Translating Collaboration: "The Joy Luck Club" and Intercultural Theatre

Abstract

On 6 August 1993 stage production of TheJoy Luck Club heralded as a cultural mixing (Wachs-Book 1993:31) opened at the Shanghai Centre Theatre. A brief description of the East-West Ping-Pong that brought the play to fruition indeed lends the impression of thorough collaboration, but deeper scrutiny reveals that fundamental issues at the heart of intercultural theatre were tangled in the web of the project. At the least, TheJoy Luck Club should lead us to envision ideal collaborative process for international theatre productions; at the most, it should force us to confront the underlying political, historical, and cultural relationships that preexist such projects, playing themselves out in their execution. As the young postmodern discourse of interculturalism is nurtured, we who participate in the scripting of its vocabulary and shaping of its manifestations must ask ourselves not only what we are doing, but also how we are doing it. Are such projects actually fostering understanding and cultural sharing or are they merely reifying existing hegemonic structures and painful misconceptions? The multilayering of North American and Chinese involvement in the staging ofJoy Luck projects image of mutual understanding and cooperation that led many to praise the first-time of eminent theatre professionals in both countries (Roy 1993:5) as an important step in international artistic collaboration (Ogden 1993:n.p.). Several prominent Chinese political and artistic figures, including the vice minister of culture, the deputy mayor of Shanghai, playwright Cao Yu, and esteemed dramatist and director Huang Zuolin, provided words of praise and congratulations painted in their own calligraphy for the occasion. Expectations for the production were high, and the artists involved were thoroughly excited about the prospect of working with group of Americans whom they perceived as colleagues and co-collaborators.