ASIAN THEATRE JOURNAL最新文献

{"title":"The Global White Snake by Liang Luo (review)","authors":"A. Chu","doi":"10.1353/atj.2022.0030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/atj.2022.0030","url":null,"abstract":"Liang Luo’s The Global White Snake is a timely addition to the growing body of interdisciplinary scholarship on the “nonhuman turn” that has emerged in the twenty-first century. This is also the first book-length study to examine the remaking of the White Snake legends in the contemporary world. In her first monograph, The Avant-Garde and the Popular in Modern China, Luo discussed the White Snake’s transformations from the early years of the Republic of China to the first decade of the People’s Republic of China. In The Global White Snake, Luo consciously takes a “peripheral” approach by examining the White Snake legends in spaces outside mainland China. The author’s multilingual ability allows her to trace the global travels of the White Snake legends in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and English productions. The book consists of eight chapters. Chapter 1 provides a comprehensive overview of the White Snake legends, which have traveled around the world as stories of hybridity, boundary-crossing, antiauthoritarianism, and gender politics. The rest of the seven chapters are divided into three parts: “The White Snake at the Turn of the Twentieth Century,” “The Profound Humanity of the Nonhuman during the Cold War,” and “The Specter of the Past in Contemporary Popular Culture.” In part one, chapter 2 includes discussions of American missionary Samuel Woodbridge’s and American diplomat Frederick D. Cloud’s translations of the White Snake legend around the turn of the twentieth century. Both Woodbridge and Cloud mistook the continuity of the White Snake legend as a sign of China’s static culture. However, Luo points out that from the 1870s to the 1920s, the White Snake legend had already assumed a new life in China thanks to “technological breakthroughs in theatrical representation, shifting performative paradigms regarding gender roles, and sociopolitical debate over what was considered normative” (p. 48). In chapter 3, Luo shows how the boundary between fantasy and reality dissolved as the White Snake was released to the Chinese cultural imagination after the sensational fall of the Leifeng Pagoda in 1924. During this period, the avant-garde, the commercial, and the popular formed a concerted effort to capitalize on the pagoda’s visuality. The two chapters in part two examine the inter-Asian network of the White Snake industry through a set of films, including Mizoguchi Kenji’s Ugetsu (1953); Madame White Snake (Byaku fujin no yōren, 1956); the Japanese animation Hakujaden (which was distributed in the United States in 1961 as Panda and the Magic Serpent); two Korean-language films, Madam White Snake (Paeksa buin, 1960) and Snake Woman (Sanyŏ, 1969); and Love of the White Snake (Paeksajŏn, 1978). Through nuanced close reading, Luo shows that “the humanity of the nonhuman continued to emerge as the central trope in White Snake adaptations throughout the Cold War” (p. 142), which served to heal the postwar trauma, as well as suture the geopolitical divisi","PeriodicalId":42841,"journal":{"name":"ASIAN THEATRE JOURNAL","volume":"18 1","pages":"414 - 417"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90582998","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Resignation of Wang An-Chi, the Artistic Director of Taiwan's GuoGuang Opera Company: A Debate from Two Versions of Phaedra (2019, 2021)","authors":"Yuning Liu","doi":"10.1353/atj.2022.0022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/atj.2022.0022","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Taiwan's GuoGuang Jutuan (GuoGuang Opera Company, GGOC)'s artistic director, Wang An-Chi (b. 1955), resigned in November 2021 after serving in the position for almost twenty years. Two versions of GGOC's production of Phaedra in 2019 and 2021 led directly to her resignation, which opens up a series of questions about GGOC's creative path. This report firstly analyzes the choices made by GGOC in the two productions, and then explores the plight of GGOC as a state-owned and state-run jingju troupe in Taiwan which embodies the close relationship among jingju, Chineseness and national identity. In the event of Wang's resignation, I argue that the development of jingju in Taiwan is not a path to China (unification), but a series of continuous inquiries into Taiwan's subjective cultural identity. Jingju, as a case study of the transfer of the Taiwanese identity, showcases the unnecessarily coherent decoding and recoding process.","PeriodicalId":42841,"journal":{"name":"ASIAN THEATRE JOURNAL","volume":"2 1","pages":"337 - 354"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89297308","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Being Lost and Becoming: Exploring the Performance of Pain and Empathy in Maya Rao's Khol Do (Take It Off)","authors":"R. Kumar","doi":"10.1353/atj.2022.0019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/atj.2022.0019","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article critically engages with Maya K Rao's Khol Do (Take It Off), as a dance-theatre performance of pain and empathy through which the notion of being and becoming is contested. This nonverbal performance, revolving around one of the stories written by Saadat Hasan Manto that is based on the atrocities occurred during the India-Pakistan partition, is about a man in search of her daughter, only to find her as a victim of gang-rape. The article examines Rao's conscious choice of portraying the role of the father to construct the performance of pain/empathy, through her use of embodied dance/theatre practice of kathakali. Building on the theoretical frameworks of Marla Carlson on empathy and Phillip Zarrilli on being-doing, the article attempts to understand how it displaces the empathy derived out of violated body of a woman and connects to contemporary debates on sexual violence by reinterpreting and inverting the kathakali codes.","PeriodicalId":42841,"journal":{"name":"ASIAN THEATRE JOURNAL","volume":"113 1","pages":"267 - 283"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83463809","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The History of Korean Western Theatre by Jaha Koo (review)","authors":"Kyueun Kim","doi":"10.1353/atj.2022.0025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/atj.2022.0025","url":null,"abstract":"In the summer of 2021, shortly after Europe lifted its travel ban and accepted visitors from the United States, I traveled to Switzerland to see Jaha Koo’sThe History of KoreanWestern Theatre. While still in themidst of the coronavirus pandemic, the Zürcher Theater Spektakel—the annual international theatre festival held on the shores of Lake Zurich—was buzzing with excitement at the return of live theatre. When I entered the theatre (Rote Fabrik) on the opening night of the festival, Jaha Koo was already on stage folding an origami toad with great dexterity as the audience settled into their seats. Later in the show, the audience discovered that this paper origami toad turns into a robot-like moving puppet that is listening, talking, and singing on stage and that symbolizes the younger generation. Another unique object-performer is a talking rice cooker hacked and reprogrammed to be chatty and emotive. Rather than following the forms of theatrical representation, Koo’s dramaturgy of performing with object-performers, as well as his extensive use of multimedia (images, videos, and music), define his signature style (Fig. 1). Although the title of the show had a documentary feel and the production used some rich archival photos and footage related to historic events, the production does not specifically encompass the history of Korean theatre nor was it intended","PeriodicalId":42841,"journal":{"name":"ASIAN THEATRE JOURNAL","volume":"85-86 1","pages":"391 - 397"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79093728","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Indian Drama in English: The Beginnings ed. by Ananda Lal (review)","authors":"S. Chakrabarti","doi":"10.1353/atj.2022.0034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/atj.2022.0034","url":null,"abstract":"power to create the world from their perspective” (p. 139). Simultaneously, Amal Allana’s post-Brechtian vision “challenged the Marxist interpretive system of Brecht by making the production more open-ended with her ingenious treatment of gender, casting a male actor (Manohar Singh) to play the role ofMother Courage” (p. 140). By tracing the “bends” (historical, social, political, and aesthetic) in Brechtian theatre in India, this chapter argues that Brechtian theatre does not allow for essentialism. It is nonlinear, favoring reimagination and aesthetic interpretations of Brecht. The closing chapter critically sums up Prateek’s discourse on Brechtian theatre and particularly highlights the scope of his analysis of Brecht in India beyond a monolithic interpretation of Brecht. Prateek illustrates how this study can further the reader’s understanding of Brecht and Brechtianmetamorphosis through culture, time, and sociopolitical systems through a multi-disciplinary approach. Brecht in India: The Poetics and Politics of Transcultural Theatre can be a significant reference point for a broad readership in theatre studies and postcolonial studies, emphasizing Brechtian theatre and aesthetics. The book contextualizes the evolution of Brechtian theatre in India geopolitically through a global and comprehensive approach. The author generates a conversation on the transformation of Brecht in postcolonial India through a series of informative accounts, which can be further explored and explained considering the extensive political, cultural, and social developments of postcolonial India.","PeriodicalId":42841,"journal":{"name":"ASIAN THEATRE JOURNAL","volume":"45 1","pages":"428 - 432"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75313790","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Intercultural Aesthetics in Traditional Chinese Theatre: From 1978 to the Present by Wei Feng, and: Transnational Chinese Theatres: Intercultural Performance Networks in East Asia by Rossella Ferrari (review)","authors":"Huimin Wang","doi":"10.1353/atj.2022.0031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/atj.2022.0031","url":null,"abstract":"the White Snake animation as a pivotal inspiration for his pursuit in animation production, does it mean that each of Miyazaki’s female protagonists “[bears] traces of the 1958 White Snake animation’s substantial impact”? (p. 135). Likewise, while the opening scene of the 1958 White Snake animation, in which the protagonist flies through space, might serve as an inspiration for the animation, Astro Boy, is there any other evidence that can solidify such a hypothesis alongside the visual similarity of the set? Despite some minor flaws, this book is critical to our understanding of transnational circulations and transcultural mutations of theWhite Snake legends. This book offers abundant sources andmultifaceted possibilities that welcome future discussions, such as the economic factors that have triggered many White Snake productions. Moreover, it is an innovative reinterpretation to recontextualize folklore and myth with the perspective of global history.","PeriodicalId":42841,"journal":{"name":"ASIAN THEATRE JOURNAL","volume":"5 1","pages":"417 - 421"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85424276","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"World Political Theatre and Performance: Theories, Histories, Practices ed. by Mireia Aragay, Paola Botham, and José Ramón Prado-Pérez (review)","authors":"K. Wetmore","doi":"10.1353/atj.2022.0027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/atj.2022.0027","url":null,"abstract":"This volume arose out of the Political Performances Working Group of IFTR, offering fourteen essays concerning political performances in Finland, the United Kingdom, Malta, Turkey, Belarus, Poland, Estonia, South Africa, India, and China. It is the last two that would be of interest to readers of this journal, although the entire volume is interesting and readable. At heart, by “political theatre” the editors here refer to theatre in response to political oppression and social injustice. The volume is divided into two sections. The first considers “the relationship between performance and activism” and the second concerns “current debates in and around political theatre” (p. 4). In part one the Asianist will find two essays of particular interest. The first, Pujya Ghosh’s “From Revolution to Dissent: A Case Study of the Changing Role of Theatre and Activism in Bengal,” offers an historical analysis of playwrights Utpal Dutt and Debesh Chattopadhyay and the Naxalbari movement in the 1960s in Bengal. Ghosh posits that both artists emerged in the sixties as performers, activists, and intellectuals, using theatre to challenge the political and social status quo. They created a Bengali theatre that was “a component of civil society, a space in which political battles and future dreams would be reflected” (p. 40). However, as the seventies drew on, progressive","PeriodicalId":42841,"journal":{"name":"ASIAN THEATRE JOURNAL","volume":"55 1","pages":"403 - 405"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78840967","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Global Modernizing Gestures in Staging a New Theatre","authors":"H. Hong","doi":"10.1353/atj.2022.0023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/atj.2022.0023","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article investigates the reformation of a guyoenkeuk (舊演劇 old theatre) into a shinyoenkeuk (新演劇 new theatre) by the nationalist theatre reformers and the Wongaksa Theatre. This reformation was associated with the first half of Korean theatre reform and the Patriotic enlightenment movement under the Japanese protectorate (1905–1910). This article attends to claims by Korea's cultural agents that they modeled their work on the theatres of civilized, Western countries to produce a new theatre as a vehicle for achieving national modernization. The article hypothesizes that these cultural agents translated and materialized their vision of a civilized, Western theatre to enlighten the Korean people by repeating ideas and practices from Korean theatre tradition with differences. Based on this hypothesis, this article analyzes how theatre reformers formulated the concept of a new theatre by utilizing and transforming Confucian music theory. In doing so, the Wongaksa Theatre created a new theatrical form and its exemplary performance, Eunsegye (銀 世界 The Silver World), by reusing pansori practice and repertoire. These practices historicized the global modernizing gestures to transmute a part of Korean theatre culture into an allegedly new, civilized, and Western form of theatre. This transformation represents one dimension of a dynamic shifting of theatre with elements from other cultures, allowing the Western project of modernity to be reconstituted in the cultural domain of Korean theatre.","PeriodicalId":42841,"journal":{"name":"ASIAN THEATRE JOURNAL","volume":"110 1","pages":"355 - 375"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80573192","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Jiang/Yun Zhijian (River/Cloud) dir. by Stan Lai (review)","authors":"I. H. Tuan","doi":"10.1353/atj.2022.0026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/atj.2022.0026","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42841,"journal":{"name":"ASIAN THEATRE JOURNAL","volume":"48 1","pages":"397 - 402"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85600160","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Performing The Politics of Translation in Modern Japan: Staging The Resistance by Aragorn Quinn (review)","authors":"David Jortner","doi":"10.1353/atj.2022.0032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/atj.2022.0032","url":null,"abstract":"Bharucha, Rustom. 2000. The Politics of Cultural Practice: Thinking Through Theatre in an Age of Globalization. London: Athlone Press. Brecht, Bertolt. 2018. Brecht on Theatre, ed. Marc Silberman, Tom Kuhn, and Steve Giles; trans. Jack Davis, Romy Fursland, Steve Giles, Victoria Hill, Kristopher Imbrigotta, Marc Silberman, and John Willett. London: Bloomsbury. Carlson, Marvin. 2003. The Haunted Stage: Theatre as Memory Machine. Michigan: University of Michigan Press. He, Chengzhou. 2016. “An East Asian Paradigm of Interculturalism.” European Review 24, no. 2: 210–220. Tatlow, Antony. 2014. “The Silence of Buddha: Triangulating Gao Xingjian, Brecht, and Beckett.” In Polyphony Embodied – Freedom and Fate in Gao Xingjian’s Writings, ed. Michael Lackner and Nikola Chardonnens, 57–72. Berlin: De Gruyter. Tian, Min. 1997. “‘Alienation-Effect’ for Whom?: Brecht’s (Mis)interpretation of the Classical Chinese Theatre.” Asian Theatre Journal 14, no. 2: 200–222.","PeriodicalId":42841,"journal":{"name":"ASIAN THEATRE JOURNAL","volume":"13 1","pages":"421 - 424"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75046515","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}