Asian Theatre Journal Research Articles

The Sense of an Ending: Contemporary Visions of Medea

The story of Medea’s murder of her own children to gain revenge against their faithless father has been tackled from many angles by playwrights and directors from Euripides’ time to the present. In recent years, due to highly sensationalized, real-life cases of mothers murdering their children, it has become fodder for sociologists, criminologists, psychologists, and feminists. Many recent productions (both original plays and directorial approaches to Euripides’ original) have avoided tackling the difficult questions raised by Euripides’ ending, which demands an answer to the following question: how could the gods send down a dragon-drawn chariot to rescue a woman who murdered her own children? Many contemporary authors and directors prefer to eliminate Euripides’ ending in order to focus on more immediate issues, such as the psychological or social damage resulting from patriarchy, colonialism, and misogyny. After considering several such productions, this article analyzes three plays that directly tackle Euripides’ troubling ending: two original scripts, by Heiner Müller and Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei respectively; and a production of Euripides’ original by Japanese director Miyagi Satoshi. Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei is Professor Emerita of Theatre at UCLA. An expert on postwar Japanese and cross-cultural performance, she is also a translator, director, and playwright. The author of Unspeakable Acts: The Avant-Garde Theatre of Terayama Shūji and Postwar Japan (University of Hawaii Press, 2005) and co-author of Theatre Histories: An Introduction (third edition, Routledge, 2016), she has published over a hundred articles, chapters, and reviews. She is an Associate Editor of Asian Theatre Journal and a Fellow of the College of Fellows of the American Theatre.

Letter from the Editor

This first issue of Ecumenica’s fifteenth volume pays respect to I Nyoman Cerita. His essay on calonarang performance in Bali was under review, here, when he passed away in late 2021. A respected artist and scholar, Cerita taught at the Institut Seni Indonesia and choreographed performances of many sorts around the world. Cerita has written about the ritual practice of performers in calonarang and encourages us to regard that practice as fundamental to calonarang performers’ art. In this issue we offer his essay, which was co-authored by his friend Kathy Foley, Distinguished Professor Emerita at UC-Santa Cruz and a past editor of Asian Theatre Journal. Foley and I Nyoman Sedana provide a preface to this essay, in memory of I Nyoman Cerita and as an introduction to the art in which he was a true expert.This issue also offers the first of two parts of Kristen Rudisill’s translation of Cho Ramasamy’s play Cāttiram Coṉṉatilai (The Scriptures Don’t Say So). Composed in Tamil, Ramasamy’s comic play dramatizes caste conflict in southern India, where caste and its implications are fundamentally entangled with religion. The second part, completing this first English translation of the play, will appear in this volume’s second issue.The last feature item in this issue is an interview with Moslem Nadalizadeh, professor of Persian Language at Ahlul Bayt International University in Tehran, Iran, who has also been a ta’ziyeh performer from childhood. In this conversation, Nadalizadeh reflects on the history of his family of ta’ziyeh performers and comments on the central features and methods of ta’ziyeh performance.The performance reviews and the book reviews in this issue attend to two specific topics. Readers will find here reviews of separate pastorela performances of this past holiday season. Javier L. Hurtado articulates his experience of El Teatro Campesino’s renowned La Pastorela, as revised and performed in 2021 as a radio broadcast. Aliza Moran looks at The Last Christmas / La Ultima Navidad, performed bilingually by Cazateatro in Memphis, Tennessee. The book reviews in this issue all attend to studies of performance and Indigenous peoples. Taken together, the books in review in this issue cover considerable ground, literally and figuratively, from Mexico City to Wisconsin, USA, and from Pre-Columbian Aztec-Nahua civilization to today’s Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. In surveying these different books, this issue’s review authors—Emily Goodell, Guillermo Avilés-Rodríguez, Neal Anderson Hebert, Sarah Alice Campbell, and Andrew Gibb examine Indigenous philosophy and epistemology, colonial history, tourism, and performative representation.We are entering the third year of global pandemic, or leaving the second year, depending on the point from which a person chooses to look at it. We at Ecumenica express hope for a year that is more free of this threat to our common health. Acknowledging what the pandemic has revealed about all of us, we hope for a year that is more open to performance and to religious practice that renews our global consciousness and our respectful regard for each other as interdependent individuals.

Leonard Cabell Pronko: An Appreciation

This summary and updating of the life and career of kabuki scholar and teacher Leonard Cabell Pronko (1927–2019) is also a personal snapshot of an extraordinary human being. It should be read in conjunction with the more comprehensive review of his contributions to Japanese theatre studies that appears in Asian Theatre Journal's "Founders of the Field" series (28:2, Fall 2011). The current article emphasizes Pronko's biography and how he came to Japanese theatre from a background in Romance languages. It discusses his key interests and points out some of the ways he influenced and aided my own career as an example of his abiding concern for current and former students. It also includes intriguing remarks from an unpublished interview with Jonah Salz (2016). I am grateful to Jonah Salz for permission to use this material.

The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Ethnicity ed. by Anthony Shay and Barbara Sellers-Young

Reviewed by: The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Ethnicity ed. by Anthony Shay and Barbara Sellers-Young Emily Wilcox THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF DANCE AND ETHNICITY. Edited by Anthony Shay and Barbara Sellers-Young. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. 768 pp. Cloth, $150.00; eBook, $119.99. Oxford has been a leading publisher of influential scholarly collections on dance for decades; the 1983 anthology What is Dance? remains a goto resource for dance history educators, while the six-volume International Encyclopedia of Dance (1998, updated 2004) is the most comprehensive reference work on dance available in English to date. In 2014, Oxford University Press (OUP) launched its newest project in this area: Oxford Handbooks. Thus far, eight dance-related handbooks have appeared: Dance and the Popular Screen (2014), Dance and Theater (2015), Dance and Ethnicity (2016), Screendance Studies (2016), Dance and Reenactment (2017), Dance and Wellbeing (2017), Dance and Politics (2017), and Dance and Competition (2018). Explicitly marketed to "scholars and graduate students," these dictionary-sized tomes are designed for academics; they aim to "offer authoritative and up-to-date surveys of original research in a particular subject area" and to "give critical examinations of the progress and direction of debates, as well as a foundation for future research" (OUP website). From the vantage point of a scholar of Asian performance like myself and most readers of Asian Theatre Journal, Asia is woefully underrepresented in these handbooks. In volumes containing between thirty and over forty essays each, typically one to two, or at most three, center on Asia-related material. At least one of these essays almost [End Page 246] always involves Asia "on the international stage"—usually code for dancers from Asia performing in Western contexts—leaving Asian subjects geographically marginalized. When essays on Asian dancers in Asia do appear, they tend to deal overwhelmingly with India, a country that (due to the history of British colonialism) has more representation in English-language dance scholarship and is already quite familiar to dance studies scholars. The comparatively more groundbreaking work on dance across diverse regions of Asia that has appeared in ATJ over the years seems to be entirely off the radar of these handbooks' editors and reviewers, despite the fact that many contributors to ATJ attend dance and performance conferences, receive degrees in dance and performance studies programs, and publish widely. With these caveats in mind, The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Ethnicity is a welcome contribution toward a more meaningful incorporation of Asia-informed perspectives into the Oxford Handbooks series. Of the thirty-one essays included in the volume, nine center Asia-related content, of which three focus on artists and activities based in Asia. The latter, which would be of primary interest to ATJ readers, are Leonard Pronko and Jonathan M. Hall's "To Call Dance Japanese: Nihon Buyō as Ethnic Dance," Ida Meftahi's "Dancing Angels and Princesses: The Invention of an Ideal Female National Dancer in Twentieth-Century Iran," and Rachmi Diyah Larasati's "Crossing the Seas of Southeast Asia: Indigenous Diasporic Islam and Performances of Women's Igal." Also of possible interest are Nancy Lee Ruyter's "La Meri: Purveyor of the Dancing Other," Rebekah J. Kowal's "Choreographing Interculturalism: International Dance Performance at the American Museum of Natural History, 1943–1952," and Miriam Phillips' "Spectacles of Ethnicities: The San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival," all of which critically examine presentations of Asian dance forms in the United States. Also of interest may be Andrea Deagon's "Orientalism and the American Belly Dancer: Multiplicity, Authenticity, Identity" and Barbara Sellers-Young's "Men and the Happiness Dance," both of which deal with transnational circuits of Middle Eastern dance, and Christine Emi Chan's "Beyond Colonization, Commodification, and Reclamation: Hula and Hawaiian Identity," which deals with issues of Orientalism as they relate to Polynesian dance in colonial contexts. Insofar as they move beyond Indian subjects and the handful of other Asia-related topics addressed in the other volumes, the above essays take an important step toward offering more varied and substantive treatments of Asia-related material in the Oxford Handbooks dance series. The fact that such a large and original representation of Asia-related content is...

Journey of A Goddess: Chen Jinggu Subdues the Snake Demon transed. by Fan Pen Li Chen

Reviewed by: Journey of A Goddess: Chen Jinggu Subdues the Snake Demon transed. by Fan Pen Li Chen Kathy Foley JOURNEY OF A GODDESS: CHEN JINGGU SUBDUES THE SNAKE DEMON. Translated and edited by Fan Pen Li Chen. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2017. 133 pp.; 46 color plates. $75.00; $28.00. Fan Pen Chen continues to fill in information on Chinese puppetry and folklore studies with this 2017 work that joins her Marionette Plays from Northern China (Albany: SUNY Press, 2017) (reviewed by Annie Rollins in Asian Theatre Journal 35: 230–233) and other works in filling out Chinese puppetry knowledge. [End Page 502] Like Victor Mair (1989), Wilt Idema (for example, 2010), and Robin Ruizendaal (2006), Chen takes as her topic under-researched oral/visual texts or performances ("folk" materials). The book provides intriguing elements of complex rituals with semi-obscure meanings that persist in contemporary folk culture. Chen's introduction entices: "Journey of a Goddess is a lively mythology of Chen Jinggu … one of the most important goddesses in Southeast China (the chief deity of the Lüshan sect). … A historical shaman priestess who became a cult, the goddess was a demon slayer (particularly of a snake sprite) before she filled the niche as protectress of women (during pregnancy and childbirth)" (p. 1). The historical shaman Chen Jinggu (766–790 ad) was promoted to goddess in the Song period. The earliest clear reference to her cult dates to 1342 ad, and Haiyouji (Record of Traveling among Seas and Lakes, which Chen translates) is taken from a 1753 ad woodblock reprint of a Ming novel (p. 3). Extensive color plates show puppets, temple statues, actors, priests, ritual paraphernalia, offerings for the puppet stage, and musical instruments. Translations of Haiyouji and two scenes from a local puppet play Biography of the Foster Mother become the body of the text. "Foster Mother" is the Goddess Chen Jinggu, also known as Lady Chen. Language is lively and extensive notes are included. Fan Pen Chen agrees with the interpretation of Ye Mingsheng (Research Institute of Art of Fujian Province) with whom she has done research (see Chen and Clark 2010). Ye traces both the novel and puppetry about Lady Chen to ritual practices of the Lüshan shamanist/Daoist rituals (see Baptandier 2002 for a discussion of some of Ye's work on the cult and Baptandier 2008 for another interpretation of this goddess). For Chen the triumph of the Lüshan goddess over her female snake adversary represents the demotion of an indigenous snake cult by shamanism. The story also represents the balance of snake cults, shamanism/Daoism, and Buddhism (represented in this case by Goddess Kuanyin). The snake is a strand of Kuanyin's hair while Chen Jinggu is born of Kuanyin's nail, so both bow to the Buddhist goddess. Fan Pen Chen taps extensive research Ye did for a large project on Chen Jinggu and makes parts of play texts Ye collected accessible for Anglophone readers. Watching a puppet performance of the tale, Chen describes how ritual mixes with theatre: "The audience exclaimed with excitement when, after performing an elaborate and extensive shamanistic ritual dance, the shaman priestess Chen Jinggu [puppet] drew the snake sprite onstage … commanding two celestial generals (who had been hovering in the air) to attack … [action] more easily executed through the use of string puppets than it would have been with human actors" (p. 13). Lady Chen's story is presented in a variety of forms—including [End Page 503] drum song, nuo opera, etc.—but string marionettes are most popular manifestation (pp. 13–14). The book begins with Chen's thirty-five-page introduction. Next comes the translation of Haiyouji telling how a ravishing seductresssnake/white python is eventually subdued by the demure, hardworking Chen Jinggu whose eldest brother is imprisoned by the python and her tiger-demon male partner. Lady Chen's second, adopted brother, Haiqing, serves as her clown-sidekick during the rescue efforts. Chen Jinggu learns ritual techniques to save brother and others, overpowering the snake. Chen Jinggu owns the narrative. She saves brothers and babies from demons. She must reason with the Buddhist goddess Kuanyin, who...

Letter from the Editors

Research Article| October 01 2018 Letter from the Editors Claire Pamment; Claire Pamment Claire Pamment is Assistant Professor of World Theatre in the Department of Theatre, Speech and Dance at the College of William & Mary. She was a Yale Institute of Sacred Music, Worship and the Arts Fellow (2015–16), and has taught at various universities in Pakistan. Her direction credits include Sarmad Sehbai's adaptation of Dario Fo's Can't Pay Won't Pay (Islamabad, 2010), which was selected for Tehran's International Festival of University Theatre in 2011. More recently she co-directed with Iram Sana (Olomopolo Media) Teesri Dhun (The Third Tune), a devised documentary theatre performance about transgender struggles in Pakistan, developed out of her present research and supported by an SSHRC grant. Her research focuses on South Asian popular theatre and performance, with interests in marginality, transgendering and Muslim cultures. Her articles have been published in TDR, Comedy Studies, Asian Theatre Journal, and in numerous books. She is the author of Comic Performance in Pakistan: The Bhānd (Palgrave 2017). Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Hesam Sharifian Hesam Sharifian Hesam Sharifian is a PhD Candidate at Tufts University, Department of Drama and Dance. He holds a bachelor's degree in Dramatic Literature from Tehran University and a Master's degree in Theatre History and Criticism from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His scholarly publications have appeared or are forthcoming in Theatre Survey, Asian Theatre Journal, New England Theatre Journal, and Academic Theatre Journal of Iran. Recognized by the professional associations of the fields of Theatre and Performance Studies, Hesam has been the recipient of the Helen Krich Chinoy Award and the Thomas Marshal Award, both from the American Society for Theatre Research. He has also won several grants and research competitions, such as the Jay and Deborah Last Fellowship in American Visual Arts from the American Antiquarian Society and the Tisch Library Fellowship in Humanities. His areas of scholarly interest include theatre and performance in Muslim worlds, theatre and opera iconography, American commercial theatre in the long nineteenth century, German expressionist theatre and opera, and multi-culturalism in theatre. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Ecumenica (2018) 11 (2): 5–7. https://doi.org/10.5325/ecumenica.11.2.0005 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Claire Pamment, Hesam Sharifian; Letter from the Editors. Ecumenica 1 October 2018; 11 (2): 5–7. doi: https://doi.org/10.5325/ecumenica.11.2.0005 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectivePenn State University PressEcumenica Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 2018 by The Pennsylvania State University. All rights reserved.2018The Pennsylvania State University Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Theatre Censorship in South Korea: a Nation in Permanent Crisis

Between 1975 and 1988, the Korean Public Performance Ethics Committee (KPPEC) censored obscene language, body exposure, and extreme violence, as is common in all forms of theatre censorship. However, the KPPEC focused in particular on depictions of the President of South Korea, and proscribed any work that challenged or even questioned the public image of the President as a strong leader for a nation in crisis. Despite the official abolition of censorship in 1988, it was discovered in 2016 that a blacklist had been in operation that excluded ‘left’ and ‘pro-Pyongyang’ theatre directors and actors from accessing public funding. By exploring the process of censorship, Seong-kwan Cho in this article interrogates the relationship between the theatre and the nation. Seong-kwan Cho is a lecturer at the School of Global Communication at Kyung Hee University. With Jae-beom Hong, in his current research he has been exploring North Korean performance, and his article on this subject is forthcoming in Asian Theatre Journal.

Hacking and Rehearsing: Experiments in Creative Tinkering

Hacking – improving software through a process of trial and error – is a mode of rehearsal. Such is the claim made by Miguel Escobar Varela in this article, which he furthers by exploring the similarities between the ways theatre makers and software programmers speak about their crafts. Understanding software programming as an essentially creative process should be of interest for theatre scholars, who are constantly searching for modes of academic discourse that are sensitive to the specificity of theatre. By offering examples from interface design for the study of Javanese theatre, Escobar argues that creating software, through an iterative process of trial and error, can become part of the methodological palette of theatre scholars. Miguel Escobar Varela is Assistant Professor of Theatre Studies at the National University of Singapore, and has worked as a theatre researcher, computer programmer and translator in Mexico, the Netherlands, Indonesia, and Singapore. His articles on the intersection of digital technology and theatre studies have been published in Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, Asian Theatre Journal, Performance Research, Contemporary Theatre Review and are forthcoming in TDR and Theatre Research International.

From the Editor

From the Editor Kathy Foley We mourn the loss in 2015 of James R. Brandon, who was a professor at the University of Hawai‘i and the founder of this journal, which first appeared in 1984 and that he co-edited with Elizabeth Wichmann-Walczak until 1992. The contents of this issue of Asian Theatre Journal include translations; articles on traditional, modern, and intercultural theatre; examinations of key contributors to Asian theatre studies; as well as performance and book reviews. The range shows the breadth of Jim Brandon’s founding vision. The authors in this issue are of diverse nationalities—Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Bangladeshi, Indonesian, Indian, American, and English. They are part of the transnational dialogue that Jim jump-started. I hope that readers will visit the website that Elizabeth Wich-mann-Walczak discusses in her report on the celebration of Jim Brandon’s life. But I also invite readers to look at this issue itself, noting the many minds and hands that meet to create it: authors, editors, and staff at the University of Hawai‘i Press. All who write, review, edit, correct, read, or create new work out of ideas gleaned from Asian Theatre Journal engage in the living legacy of James R. Brandon, a true “founder of our field.” [End Page v] Kathy Foley University of California, Santa Cruz Copyright © 2016 University of Hawai‘i Press

A Continuous Revolution: Making Sense of Cultural Revolution Culture by Barbara Mittler (review)

Reviewed by: A Continuous Revolution: Making Sense of Cultural Revolution Culture by Barbara Mittler Xing Fan A CONTINUOUS REVOLUTION: MAKING SENSE OF CULTURAL REVOLUTION CULTURE. By Barbara Mittler. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2012. 486 pp. Hardcover, $59.95. Barbara Mittler’s A Continuous Revolution: Making Sense of Cultural Revolution Culture is a valuable and stimulating monograph on artistic and cultural theory, practice, and experience during China’s Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). This book revolves around two interrelated questions: How shall we characterize Cultural Revolution culture? And what shall we make of it? Investigating the multifaceted landscape of the lived experience during the Cultural Revolution, the author reveals for the reader a period of complexity, paradoxes, and contradictions, and the book is a useful source for both academic and general readers. The author offers three core arguments: (1) Cultural Revolution culture comprised a diversity of both official and unofficial activities, and it itself experienced changes during its ten-year period. (2) Synchronicity played a crucial role in reaching out to an extremely wide public because the same messages were repetitively presented at every possible location and in every possible form. (3) Cultural Revolution culture was a pivotal moment in the pursuit of a new, Chinese, modern culture, from the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century. (All audiovisual resources under discussion in this book are collected in an online archive available at http://projects.zo.uniheidelberg.de/continuousrevolution.) Employing aesthetic experience as the base of this study, Barbara Mittler organizes her book around senses. In “Introduction: Nose—Smells,” the [End Page 617] author presents the overall ideas on some fundamental characteristics of Chinese propaganda art and proposes three reasons for the extreme popularity of Cultural Revolution culture, thus offering the initial “odors” of the scholarship. In the three subsequent divisions, each of which consists of two chapters, the author focuses on the audio, literary, and visual experience, respectively: part 1 is about the musical aspect of the model works and revolutionary songs, part 2 focuses on Mao Zedong’s writings and the fate of Three Character Classic, and part 3 is dedicated to Mao portraits and Cultural Revolution comics. In “Conclusion: Hands—Touch,” the author finishes with an analysis of the far-reaching and lasting popularity of what the author calls “Cultural Revolution Culture” from the perspectives of style, localities, and connections to the pre–and post–Cultural Revolution. Oral history is a significant dimension of this study. Not only acknowl-edged artists, writers, and scholars, but also forty anonymous interviewees with different family backgrounds provide their firsthand experiences with Cultural Revolution culture. At first reading, their narrations may appear overwhelmingly contradictory—people’s recollections of any given aspect of their cultural activities may differ from official statements and/or general assumptions regarding the ten years of the Cultural Revolution, people may relate widely divergent experiences, and one individual may even have different approaches to one issue at various points of a single interview. When the author juxtaposes these recollected personal experiences with discussions of artistic productions, however, a larger picture of the Cultural Revolution culture—one incorporating hatred and love, horror and pleasure, pain and joy, and destruction and construction—begins to emerge. In the study of Cultural Revolution culture, artistic creativity and the connection between the Cultural Revolution and previous periods have already attracted academic attention (see Paul Clark’s The Chinese Cultural Revolution: A History and Xiaomei Chen’s Acting the Right Part: Political Theater and Popular Drama in Contemporary China). In challenging the long-term oversimplification of Cultural Revolution culture as homogeneous and stagnant, Mittler’s book complements the literature in this field by presenting official model works in the context of audience reception and reenactments, and she juxtaposes the officially approved pieces with unofficial cultural experience. Moreover, in declining to isolate the Cultural Revolution as a discrete period in China’s cultural history, she examines not only theatrical and musical performance, but also literary and visual experience, and contextualizes Cultural Revolution culture within the larger picture of Chinese history from the late nineteenth century to the present. For the reader of Asian Theatre Journal, I will focus on part 1 in the...

Karnnaparithyagam (The Abandoning of Karna) by Sadanam K. Harikumaran (review)

KARNNAPARITHYAGAM (THE ABANDONING OF KARNA). Premiere of a kathakali play by Sadanam K. Harikumaran. Sadanam Kathakali Academy, Kerala, India, 18 January 2013. Karnnaparithyagam (The Abandoning of Karna) premiered during the Sixtieth Anniversary of Sadanam Kathakali Academy in Kerala on 18 January 2013. Since 2008, Sadanam K. Harikumaran has been secretary of the academy, which he founded in 1953 by his father, K. Kumaran, a freedom fighter and follower of Gandhi. Harikumaran wrote the play four years ago, but this was its first performance. As usual, he also composed the music and choreography. Harikumaran has written twelve kathakali plays. Seven are based on episodes in the Mahabharata, three are based on other Hindu epics, and the other is Manikantha Charitham (The Story of Manikantha), about the conflict of an invading Muslim general and a Hindu prince and their eventual friendship. Harikumaran's plays are written according to kathakali tradition. Eight have now been performed, including Charudattam, his adaptation of Julius Caesar. (See my review in Asian Theatre Journal 28, no. 2 [2011]: 569-572.) Harikumaran is one of the finest kathakali actors, as well as a composer and choreographer, and is also known as a kathakali and carnatic music vocalist. He designs kathakali makeup and headdresses and is a sculptor and painter. Since 2009, I have been fortunate to see five of Harikumaran's plays: four in Kerala, and scenes 3 and 5 of Sapamochanam (Deliverance from the Oath), in which he was the lead actor, in San Francisco and Los Angeles in October 2010, the only performances of that play outside of India to date. The first part of Manikantha Charitham, with the new title Bhasmasura Vadham (The Killing of Bhasmasura), was performed in Zagarolo, Italy, on 22 June 2013. Seven of his works, including Charudattam, are published in the original Malayalam as Kathakali Aattakkathakal (Kathakali Play Texts) (Kozhikode, Kerala: Mathrubhumi Books 2008). New plays have continued to be written for kathakali since the classic era of the eighteenth and ninteenth centuries, but especially in recent decades they are not always successful. Another play on Karna, Karnasapadham (Karna's Oath) was written in 1967 by V. Madhavan Nair (see Zarrilli 2000: 180-181). As in The Abandoning of Kama, the emphasis is on pathos (karuna). It is still performed but remains controversial, the principal criticism being that it does not conform to the kathakali structure, not even having slokas (verses describing the narrative of the story). The Abandoning of Karna is the story of the birth of Karna, which has never previously been depicted in a kathakali play. Karna is regarded as one of the greatest warriors in the Mahabharata. Although born to Kunthi, who later becomes mother of the first three Pandava brothers, Yudhisthira, Bhima, and Arjuna, Karna is abandoned at birth and ends up on the side of the opposing Kauravas. Later episodes of his warrior life are represented in other kathakali plays, including Harikumaran's own Karnnaparvam (Karna's Chapter). In The Abandoning of Karna, the sage Durvasa (actor-dancer Sadanam Balakrishnan) arrives, planning to stay at the palace of King Kunthibhoja (played by Kalanilayam Balan), stepfather of Kunthi. Balakrishnan skillfully portrays the temperamental Durvasa, whose erratic behavior scares the king. The young Kunthi agrees to serve Durvasa, who in foreseeing the future realizes that when Kunthi marries Pandu, father of the Pandavas, she will have trouble bearing children. He offers her five boons so she can have children from divine beings. Kunthi is played by a senior streevesham (female role) actor, Kalanilayam Gopalakrishnan, who gracefully displays the sensitivity of the young girl. There is a fascinating to and fro in one scene between Kunthi and Durvasa. Harikumaran explains in a personal email (11 May 2013) that Durvasa is considered the personification of the anger of Shiva. …

From the Editor

From the Editor Kathy Foley Our field will greatly miss Nakamura Kanzaburō XVIII. I invite scholars to take the time in future articles to evaluate the important work of figures such as him in more substantive ways to more fully acknowledge their contributions. It gives me great pleasure to introduce the second in the ATJ series: “Founders of the Field” (see Asian Theatre Journal 28, no. 2: 281–476), a group of short essays, which have again been solicited and edited by Siyuan Liu (University of British Columbia) and David Jortner (Baylor University). The symposium reflects some ideas first presented at the 2012 AAP Conference in Washington, DC, in a panel they organized. While this grouping in no way “finishes” the story started in the first installment, it does extend it, showing some new directions. For example, in the last set we saw a generation coming largely from the United States, Europe, and Australia who became fascinated with Asian performance traditions as a number of the men received their first exposure to the forms during military service in World War II or the Korean War. In this second group we see mostly figures who began their study, teaching, and practice of theatre in the Cold War era. Daniel Yang from China/Taiwan and I Made Bandem from Indonesia, for example, are talented Asian artists who came to study for their PhDs in the United States, Yang with A. C. Scott at the University of Wisconsin and Bandem with Fredrik de Boer at Wesleyan University (both of their teachers were discussed in the first Founders of the Field Symposium), so in some sense we can say that they are “second generation.” Farley Richmond was an early student of James R. Brandon’s at Michigan State University. Schechner and Goodman found their own paths to Asia as travelers. So, with the possible exception of Benito Ortolani, who came to Japanese theatre research via a religious studies route, these individuals are part of the “next wave.” Travel was growing easier and funding was beginning to be available though area studies and international grants to promote East-West flows. Though some of these researchers worked intensively on arts that seemed to be endangered or archaic (Farley Richmond on kutiyattam, [End Page iii] Ortolani on the religious roots of Japanese performance, and Bandem on gambuh as a root of Balinese performing arts), as a group over the long run they were as invested in the modern as in researching the past: Richard Schechner became the poster boy for American intercultural theatre and one of the major figures in cross-fertilization of anthropology, dance, and theatre studies. He blew some of the traditional Eurocentrism out of theatre studies, showing it was no longer mandatory to start that survey with the Greeks, even if some (Rustom Bharucha, for example) found his methods of borrowing and eclectic uses of Indian models too free for their taste. But while potshots were being taken as the emergent concepts of “Orientalism” and “PC” became part of the academic lingua franca and steps were made toward the construction of postcolonial discourses, this was part of the academy discourse of the period; as these men entered it was engaged in deconstruction, postmodernism, and gender and culture wars. It was natural that these would have their reflections in our field. Such crosstalk enriched our field and our thinking. Interculturalism was also a part of the living experience of this group of artist-thinkers hitting their stride in the 1970s and 1980s. Daniel Yang became the head of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival and then led the Hong Kong Repertory Theatre in its work. David Goodman was arriving in Japan at a moment of red-hot political theatre and he became a witness to and participant in the new theatre, documenting it in Concerned Theatre Japan. Farley Richmond began with modern theatre in India, stepped back to kuttiyattam, and has taken his Indian training to directing opera and explored new media in interface with Asian work. I Made Bandem, whom some wily press person dubbed the “Joe Papp of Bali,” has used his interests in traditional theatre to develop new-old performances. His reconstructions of gambuh...

Some Personal Recollections of Benito Ortolani

Some Personal Recollections of Benito Ortolani Samuel L. Leiter (bio) I do not believe anybody else had as long and close a professional relationship with Benito Ortolani as I. We first met in Tokyo in 1963. I had gone to Japan as one of three East-West Center grantees from the University of Hawai‘i; the East-West Center had been established by the federal government a year earlier and Benito had been asked to oversee the first crop of East-West Center grantees sent to Japan to study theatre. Father Ortolani, as he was then known, was a thirty-five-year-old Jesuit priest teaching at Sophia University; I had never met a priest before, and he was completely unlike any preconceptions I may have had. My very first published article, originally written as part of my master’s thesis, was a series of four interviews with leading kabuki actors, each of whom Father Ortolani contacted on my behalf to set up dressing room appointments. He and I then lugged a heavy Wollensak reel-to-reel tape recorder on Tokyo’s buses and trains to each session, where he served as my interpreter, as my Japanese then was inadequate to doing the interviews on my own. [End Page 358] I met him next in 1971, at Brooklyn College, where I had begun teaching six years earlier. Although he had come to New York to join the recently inaugurated Columbia University Theatre Department, when that program quickly fell apart due to what I believe were financial reasons, he’d been able to land a job teaching Asian literature in what was then the Comparative Literature Department at Brooklyn. He soon managed to switch into the newly created Theatre Department (in 1973 it had separated from what had been the Speech and Theatre Department). In 1976 he was elected chair, a position he held until he retired, a quarter of a century later. When he retired, I succeeded him as chair. He and I were two of America’s best-known scholars of Japanese theatre, but, unfortunately, we were trapped in a department that had little interest in our field. It was an academic anomaly that we were never able to overcome. The Brooklyn College theatre faculty was focused on training students in Western theatre, and was increasingly performance oriented; as in so many other programs the academic aspects of theatre education were respected but not considered a priority. My production of a kabuki play in 1976, while appreciated, was a true rarity. Benito taught Japanese theatre as a brief unit within a graduate survey course on theatre history. His familiarity with European theatre history was great, and his students gained enormously from his lectures. On several occasions he arranged for Japanese theatre practitioners to give lecture demonstrations for the entire department. He also was instrumental in bringing Tadashi Suzuki’s production of Trojan Women to the campus. During his heyday, it was hard not to hold Benito in the highest regard, not only for his intelligence and learning but for the distinguished way in which he bore himself. He dressed nattily in well-tailored suits and ties (he was fond of wearing his suit jacket in Continental fashion, draped over his shoulders) while those around him were typically clothed in jeans and sneakers, and he carried with him the air of a courtly European. His musically accented but crystal-clear English was marked by long sentences that made me think of German syntax, but he was always a compelling speaker. His contributions to Japanese theatre scholarship are very important; I’m happy to see his work as a “founder of the field” remembered in the pages of ATJ. [End Page 359] Samuel L. Leiter Samuel L. Leiter is Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Brooklyn College, CUNY, and the Graduate Center, CUNY. He has written or edited twenty-six books and is a former editor of Asian Theatre Journal (1992–2004). In 2009 he became the first theatre scholar to receive an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Emeritus Fellowship, and he is on the committee for the annual Drama Desk Awards in New York City. Copyright © 2013 University of Hawai‘i Press

Seven Contemporary Plays for the Korean Diaspora in the Americas ed. by Esther Kim Lee (review)

Reviewed by: Seven Contemporary Plays for the Korean Diaspora in the Americas ed. by Esther Kim Lee Kathy Foley Seven Contemporary Plays for the Korean Diaspora in the Americas. Edited and introduced by Esther Kim Lee. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012. 330pp. Esther Kim Lee, author of A History of Asian American Theatre (Cambridge University Press, 2006), continues her documentation of the drama by authors of Asian descent by editing selected plays of second-generation Koreans, largely in the United States. Thus the text is mostly about American theatre, where most of these figures have their home and locus. The work is literature-focused, and a short discussion of the literary themes is found in the introduction, [End Page 553] but very minimal attention is devoted to production or the theatre infrastructure or educational institutions that generated or supported the material. Some particulars of narrative tropes (intergenerational family issues) or, in two cases, literary references (to a pansori narrative song or the modernist Poet Yi Sang) are the Korean links. Pieces highlight child-parent and sibling conflicts that result as Confucian patterns clash with Euro-American cultural norms. Broad aspects of Korea’s history (diasporas after the devastation of the Korean War, anti-Japanese feeling stemming from the colonial occupation) form a background for a number of the plays. The work ultimately tags authors who should be watched as the contemporary American or Canadian artists they are. One of the plays has, however, had significant Korean production, Yi Sang Counts to Thirteen (see Kim Yoon Young’s 2011 review of Yi Sang Counts to Thirteen in Asian Theatre Journal 28, no. 1: 262–267). Lee does not argue any unifying factor for the plays beyond the generation of the authors (all are second generation) and their ethnicity (Korean); rather “the plays are about what the writers have felt emotionally and intuitively in seeing themselves as part of the Korea diaspora” (xxiii). Though the genres range from the surreal emotional landscape that Sung Ngo evokes in his play on poet Yi Sang to the relative realism in Julia Cho’s 99 Histories, the system the artists come from is largely East Coast American theatre education. The authors studied at Brown University (Edward Bok Lee, Sung Rno), New York University (Julia Cho, Diana Son), the New School (Lloyd Suh), or Columbia University (Kyoung Park). The one non-American-trained author is Jean Yoon (University of Toronto). This common educational training may lessen the hemispheric coverage the volume aspires toward. The two frequent themes that emerge from the overall assemblage are exploration of cultural and literary roots treated through the styles of contemporary Western dramatic arts practice and generational misunderstandings that beset the nuclear family. Kim’s introduction is brief and covers the changing dynamics of the Korean diaspora: Japanese colonialism, the devastating Korean War leading to emigration in search of economic and educational opportunity, emergence of Korea as an economic force in the 1980s and 1990s, and the hallyu (Korean wave) that has made the country a force in Asian popular culture since the 1990s. These comments and the introductions prior to each play, given their brevity, do not push toward deep analysis of the works. Editor Kim wants to hold to the idea of the authors as distinctive and different, yet has—for purposes of Korean-ness—selected plays that consciously link to either the literature of the homeland or the divides Korean upbringing may imprint on Westernized offspring. Three works adopt realism as a primary acting mode. Juliette Cho’s 99 Histories tells of a pregnant unmarried daughter who returns home to give birth and bonds with her mother as she explores the story of an aunt born with a hereditary mental disease. The Western canon is referenced repeatedly: Glass Menagerie’s “gentleman caller” and mother-child dynamic is directly [End Page 554] cited, and Ibsen’s Ghosts haunt the play with its secret of an inherited mental illness that may beset the unborn fetus. The play zigzags between realism and poetically evocative scenes. The Los Angeles riots of 1992, where the girl’s shopkeeper father died, form the background of the girl’s mental fragility. While there are...

Guilt, Nostalgia, and Victimhood: Korea in the Japanese Theatrical Imagination

How has post-war Japanese theatre grappled with Japanese responsibility for its imperialistic/militaristic past in Asia, and for institutionalized discrimination against resident minorities? Using the tools of guilt, nostalgia, and the valorization of victimhood that are embedded in the idea of hōgan biiki (sympathy for the loser/victims), Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei here analyzes Japan's often contradictory, flip-flopping self-image as both victimizer and victim in relation to Korea and resident Koreans. Looking at both mainstream and alternative performances, her article suggests that despite attempts to discuss these issues openly, most theatre artists actually present images that soften or displace responsibility for the past. Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei is Professor Emerita of Theatre at UCLA, and was recently a Research Fellow at the Institute for Interweaving Performance Cultures, Freie Universität, Berlin. An authority on post-war Japanese and cross-cultural performance, she is also a translator, director, and award-winning playwright. Her books include Unspeakable Acts: the Avant-Garde Theatre of Terayama Shuji and Postwar Japan and the co-authored Theatre Histories: an Introduction. She has published numerous articles and presented papers and keynotes throughout the world. Professor Sorgenfrei is Associate Editor of Asian Theatre Journal and Editor of the Association for Asian Performance Newsletter.

Mei Lanfang, Brecht, Meyerhold, and Other Issues: A Reply to Janne Risum

COMMUNICATIONS FROM READERS MEI LANFANG, BRECHT, MEYERHOLD, AND OTHER ISSUES: A REPLY TO JANNE RISUM I read with great interest and gratitude Janne Risum's extensive review1 of my recent book, Mei Lanfang and the Twentieth-Century International Stage: Chinese Theatre Placed and Displaced (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). As I wholeheartedly agree with Risum in her cogent remark that ``serious debate is best fed by questions rather than ready-made answers'' (p. 236), I want to address some of the points that she made in her review. I want to emphasize that as an important development of the arguments I made in my 1997 article on Brecht's interpretation of Chinese acting,2 I compared and discussed in the book that Risum reviewed (hereafter, Mei Lanfang) different versions of Brecht's article on Mei Lanfang -³ (1894±1961) and Chinese acting. In addition, I called particular attention to one of Brecht's most signi®cant concepts, refunctioningÐa key concept that has been generally forgotten or overlooked, and revealed how Brecht used ``refunctioning'' as a strategy in his interpretation of, and his judgment on, the usability of Chinese and Japanese theatres (pp. 210±13). In my 1999 article on Meyerhold's interpretation of Mei Lanfang and the Chinese theatre,3 I discussed all the major sources I had found on the subject published in Russian, French, Chinese, and English. In the expanded and revised chapter in Mei Lanfang, I made use of many other new sources (in Russian, French, Chinese, and English) on this subject that were not covered in Risum's 2001 article on Meyerhold and Mei Lanfang.4 I also added a section on Alexander Tairov's interpretation of the Chinese theatre in the context of his idea of ``Theatre of Synthesis'' (pp. 170±73). Risum compares my work to her 2001 article, and to two others, this way: ``. . . Tian focuses more on the misinterpretations at the same time that he presents what he thinks is a more authentic and correct understanding of Mei's art'' (p. 231). Here I want to make it clear that more than that, my arguments, whether as originally put forth in my 1997 and 1999 articles, or as expanded on in this book, are fundamentally different from Risum's as put forth in her 2001 article. 1 CHINOPERL Papers 31 (2012): 228±36. 2 Min Tian, ```Alienation-Effect' for Whom? Brecht's (Mis)interpretation of the Classical Chinese Theatre,'' Asian Theatre Journal 14.2 (Fall 1997): 200±22. 3 Min Tian, ``Meyerhold Meets Mei Lanfang: Staging the Grotesque and the Beautiful,'' Comparative Drama 33.2 (Summer 1999): 234±69. 4 Janne Risum, ``Mei Lanfang: A Model for the Theatre of the Future,'' in Be Âatrice PiconVallin and Vadim Shcherbakov, eds., Meyerhold, rezhissura v perspektive veka/Meyerhold, la mise en sce Áne dans le sie Ácle (Moscow: OGI, 2001), pp. 258±83. CHINOPERL: Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature 32.1 (July 2013): 100±106 # The Permanent Conference on Chinese Oral and Performing Literature, Inc. 2013 DOI: 10.1179/0193777413Z.0000000005 In her review, Risum speaks twice of my approach as an ``essentialization'' of xiqu 2ò (indigenous Chinese theatre). The ®rst time comes after she has rehearsed my argument that Mei Lanfang's art could not truly act as a model for Western antirealist avant-gardists (such as Brecht and Meyerhold) because it does not conform to their theories and praxis and, in effect, it ``converges in some of the most essential points'' (emphasis added) with the Stanislavsky systemÐthose points that ``antirealist avant-gardists attacked as naturalistic'' (p. 14). Risum then makes this statement: ``. . . with this move, Min Tian turns the view he is opposing upside down by going to the other extreme (from `cold' to `warm') and in so doing he essentializes xiqu as he understands its conventions'' (p. 232). As I strongly believe that Mei Lanfang was much closer to Stanislavsky than he was to Brecht (if such a comparison has to be made), I would stress that what I have done in my exposition and deconstruction of Brecht's ``cold'' interpretation of Chinese acting is to underline the paramount importance of ``inner experiencing'' and``identi®cation'' (she shen...

The Case against World Theatre History

A strong case can be made against world theatre history as a subject of scholarly study. This paper analyzes seven arguments that can be levelled against world theatre history as an academic subject. It then offers rebuttals to each of these arguments. In so doing, it seeks not only to establish the legitimacy of world theatre history as a subject of study, but also to clarify the methodologies and the goals of such study. Steve Tillis received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and currently teaches at St Mary's College of California. He has previously published articles on world theatre history in Asian Theatre Journal, TDR, Theatre Topics, and Theatre Survey.

Asian Shakespeare 2.0

Asia. An impossible interpellation. --Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (2006: 121) How many ages hence Shall this our lofty scene be acted over, In states unborn and accents yet unknown! --Julius Caesar 3.1.112-114 (Shakespeare 2005) The age of Asian Shakespeare 2.0 has arrived. It is an age in which performing Shakespeare in Asian theatrical styles generates incredible artistic and intellectual energy. It is an age in which certain Asian theatrical practices are foreign at home and abroad, while Shakespeare is proclaimed, once again, the bearer of universal currency. It is an age in which Asian performance and Shakespearean interpretations foster symbiotic and antithetical relationships with equal force and ever-increasing pace--fueled by the efficacy of virtual media (video sharing and social networking sites among them) and by rapid localization of globally circulating goods, ideas, and art works. Neither Asia nor Shakespeare has unified identities in any meaningful sense or even consolidated economic interests. Rather, they are defined by remarkable internal divisions and incongruities. The last two decades of the twentieth century marked the first phase of sustained study of Asian Shakespeare performance as a marginalized cultural phenomenon (Leiter 1986; Kennedy 1993; Brown 1999). The present time is defined by the rise of Asian Shakespeare 2.0 as both artistic and intellectual paradigms. As theatre artists challenge fixated notions of tradition, critics are no longer confined by the question of narrowly defined cultural authenticity. More notable productions are emerging across Asia, and these productions are being archived, read closely, and used as case studies in the classroom. Stage directors such as Ninagawa Yukio, Oh Tae-suk, Ong Keng Sen, and Wu Hsing-kuo reached diverse audiences through new strategies to bring together different cultural contexts and genres. A wave of new English-language scholarship since 2000 also put Asian Shakespeare performance in the spotlight (Trivedi and Minami 2010; Kennedy and Yong 2010; Huang and Ross 2009; Huang 2009a, 2009b; Lee et al. 2009; Dionne and Kapadia 2008; Chaudhuri and Lim 2006; Trivedi and Bartholomeusz 2005; Minami, Carruthers, and Gillies 2001). But there are critical gaps to be filled in research on the topic. First of all, the two-way traffic of intercultural exchange has not been addressed adequately. Important in their own right, questions such as is it that endures when [Shakespeare] is deprived of his tongue? dominated the research in the 1990s and continue to guide certain inquiries today (Kennedy 1993: 17; Kennedy and Yong 2010: 21), and the sea change occurring within Asian performing traditions has taken a back seat to what has been perceived as more urgent questions on Shakespeare's place in the modern world. Scholars are now seeking answers to how Asian Shakespeare formulates firsthand experience rooted in Asia (Trivedi and Minami 2010: 6). This special issue adds to the scholarship on global Shakespeare and Asian theatre's relationship to Anglophone cultural texts. As an Asianist and Shakespearean constantly moving among a number of fields that do not usually talk to one another, I am very grateful to Kathy Foley and Asian Theatre Journal for giving me this opportunity to edit this issue and put on several hats at once. The selection of essays has been consciously designed to include historical as well as contemporary work and to highlight diverse geographical areas even as some articles and interviews cover the usual suspects, such as Japan. Supplemented by reviews of performances, an exhibition, online resources, and books, as well as artists' reflections on their own works and an interview, these articles contextualize the arrival of Asian Shakespeare 2.0. Kathy Foley attempts to draw lines of convergence among what, at first glance, are disparate companies: an emerging troupe (Naked Masks) in Bangkok that tries to make Shakespeare a Thai contemporary, the work of a Balinese-influenced American company (Shadowlight) working in the shadow medium, and a Japanese theatre group (Setagaya) led by a traditionally trained kyogen actor. …

Possessed by Love, Thwarted by the Bell: An Overview of Kumi Odori

Kumi odori is an aristocratic dance-drama developed in 1719 by Tamagusuku Chokun as part of Okinawan court performance for the ritual investiture of the monarch. Shushin Kaniiri (Possessed by Love, Thwarted by the Bell) was written for this court presentation and has remained one of the most frequently performed works. This essay gives an introduction to kumi odori based on the practice of Kin Ryosho, an important twentieth-century master of the form. A translation of Possessed by Love, Thwarted by the Belly with stage directions reflecting Kin Sensei's choreography, follows this essay.1 The essay and translation were originally published in Asian Theatre Journal , 22:1 (spring 2005) in a slightly different format.

Decade of Dreams: Democracy and the Birth of Nepal’s Engaged Stage, 1980–1990

The decade between 1980 and 1990 was a time of political upheaval and change in Nepal as the populace demanded a voice in the system that governed their lives. It was also an important period in the development of Nepal’s theatre as democracy was won with the help of the fledgling political theatre movement, which began in the university, was taken to the streets, and was emulated throughout the kingdom. Particularly important was the work of Asesh Malla of Sarwanam and Sunil Pokharel of Aarohan. The work culminated in the Jana Andolan (People’s Movement), which climaxed in April 1990. As the citizens of Nepal wrestled absolute power from the hands of their king the relationship between Nepal’s theatre and society was changed forever. This paper illuminates this exciting period and the people at the forefront of Nepal’s socially engaged theatre. Carol C. Davis is an associate professor of theater at Franklin and Marshall College. She is also the founding artistic director of the Nepal Health Project, an educational and charitable theatre company that treks to villages throughout Nepal with plays and workshops on health and hygiene, and teaches creative dramatics to children in the orphanages of Kathmandu. Carol has acted and directed in California and Nepal, and her articles have appeared in Asian Theatre Journal, Theatre Symposium, Mime Journal, Education About Asia, Encyclopedia of Asian Theatre (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006), and Not For Sale: Bearing Witness, Making Politics (Melbourne: Spinifex Press, 2004).