Postcolonial Theatre Research Articles

Tactics of Resistance in Zimbabwean Post-2000 Street Theatre Performances

The aim of this article is to set post-2000 street theatre in Zimbabwe apart from earlier post-1980 postcolonial theatre as representing a new radical aesthetic based on “hidden” rather than “public” transcripts and representing new forms of subaltern aesthetic practice of more direct engagement with audiences. This article analyses performance techniques whose effect is to disguise the playing of resistance against Zimbabwe’s authoritarian regime. The article applies a combination of public and hidden transcript theory and post-linear theory, examining how street theatre adopts techniques that produce and disguise resistance, making the performance appear innocuous. The focus is on how post-linear techniques, which reject dominant theatre practice, provide convenient cover for subordinate groups, appearing less confrontational and placing the hidden transcript beyond the reach of the dominant. Through a combination of James C. Scott’s theory and post-linear theories, the article interrogates the use of performance techniques as necessary in rendering the performance innocuous in contexts where authoritarian regimes censor critical and divergent art.

Theatre practitioners as unionists: art workers in post-independence Zimbabwe’s theatre sector (1980 – 1999)

ABSTRACT This article attempts to frame and examine the structuring of labour struggles from the precarious subject position of theatre workers, without isolating these struggles into the occupational sector of the creative industries in the Zimbabwean context between 1980 and 1999. In this article, I frame theatre practitioners as ‘art – workers’ and collectives such as the NTO and ZACT as mobilising and organising agencies operating within the postcolonial Zimbabwean theatre industry. On the one hand, the NTO controlled and administered purpose-built theatres, provided funding as well as organised affiliates into a unity. On the other hand, ZACT organised multi-racial Zimbabwean theatre groups into a collective, providing and mobilising financial and organisational support towards the creation of a ‘national theatre’ narrative. Deploying resource mobilisation and rational choice theories, this paper submits that NTO and ZACT mobilized and coordinated their stakeholders towards addressing the precarious work conditions in the sector. This paper argues while attempts, through theatre associations, have been undertaken to organise the creative sector, this paper submits that the precarious nature of the work, employer-employee non-distinction, lack of legal rights knowledge and fierce inter-and intra-organisational competition complicates the process of re-mobilising and organising creatives in Zimbabwe

To Reverse or to Rehearse Performing Colonial Reality in Arna’s Children

Placing it in the area of postcolonial performance, this essay seeks to measure the capacities of (theatrical) performance and the role it plays in colonial contexts as represented in the documentary Arna’s Children. By examining this documentary, this essay analyses the role of theatre in the formation of alternative realities and projecting what Mishra and Hodge identify as “a configuration of experiences and insights, hopes and dreams arising from a hitherto silenced part of the world,” foregrounding challenges to dominant and exclusionary colonial narratives and practices. Questioning the subversive potential of theatre, this essay intensifies the need for expanding parameters of postcolonial theatre to include the Palestinian crisis as a central node of critical interpretation in discussions about the role of theatre in times of war and violence. The essay further argues that studying the role of theatre in the Palestinian context proposes new and intriguing ways of thinking about the ways in which theatre functions in colonial contexts, and it questions whether participants reverse or rehearse the impact of colonialism.

Authenticity and commercialization. Cambodian theatre in a postcolonial perspective

The article discusses the problem of authenticity and commercialization in the context of the postcolonial theatre in Cambodia. It seems that contemporary art in this country depends on foreign funds and at the same time on the special taste of – mainly – Western donors. The author tries to show, that the epithet “pure Cambodian” is very often used to make art more interesting to tourists. A similar situation can be seen in the crucifixions in Cutud (which annually takes place in a Philippine province – Pampanga with a wide touristic audience) and in Balinese theatre (another good example of a postcolonial, hybrid identity). Moreover, a discourse of the battle between “traditional” and “touristic” points of view does not have one answer. The search for purity can be a cause of petrifying traditional forms, as well as a sign of neocolonialism and (self-)orientalisation. On the other hand, a dialogue between indigenous artists and the others, tourists, may give the art a new profile and new meaning.

Language Use in Postcolonial Zimbabwean Alternative Theatre Performance

This paper deploys the sociolinguistic concepts of indexicality and language ideologies to examine Amakhosi Theatre Productions and Rooftop Promotions’ use of language and linguistic frames as a performance resistive strategy in the postcolonial Zimbabwean landscape. These concepts offer a framework to critically appraise the political, social, ideological and cultural meanings latent in language/s used in alternative theatre performances, which have the ability to influence and define identities and ideological structures. From this lens, colonial residual hegemony, dominance and cultural subjugation expressed through English and/or Shona are challenged and re-framed through code- switching, translanguaging and language mixing. From an interpretive approach, this paper shows that the creative linguistic methods employed by Amakhosi Theatre Productions and Rooftop Promotions to reject normative and metropolitan power enforced by English purists (Ndebele and Shona in the context of Zimbabwe) over means of communication. In essence, this paper provides deeper insights into syncretic linguistic forms, and culture vis-à-vis colonial residual domination, hegemony and cultural subjugation in postcolonial Zimbabwean alternative theatre.

Constructing Patience: postcolonial theatre as a possibility for redemption

This paper centres on the definition of failure in a theatrical work. Failure is pursued as an epitome for possibilities, thus shifting the boundaries of theatrical work outside of conventional lines of understanding. The notion is to remove the fear of failure within a work, in order to explore new means through which a work can be produced. In this article, myself, the researcher, and my supervisor discuss the failures within my theatrical work, in order to re-imagine new possibilities in which the work can occur. Failure is seen as an opportunity, to not only draw on what it is that failed within a work, but to also build on that which has worked. The work itself centres on failure. It is thus a case where form and content mirror the possibilities through which an artwork can be reproduced. The article refers to notions of queerness when referring to failure. This queerness is also situated within the theories of Walter Benjamin. Failure becomes a historical construct, and becomes the key means through which to constantly reproduce the postcolonial effect. Here, the postcolonial refers to the failure of Colonialism, as well as the failure in progressing the self forward after breaking the actions put forth by Colonialism. The objective of this article is to move postcolonial texts forwards, to learn from the failures committed, and to reproduce postcolonialism as a transformative entity.

Rebels and Biopolitics: Mahasweta Devi’s Mother of 1084

Biopolitics—the strategies and mechanisms through which human life processes are managed and regulated under regimes of authority—is ordinary currency in society, and ruling political systems exercise surveillance, incarceration and killings to a great extent in this regard. Michel Foucault’s work on the regulation of human beings through the production of power serves as an initial medium of investigation into biopolitics. Yet, Giorgio Agamben probes the covert and overt presence of biopolitical violence in society, particularly through his concepts of state of exception and bare life. The Indian playwright Mahasweta Devi’s Anglophone play-text Mother of 1084 (1973) enables scholars to participate in a critical forum on biopolitical praxis, because of its pervasive and explicit representation of state violence and rebels. Nonetheless, the play-text is often renowned for its reference to feminist ideology and mother-son relationship. Existing scholarship has overlooked the manifestation of torture and dead bodies on-stage represented in it. The play is also on the periphery of the mainstream literary criticism. By engaging with a textual portrayal of the play through Foucauldian and Agambenian critical lenses, this article interrogates the ways in which biopolitics coerces populations within the contemporary socio-political milieu. The analysis implies a potential to understand the biopolitical logic more meaningfully, and to be resistant to its stratagems of coercion. It adds to the existing body of literature on biopolitics by creating a specific account of life-politics as characterised in postcolonial theatre, provides a supplemental standpoint to debates on biopolitical subjugation and specifically contributes to current discussions of the play.

Poetry, politics, the past and the present: Interweaving Maori postcolonial theatre with Bertolt Brecht in Kilimogo’s production of Apirana Taylor’s Whaea Kairau: Mother Hundred-Eater

Abstract This article examines ways in which the concept of resistance – in a postcolonial sense – has been articulated in Maori theatre, and in particular by Maori playwright, actor and poet Apirana Taylor during a period that might be loosely termed the ‘Maori renaissance’. Specifically, the article focuses upon how resistance plays out theatrically in Kilimogo Productions’ presentation of Taylor’s play Whaea Kairau: Mother Hundred-Eater, performed in Otepoti/Dunedin in 1999. Taylor’s and Kilimogo’s contributions to Maori theatre’s function as a theatre of resistance are duly examined. Alongside a postcolonial critical stance, the article evaluates how the Brechtian elements of Verfremdungseffekt, Gestus and historicization can be applied to Maori theatre in a way that complements rather than colonizes. Theatrical strategies found in Taylor’s play and Kilimogo’s production provide the spectator with the Brechtian experience of Verfremdungseffekt, but simultaneously accommodate the undergirding principles of Kaupapa Maori and Maori tikanga (Maori topics, policies, agendas or initiatives, and customary cultural practices). These theatrical strategies allow for a dialectical engagement between cultural signifiers and texts, and for the possibility of contradiction in the theatrical image. A sense of complex undecidability is consequently evident in Kilimogo’s production of Whaea Kairau. Whilst acknowledging Bertolt Brecht’s legacy and influence, the article also recognizes his complex status as a canonized theatre-maker in this particular postcolonial context, and therefore looks at ways in which Kilimogo’s production both utilizes and interrogates Brecht’s tenets.

Towards Reconciliation: Immigration in Marty Chan’s The Forbidden Phoenix and David Yee’s lady in the red dress

When Prime Minister Stephen Harper offered a public announcement of redress to acknowledge the early mistreatment of Chinese immigrants, he turned a new chapter in Canada’s legislative history. Postcolonial theatre offers a window into the lives of late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries immigrants, many of whom were subjected to exclusionary policies while attempting to become Canadian citizens. This article offers a comparative analysis of two plays: The Forbidden Phoenix by Marty Chan and lady in the red dress by David Yee. Such plays actively encourage readers and audiences to move towards reconciliation, a term used to describe the process of featuring immigrant characters onstage in order to challenge the roots of stereotypes and race-based policies. These plays, though contrasting in style and tone, gesture towards the importance of immigrants to Canadian history, and, more specifically, how theatre artists are attempting to understand the legacy of race-based policies and prejudices on the cultural relations of the twenty-first century.

Communities of Imagination: Contemporary Southeast Asian Theatres by Catherine Diamond (review)

Reviewed by: Communities of Imagination: Contemporary Southeast Asian Theatres by Catherine Diamond Jennifer Goodlander Communities of Imagination: Contemporary Southeast Asian Theatres. By Catherine Diamond. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2012. 426 pp. Hardcover, $55.00. Author Catherine Diamond began this project with the plan to spend three to four weeks in each Southeast Asian country with the goal of seeing as many performances as possible. She declares, "I adopted this inductive approach because I wanted to remain as free from expectation as possible, and impose neither theories nor subjective judgments too precipitously before I had had a chance to see the range of theatre on offer" (p. vii). Diamond went back to each country several times in order to see more theatre and to conduct follow-up interviews, but her initial plan gives insight into the structure and purpose of the book: to provide a comprehensive overview of the many different kinds of performance that make up theatre in Southeast Asia today. The strength of this book lies in the vivid descriptions of a variety of performances that favor neither traditional nor contemporary performance genres—but rather examine theatre in Southeast Asia as a multilayered tapestry. In order to link the different countries and chapters, Diamond invokes Benedict Anderson's notion of "imagined communities"; throughout the book she argues that theatre makers create a community across the region through their use of the imagination to bridge tradition and modernity within contemporary culture. Many books on Asian theatre struggle to compare and contrast theatre that could be considered traditional against newer genres of performance that have appeared in the last century. Diamond defines traditional performance as "the theatre considered authentic to the peoples of Southeast Asia before [End Page 233] European intervention" (p. 2). She contrasts "traditional theatre" to what she describes as the four prevailing types of twenty-first-century theatre; these are postmodern theatre, postcolonial theatre, intercultural theatre, and social action theatre. In the introduction, Diamond perhaps simplifies the complex array of performance genres and cultures that make up the region of Southeast Asia, but I also very much appreciate her attempt to define terms and to establish boundaries. Southeast Asia provides a complicated object of study because of the many diverse histories, cultures, political formations, geographies, and of course theatre and performance genres found there. There are many differences and similarities, and deciding how to organize a book that deals with the entire region is a dilemma. James Brandon organized his book Theatre in Southeast Asia (1967) by themes such as "puppetry" and "social contract," which allows the reader to compare and contrast similar performance phenomena across national borders. In Diamond's book each country gets its own chapter, and she groups her chapters and countries together under three different yet overlapping themes in an attempt to foreground some of the regional trends. The different topics allow for interesting connections and comparisons that would certainly not be limited to the countries within that section but assist the reader in finding a way into the vast subject. Addressing one country in each chapter also allows for excellent comparisons and contrasts and reveals the rich amount of theatre happening in each of these areas. The first theme, the increased participation of women in the performing arts, applies to the countries of Thailand, Vietnam, and Bali. In the chapter on Thailand she contrasts two characters, Mae Naak and Phra Ram, as two key opposing archetypes of female and male that appear in myriad theatrical forms and stories. Through and in opposition to these two archetypes, Diamond describes how much of Thai theatre represents anxiety about traditional versus modern values that come into conflict both inside and outside their society. In the chapter on Vietnamese theatre, Diamond starts with gender by examining the work of female theatre artist Nguyen Thi Minh Ngoc, but that is not the only focus. Rather, this chapter provides an excellent overview of many of the different genres of Vietnamese theatrical forms, such as cai luong, kich noi, and hat boi. Diamond argues through rich examples that actors "create a distinctly Vietnamese style" by combining Stanislavski based methods of characterization with Vietnamese character types (p. 73). The...

Contemporary theatre in the Philippines

The Filipino contemporary culture (in this case also theatre) can be seen as a great example for anyone who would like to speak about the postcolonial identity of the nation. The Philippines – because of the difficult and complex history of the country – cannot be con-sidered in a binary differentiation: “Asian” vs. “Western”. Moreover, we should not forget that this country – according to Sir Anril Pineda Tiatco in Situating Philippine Theatricality in Asia – «is not only an amalgamation of pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial cultures». There is no point in calling for the “authenticity” or the “pureness” of the postcolonial theatre forms (and postcolonial sacral performances), or in the accusation of being “polluted” by foreign influence, as long as the major aim for the Filipino theatre makers is to redefine their own artistic identity. In this article I proposed the distinction between the group identity and the individual identity, being aware of the fact that both of them stay in a constant dependency and each of them negotiates its own importance. If the theatre group is more concerned about social and/or political issues, the individual identity of an actor is not any more so easy to achieve. In the same time, even if we discuss the “common good”, the artistic freedom does not have to be limited. However, we may observe similar situations in other postcolonial countries, I do believe that the Filipino case – because of its double colonial identity – deserves particular attention.

Feminist Visions and Queer Futures in Postcolonial Drama: Community, Kinship, and Citizenship (review)

Reviewed by: Feminist Visions and Queer Futures in Postcolonial Drama: Community, Kinship, and Citizenship Ketu H. Katrak Feminist Visions and Queer Futures in Postcolonial Drama: Community, Kinship, and Citizenship. By Kanika Batra. New York: Routledge, 2011; pp. 194. Feminist Visions and Queer Futures in Postcolonial Drama is a welcome addition to postcolonial studies, in which drama receives, in general, less critical attention than fiction. Even within postcolonial theatre studies, as Kanika Batra points out, the field is “often defined by the canonized work of a few male dramatists” (12). Thus, in identifying “the centrality [End Page 620] of gender justice” in the work of individual feminist playwrights and progressive theatre groups from Jamaica, India, and Nigeria, Batra sheds new light on postcolonial drama, demonstrating the close ties between it and “feminist and incipient queer activism” in the three sites of her study’s focus (4). The book’s focus on sexuality begins with the recognition that in these societies, which are more neocolonial than postcolonial, heteronormativity remains dominant. Indeed, as Chandra Mohanty and Jaqui Alexander have observed, postcolonial states often conflate citizenship with heterosexuality and thus treat nonheterosexuals as “disloyal to the nation” (qtd. in Batra, p.10). The individual dramatists and theatre groups discussed by Batra seek to challenge the cultural attitudes and legal proscriptions that limit sexual choices for men and women. To do so, they expand their focus to consider not only sexual identities (including those of gay, lesbian, transgendered, and transsexual people), but also the social, economic, and political issues that define the lives of women and sexual minorities: namely, low social status in patriarchal cultures, sexual exploitation (as when poor women use sex to obtain food for their children), and violence (including by the state, as discussed in chapter 3). In representing these issues, such theatre work “generates a dialogue on citizenship . . . [for] women and sexual minorities” (4) marginalized from nationalist discourses. Here, the terms of the book’s subtitle—community, kinship, citizenship—emerge. Batra indicates that, thanks to cultural norms in Jamaica, India, and Nigeria, “kinship is always already heterosexual”; hence, insofar as drama can counter such restrictive gender parameters, new community ties, as in “chosen families,” become possible (7–8). The book is composed of six chapters organized into three parts, each focusing on a distinct geo-political region. Part 1 discusses theatre for development in Jamaica, looking first at Dennis Scott’s work set in prisons and hospitals (chapter 1) and then at the Sistren Theatre Collective (chapter 2). Part 2 examines postcolonial theatre in India, focusing on the street-theatre group Jana Natya Manch, or Janam (chapter 3), and then Mahesh Dattani’s drama on hijras—a transsexual and transgendered community—as well as Mahasweta Devi and Usha Ganguli’s Rudali, on women professional mourners (chapter 4). Part 3 shifts the scene to Nigeria, where Batra considers the group WIN (Women in Nigeria) and Femi Osofisan’s drama about a peasant revolt (chapter 5), as well as Tess Onwueme’s Tell It to Women, about women who challenge political corruption (chapter 6). For reasons of space, I shall highlight one chapter from each of Batra’s three sections. In part 1, Batra considers two plays by the Sistren Theatre Collective in Jamaica, where Honor Ford-Smith served as artistic director during the period 1977–88. As Batra discusses, in Bellywoman Bangarang and QPH, the group presented a vexed sociological “pattern of teenage pregnancy, familial rejection, lack of economic support from the male partner, and destitution” (53). Although the dominant society blames women for “slackness,” which, as Batra explains, “is Jamaican for sexually loose behavior”—even when they become pregnant from rape—these plays challenge that cultural norm by featuring female characters who support the victims (60). For daring to represent such an attitude, this all-women’s group has faced real threats of physical violence, being labeled as “sodomites” and “man-royals” (a derogatory term for women considered masculine) during its history. Batra maintains, however, that hope for the future exists, given Sistren’s “continued relevance and strong voice,” as evidenced in the play it staged in 2009 before the Jamaican parliament to demand the legalization of abortion (66). Although this...

Early Ainu and Maori postcolonial theatre: Postman Heijiro and Te Raukura

This essay presents a postcolonial reading of the first play by Ainu, Japan’s indigenous minority1. Although postcolonialism is rarely applied to Japanese society and cultural outlook, this paper argues that Japan’s colonization of Hokkaido, the subsequent dispossession of and discrimination towards the Ainu, and contemporary issues of indigenous recognition and rights, all follow a clear postcolonial pattern. Furthermore, setting the first Ainu play, Postman Heijiro (2005), alongside the first Maori play, Harry Dansey’s Te Raukura (1972), reveals striking similarities of theme and method, despite the great distance of time, location and cultural context which separate the two. Both plays revisit a well-known moment in each nation’s colonial development, presenting a revisionist history by centring an Ainu or Maori perspective. In their presentation of Ainu or Maori as heroic victims of aggressive colonial domination, they also activate a reconsideration of race relations in the contemporary contexts of their respective staging. However, while the intent of resistance literature is evident in both plays, the messages of Heijiro and Te Raukura remain unclear due to ambivalences of subject matter and presentation. At a time when Ainu claims of recognition, rights and respect for their culture appear to be gaining momentum in Japan, Heijiro is an important, if incomplete first step.

Indonesian Postcolonial Theatre: Spectral Genealogies and Absent Faces (review)

Indonesian Postcolonial Theatre: Spectral Genealogies and Absent Faces (review)

Playing (with) Stereotypes in Postcolonial Pacific Theatre

Through an analysis of Vilsoni Hereniko and Teresia Teaiwa’s Last Virgin in Paradise and Oscar Kightley and Simon Small’s Fresh Off the Boat, this article looks at the subversion of Pacific stereotypes prevalent in popular representations. I employ Christopher Balme’s notion of “performance genealogies” to show how the performative nature of cross-cultural encounters which determined colonial representations of Pacific peoples is employed in postcolonial theatre to condemn the pervasiveness of those images, subverting them through strategies of citation and reciprocity.

Redefining political drama: Onwueme and Nigerian society

Tess Akaeka Onwueme, the noted Second Generation playwright of the Nigerian National Theatre movement, moved beyond initial attempts to fashion agendas for a developing postcolonial national theatre. Abandoning the original, First Generation trajectory to found a unique national culture through the celebration of Nigeria’s diverse literary and musical forms, she engaged more directly the political and social issues of her current national history. Inspired in part by Brechtian Epic Theatre performance style and theory, Onwueme’s stagecraft sought to merge Brecht’s famous ‘alienation effect’ with empathic character portrayals. Rejecting Brecht’s view that audiences should leave aside the emotional identification with the characters for the sake of a critical, disinterested perspective, Onwueme used both traditional character empathy and Brechtian distancing devices in her plays. Moreover, her often heavy use of irony and explicit political and social allusions created a critical perspective without sacrificing the audience’s emotive response to character and situation. The result was a richly textured and varied dramatic experience that included political issues of social complexity and psychological depth.

FRAMEWORKS FOR INTERPRETING FRENCH CARIBBEAN WOMEN'S THEATRE: INA CÉSAIRE'SISLAND MEMORIESAT THE THÉÂTRE DU CAMPAGNOL

The plays and performances of French Caribbean women, which have mostly been examined in the French language and in the field of French literary studies, require a new theorization of postcolonial theatre. Highly influenced by what I call French universalism, French Caribbean women's theatre moves continuously between evoking Caribbean and gender difference and mobilizing the concept of the human universal. Their work enacts a restorative postcolonial women's agenda that is specific to the cultural context of the French overseas departments of Martinique and Guadeloupe.

Between “Glocal-locality” and “Subversive Affirmation” Introduction to a Special Section on Glocal Dramatic Theories

Spring 2009 41 Between “Glocal-locality” and “Subversive Affirmation” Introduction to a Special Section on Glocal Dramatic Theories Evan Darwin Winet The currency of globalization as a framework for cultural research promises a reduction in the parochialism of American theatre studies. Myths of cultural purity, however, still obscure the complexities of theatrical interculturalism. The core difficulty is no longer simply a lack of interest in other cultures. The American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) has signalled a concern with the transnational through recent conference themes emphasizing “borders,” “diaspora,” and “migrancy.” Performance Studies international (PSi) pointedly withholds the capital letter from the third word in the organization’s name to call attention to the work yet to be done. Paralleling the economic mandate within university administrations to provide “global” educations, American theatre departments increasingly seek to add non-Western content to their history and performance curricula, while it has become more common for departmental seasons to feature works from non-traditional repertoires. Recent special issues of Modern Drama and Contemporary Theatre Review have addressed aspects of theatre and global culture. Nevertheless, conversations in the classroom, the theatre, and even the conference hall frequently remain informed by self-perpetuating presumptions of cultural (and frequently national) coherence. The legacy of Emmanuel Levinas to post-structuralist epistemology (that is, the claim of the Other to irreducible alterity) has inspired an ironic indifference to specific practices that dismantle cultures.1 Such biases challenge our capacities to attend to how societies and their theatre practitioners synthesize “native” and “exogenous” traditions. Aparna Dharwadker has usefully discussed how the prevailing explanatory frameworks of “interculturalism” and “postcolonialism” have each in its own way obscured the development of modern urban theatre in much of the world. The discourse of performance studies has echoed the concerns of many Western scholars of Asian theatre by emphasizing indigenous performance traditions whose formal and technical continuities survived relatively unscathed their interactions with Evan Darwin Winet is an independent scholar affiliated with the University of California Hastings College of Law. His book Indonesian Postcolonial Theatre: Spectral Genealogies and Absent Faces (2009) is a critical history of that nation’s modern theatre and drama, tracing continuities from colonial pasts through perceived postcolonial ruptures. His English translations of several modern Indonesian plays will appear in the forthcoming Lontar Anthology of Indonesian Drama (2009). He is also a contributing editor to the Norton Anthology of Drama (2009), and a major contributor to the Encyclopedia of Asian Theatre (2007). 42 Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism exogenous influence. In the 1970s, as complex postcolonial theatres emerged in the booming megacities of the global South, “world” theatre scholarship remained fixated on these predominantly rural traditions.2 Performance studies thereby reinforced what Benedict Anderson (following José Rizal) called “the spectre of comparison” between such traditions and Western avant-garde theatres.3 Few alternative frameworks gained currency in Western scholarship in the 1980s and 1990s. In the mid-1980s, Patrice Pavis introduced his “hourglass model,” which depicts intercultural reception as involving a fragmentation of practices in order to pass through a narrow aperture separating source and target cultures. Twenty years later, this model remains a prevailing semiotic description of the transfer of culture between theatrical traditions.4 However, Pavis’s model likewise presumes a coherence of “source” and “target” cultures that does not adequately account for postcolonial artists trained in Western techniques who re-acquaint themselves with traditions of their home cultures with which they are less familiar, or those whose societies have been saturated with an imperial culture but who seek ways to clear local spaces for articulating alternative expressions. Dharwadker finds little remedy in a highly text-oriented postcolonial theory, which furthermore shifts attention from the indigenous to the diasporic. The work of theatre practitioners and dramatists deeply literate in Euro-American traditions yet operating within the local communities of third and second world cities seems to slip through the cracks of both intercultural and postcolonial analyses. This special section on “global and local dramatic theories” draws on work that has emerged within the context of the National Identities/National Cultures working group of the American Society for Theatre Research. This group first convened in 2004 with a mandate to...

Shifting South Korean Theatre: Jo-Yeol Park’s A Dialogue Between Two Long-necked People and Taesuk Oh’s Chunpung’s Wife

Spring 2009 47 Shifting South Korean Theatre: Jo-Yeol Park’s A Dialogue Between Two Long-necked People and Taesuk Oh’s Chunpung’s Wife Kyounghye Kwon1 Why is Waiting for Godot the most frequently staged Western play in Korean theatre history? Why are the absurdists Beckett, Pinter, and Ionesco among the top twelve most staged Western playwrights?2 Further, why is it that Korean scholar Junseo Im3 goes so far as to say that almost all South Korean plays since the 1960s have been more or less influenced by the Theatre of the Absurd, and that absurdist theatre can be regarded as a short cut to understanding Korean contemporary theatre?4 Beginning with a 1960 production of Ionesco’s La Leçon (The Lesson, 1951) by Sireomgeukjang (Experimental Theatre), numerous small Korean theatre groups staged Western existentialist and absurdist plays in the 1960s and 1970s.5 Korean directorYoung-Woong Lim has staged Waiting for Godot steadily for about forty years since 1969, and his 1988 production was lauded by Martin Esslin. In “The Reception of the Theatre of the Absurd and Korean Theatre,” Miyhe Kim analyzes this extraordinary engagement with Western absurdist theatre in South Korea, and traces the history of its reception. Kim departs from certain scholars’criticism that Korean theatre artists had received Western absurdist theatre and its aesthetics “uncritically” even when Western realism was not “adequately understood” in Korean theatre, thereby “possibly shaking the foundation of realistic theatre” in Korea. Instead, she argues that Korean theatre’s “active” reception of absurdist theatre should be respected because it has fostered the development of Korean theatre, although Korea should have approached absurdist theatre more judiciously and systematically.6 I would add that there is also no reason why non-realistic experimental theatre should have been explored only after Western realistic theatre7 had been thoroughly founded in Korea, especially given that, as my essay will show, non-realistic theatre is closer to Korea’s indigenous performance aesthetics. The suggestion that Korean theatre should follow the same artistic trajectory as the West (from the achievement of realistic theatre toward anti-realistic experimental theatre) implies an uncritical logic that privileges Western theatre history. As it has done thus far, Korean theatre must simultaneously negotiate the pluralities of global theatrical trends. Kim’s essay on the significance of Korean theatre’s reception of Western Kyounghye Kwon is a doctoral candidate in English at the Ohio State University with a Graduate Minor in Theatre and Performance. Her research and teaching interest areas include postcolonial theatre studies, 20th-century drama,AsianAmerican theatre, performance theory, and cultural studies. Her other scholarly essays can be found in Text & Presentation and Pinter Etc. (ed. Craig N. Owens, forthcoming). 48 Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism absurdist theatre is my starting point. However, departing from Kim’s focus on the production of Western absurdist plays, I will concentrate on Korean plays that sometimes controversially evoked absurdist styles, and will situate a notable aesthetic shift in Korean postcolonial theatre from the 1970s in its local and global contexts. Korean theatre of the post-colonial8 period emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, and thus converged with the Theatre of the Absurd. This took the form of a unique and significant global and local aesthetic interpenetration in Korean postcolonial theatre. When an aesthetic grown from one cultural location migrates to another domain, it is bound to undergo adjustments and alterations, develop different emphases and unexpected additions, and/or demonstrate resistance. In this essay, I will first treat Korean theatre’s active engagement with absurdist theatre in the 1960s not as a West-centered case of evaluation and imitation, but as a significant glocal aesthetic phenomenon; it is from this perspective that I will approach JoYeol Park’s A Dialogue Between Two Long-Necked People and Taesuk Oh’s early plays. However, when it comes to Oh’s later theatre from the 1970s and onwards, I will discuss a specific mode of glocality, which I call “glocal-locality”—that is, the intersection of the global, the local, and the restored local cultures from the past within the larger local. Glocality: Jo-Yeol Park’s A Dialogue Between Two Long-necked People Although...

Au Pire : Language, Violence and the Totalitarian Ideology of Origins in Ionesco's La leçon and Césaire's Une tempête

Au PireLanguage, Violence and the Totalitarian Ideology of Origins in Ionesco's La leçon and Césaire's Une tempête Jeanette Patterson Eugène Ionesco's La leçon and Aimé Césaire's Une tempête, otherwise two very different plays, resemble one another in the violence of their language. Such violence is neither new nor limited to the fictional realm of theatre; from verbal disputes to clashes between languages, language has often been the battlefield as well as the weapon of choice in conflicts of interpersonal and international scales. Meanwhile, the performative power of language and the manipulative language of power are well documented in speech act theory and linguistic politics and explored in literature and theatre such as Ionesco's and Césaire's. The battles of words represented in La leçon and Une tempête surpass dialogical one-upmanship and verbal markers of dominance or subordination, elements that are important to these plays but which are common to theatre in general.1 What sets these two plays apart and joins them together is, firstly, their discourse on languages and relationships among them, and secondly, their endowment of the word, through ritual, incantation, and magic, with creative and destructive powers. Idiom, speech, and the politics and philosophy of language are tightly bound to underlying problems of origins, myth, sacrifice and the political contexts under which both works were written. Published in 1951 and 1969 respectively, La leçon and Une tempête are products of two periods of international upheaval, namely the Second World War in the former and the decolonization of much of Africa, the American civil rights movement and contemporary global racial and national tensions in the latter. Post-war Europe and the long period of decolonization (in large part catalyzed by Africa's role in the [End Page 195] war) were both characterized by the redefinition of national boundaries as victorious, defeated, and recently occupied and colonized states strove to move forward. National and personal identities were called into doubt as those who had experienced occupation, transplantation or decolonization lost, gained or regained a homeland and oppressors, victims, and silent collaborators sought to redefine themselves in a post-traumatic world. Emerging from times of destruction and rebirth, La leçon and Une tempête break the silence imposed through slavery, colonial exploitation, totalitarianism and genocide while exhibiting an ambivalent attitude toward language. While all writing involves the manipulation of language, the immediacy of the spoken word on stage lends it a mystical and communal aspect, making theatre a potent medium to comment on language itself. Just as silent film, non-verbal theatre such as mime and clown, and avant-garde movements from surrealism to Antonin Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty had questioned speech's role in storytelling in the first part of the century, postwar and postcolonial theatre inherited a troubled, complex relationship with the spoken word. Language re-mains an untrustworthy and often inadequate means of communication in Ionesco's and Césaire's theatre. However, rather than replacing the word with physical, gestural modes of expression, these later playwrights reexamine the problems of speech by pushing it to its limits, using words as gestures. Superficial meaning fades to the background, directing attention instead to language's power, on the one hand, to manipulate and intimidate, create and destroy, and on the other hand, its failure before its purported task of meaningful communication. Césaire's political and Ionesco's anti-political theatre reacts to colonialist and Nazi political speeches and propaganda, theatrical displays whose manipulative language, orality and shared experience of national audiences reinforced and augmented the power they sought to represent. Aiming to unify and move the masses by the effect of its emotionally charged catchwords, totalitarian language communicates little information, often obscuring it instead. By staging the abuses of language in a similarly public media, resistant theatre such as Ionesco's and Césaire's offers an open rebuttal to oppressive ideologies whose dissemination through public media and, more generally, language, had condoned and even prompted unspeakable atrocities. Ionesco, who saw the German occupation of both his native Romania [End Page 196] and France, wrote in...