The Methuen Drama Handbook of Interculturalism and Performance ed. by Daphne P. Lei and Charlotte McIvor

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Methuen Drama Handbook of Interculturalism and Performance ed. by Daphne P. Lei and Charlotte McIvor Ric Knowles THE METHUEN DRAMA HANDBOOK OF INTERCULTURALISM AND PERFORMANCE. Edited by Daphne P. Lei and Charlotte McIvor. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2020; pp. 260. The second decade of the twenty-first century saw a renewal of interest in a reinvigorated intercultural performance studies that has been called by some "the new interculturalism" and, at the end of the decade, by the editors of The Methuen Drama Handbook of Interculturalism and Performance, "Wave Three: 'Other Interculturalisms'" (following "Wave One: Emergence and Backlash" in the 1970s to 1990s, and "Wave Two: Consolidation" in the early 2000s to 2010). The third wave that this volume consolidates and advances, the editors argue, focuses on "projects and histories arising from migrant and/or minoritarian practices and practitioners, often in collaborative and community-based interculturalism-from-below" (241). It has featured challenging work by scholars such as Leo Cabranes-Grant, Marcus Chen Chye Tan, and Royona Mitra, as well as Erika Fischer-Lichte and her colleagues at Berlin's International Research Centre, Interweaving Performance Cultures, and notably, in their previous work independently, Daphne P. Lei and Charlotte McIvor, the coeditors of the volume under review. In planning the volume, Lei and McIvor "purposely looked for the hidden crevices and niches, neglected affect, and silent voices," seeking out scholars of "African, Latin American, Middle Eastern, Asian, and Oceanic performances" (1), and it is indeed this breadth and eclecticism of case studies from globally minoritized cultures that is the distinguishing feature and major contribution of the volume. The editors have also provided a useful five-part organizational structure for the book and its subject; a guide, by way of an alternative listing of chapters according to keywords, allowing readers to develop their own paths through the subject; and, in "waves," a new metaphor to add to the already existing crossroads, crosscurrents, networks, rhizomes, and interweavings that have attached themselves to intercultural performance in the past half century. "We believe," Lei proposes, "that theatre and performance studies must recognize interculturalism/interculturalization as a continually unstable and turbulent process. … Ocean waves never visit the shore and return home 'empty handed'—they always leave something behind and take something away" (3; emphasis in original). Finally, McIvor and Justine Nakase have provided a fulsome and extremely useful (for scholars and teachers) annotated bibliography of the foundational texts, major contributions, and keywords associated with each of their three waves. While the editors have provided organizational principles, a structuring metaphor, and a guide to resources, the volume's contributors have offered, for the most part, compelling case studies that fill in some of the crevices in scholarship in a field that has overwhelmingly emerged from the Global West and North. Part 1 revisits what editor Lei has previously called "hegemonic intercultural theatre" (HIT), which exploits the raw material, labor, and performance traditions of the Third World for the financial and cultural benefit of the West. This section features a revisiting by Marcus Cheng Chye Tan of Peter Brook's Battlefield (a distillation of his infamous Mahabharata), in which the politics of listening "re-soundingly" contradict the creators' claims to universality (13). Following up on his important 2012 book Acoustic Interculturalism, Tan offers sound—including accents, vocalization, rhythm, and listening—as an alternative analytical framework to dominant visual ones. The section also includes Emily Sahakian's analysis of Caribbean writer Maryse Condé's An tan revolisyon as complex strategic "inter-theatre" with Ariane Mnouchkine's classic 1789, and Arnab Banerji's analysis of Indian playwright Badal Sircar's problematic repatriations of Western appropriations of Indian theatrical forms. Parts 2 and 3, "Networking New Interculturalisms" and "Interculturalism as Practice," feature two of the strongest chapters in the collection, essays that, like Tan's, go beyond the particularity of their case studies to articulate new and broader principles. Diana Looser, writing about Oceania as "a space of crossings and connections" (78), selects two case studies, not from large, well-resourced sites such as Aotearoa, Fiji, or Hawai'i, but from the Tuamotu Archipelago and Norfolk Island, usually considered remote and isolated, but here shown to be far from...