-speaking plays created in Sri Lanka after the 1960s focused on contemporary political and social issues, there were surprisingly few theatre productions that addressed the civil war, a significant political crisis in Sri Lanka. Additionally, those few plays that addressed the Civil War failed to provide an opposing thought to the racist ideology that led to the Civil War. Therefore, the purpose of this report is to discuss the issues that caused Sinhala-speaking theatre to pay less attention to the civil war. French philosopher Louis Althusser claimed that “The Ideological State Apparatuses function massively and predominantly by ideology, but they also function secondarily by repression” (Althusser 1971: 145). Along with the argument by Althusser, I will also explore how ideology and repression weaken the significance of the war for the Sinhala-speaking theatre during wartime.

Abstract:

This article traces the performance history of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus in Iran, focusing on the most recent production of the play directed by Mostafa Koushki (b. 1984), performed between 2019 and 2020 in Tehran, Iran, and Kerala, India. Based on an original in-person interview with Koushki conducted by one of the authors in Tehran in July 2020, the article discusses how the production reflected and responded to the country’s volatile political climate. The analysis considers how various elements, including the minimalist set and costumes as well as gender-neutral casting, work together to communicate the production’s criticism of the current state of affairs in the Islamic Republic while staying within the boundaries imposed on theatre performances by the Iranian censorship regime.

Abstract:

Changgeuk Lear of the National Changgeuk Company of Korea presents an intriguing case of interculturalism. Produced in 2022 by an elite creative team representative of Korean theatre, Lear is remarkable for its lack of traditional spectacles that have characterized many Korean Shakespeare performances. This essay analyzes the transcultural esthetics of changgeuk Lear in comparison to the Koreanized spectacle of changgeuk Romeo and Juliet (2009), placing both productions in the history of changgeuk and the efforts to popularize the genre in the global age. The ontology of Lear is underpinned by a new notion of living tradition promoted by Kim Sung-Nyeo, which I relate to the concept of transculturation. I propose to reclaim the term transculturality for intercultural performance discourses, thereby deconstructing the false dichotomy of Korea as tradition and the West as modernity. Through a dynamic fusion of traditional chang and global art forms, changgeuk Lear creates a transcultural “K-opera” that represents a renewed sense of Koreanness.

Abstract:

This article examines how theatres of migration in the professional sphere intervene in contemporary social issues around Asian immigrants in multicultural South Korea. Of those from other Asian countries, Ranui ilgi (Ran’s Diary, 2011) concerns female marriage migrants, confronting its non-migrant South Korean spectators with an uncomfortable and neglected reality of the migrant women’s cross-border marriages with ethnic South Korean men. Along with a specific focus on the group of marginalized Asian others in the country, the sexually suggestive mise-en-scène particularly calls the attention of the audience. In this article, I first offer a brief overview of the societal backgrounds and effects of an unprecedented influx of Asian brides into South Korea, a country with a long-held fetish for ethnic homogeneity. Then, I analyze Ran’s Diary in terms of the play’s critical perspective on inter-Asian marriages, its strategic focus on and staging of a sexually victimized female Asian migrant character, and the authentic as well as culturally conscious representation of lived experiences of those immigrants in the host country. In my conclusion, I argue that this sexually-charged performance functions as a protest against the dominant public, generating a counterpublic discourse.