Radical Hope

In this article, Yizhou Huang considers the transnational transmission of devised theater, focusing on the Shanghai-based performance group Grass Stage (Caotaiban) led by Zhao Chuan. She discusses the group’s devising process from two symbiotic aspects, the corporeal and the political. Attending to Grass Stage’s eclectic inspirations and international collaborations, Huang compares the collective to world renowned ensembles such as Théâtre du Soleil and parses out the unequal transactions between Asian performance traditions and devised theater techniques. She warns against a neo-Orientalism that positions non-Western artists and their works solely into an epistemological framework that applauds liberal democracy and argues for devised theater as a site of minor interventions, world making, as well as radical hope.