Conclusion: A Haunting Legacy

Abstract

The twentieth-century modernist use of Asian theatre cannot be isolated and relegated to the history of Western theatre, and must be treated as an integral part of the twentieth-century modernist movement in Western theatre. Its legacy had a direct impact on the theories and practices of Western intercultural theatre in the second half of the twentieth century, and today, it continues to haunt those developed in the twenty-first century. Unlike the founding fathers of modern Western theatre featured in this book, who had not seen an Asian theatre performed on its native soil, their heirs, such as Jerzy Grotowski, Peter Brook, Ariane Mnouchkine, and Eugenio Barba, had the fortune of experiencing and studying at least one of the Asian forms performed on its native soil. Their use of Asian theatre, however, was undergirded by the same mechanism and dynamic of displacement conditioned by their redefined intercultural relationship with Asian theatre.