{"title":"A Journal of the Plague Year by Terayama Shūji in Collaboration with Kishida Rio: “Contagious Magic” for a Time of Epidemic","authors":"Tsuneda Keiko, Colleen Lanki","doi":"10.1353/atj.2022.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/atj.2022.0001","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Terayama Shūji (1935–1983), a leading figure in the Japanese avant-garde theatre movement, founded his theatre troupe Tenjō Sajiki (The Peanut Gallery) in 1967. Terayama and company member/collaborating writer Kishida Rio (1946–2003) scripted Ekibyō ryūkōki (A Journal of the Plague Year) in 1975 as the last of three plays created for a European audience. Inspired by Daniel Defoe’s fictional memoir of the same title, the play deals with isolation, denial, rage, and the many coping strategies of a community confronting a deadly epidemic. The play shows how words are a powerful contagion, and by infecting the imagination and memory, they are as much a plague as any disease. Although written and produced in 1975, with ideas from a 1772 fictional memoir about a 1665 plague in London, Terayama and Kishida’s A Journal of the Plague Year is a play for our times. It is hauntingly prescient, offering a shocking and often comical reflection of our own lives during the current COVID-19 pandemic.","PeriodicalId":42841,"journal":{"name":"ASIAN THEATRE JOURNAL","volume":"63 1","pages":"1 - 53"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91233282","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 “Homosexual Code” in Contemporary Korean Theatre: The Case of Shakespeare’s R & J in Seoul","authors":"Yeeyon Im","doi":"10.1353/atj.2022.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/atj.2022.0004","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay critiques the vogue of “the homosexual code” in contemporary Korean theatre, with a close-up analysis of ShowNote Company’s Shakespeare’s R & J that premiered in 2018. It first examines the surge of queer-themed films and theatres since the mid-2000s in relation to the growing visibility of homosexuality, the changing concept of masculinity, the “flower boy” syndrome, and neoliberalism in South Korea. Defining the “homosexual code” as a distancing strategy of encoding homosexuality to bypass homophobia, I problematize the way queer subject is appropriated for novelty and spectacle in the theatre industry. The second part of the essay examines ShowNote’s R & J in depth, partly in response to a recent discussion of Choo Min Ju’s Our Bad Magnet (2012) by Claire Maria Chambers. Pointing to a close resemblance between the two, I argue that both shows adopt the established formula of “the homosexual code,” contingent upon the neoliberal ideology of commodification and consumerism.","PeriodicalId":42841,"journal":{"name":"ASIAN THEATRE JOURNAL","volume":"1 3 1","pages":"116 - 132"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76241184","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":"Music of the Baduy People of Western Java: Singing Is a Medicineby Wim van Zanten (review)","authors":"Kathy Foley","doi":"10.1353/atj.2022.0014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/atj.2022.0014","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42841,"journal":{"name":"ASIAN THEATRE JOURNAL","volume":"77 1","pages":"230 - 232"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85906611","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 Arts of Indonesia: Malay Identity and Politics in the Music, Dance, and Theatre of the Riau Islandsed. by Margaret Kartomi (review)","authors":"Jennifer L. Goodlander","doi":"10.1353/atj.2022.0015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/atj.2022.0015","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42841,"journal":{"name":"ASIAN THEATRE JOURNAL","volume":"42 1","pages":"233 - 235"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79070535","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":"Theatre as Business: A Study of Shanxi Merchants’ Sponsorship of Theatrical Performances in Qing China","authors":"Yunjie Hu","doi":"10.1353/atj.2022.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/atj.2022.0003","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In Qing-dynasty China, a guildhall theatre (huiguan juchang 會館劇場) was the center for a merchant guild’s recreational activities. This article examines Shanxi merchants’ sponsorship of theatrical performances in such merchant guildhalls. It analyzes the ways in which Shanxi merchants established guildhalls and stages, invited troupes to perform in and on them, and provided financial support for these performances during fellow traders’ assemblies and temple fairs. Primary sources employed in this study include but are not limited to literati jottings, fictional accounts, historical accounts of Shanxi merchants’ commercial activities, and guild regulations. Based on these materials, this study argues that for Shanxi merchants, sponsoring theatrical performances provided not only a form of entertainment but also trade benefits, as the sponsorship functioned as a tool for disciplining and educating guild members and for promoting the guilds’ reputation. More importantly, the sponsorship contributed to the proliferation of various forms of Shanxi regional theatre and to the emergence of new theatrical styles. This article proves that there was a reciprocal relationship between commercial activities and the development of theatrical performances in Qing-dynasty China.","PeriodicalId":42841,"journal":{"name":"ASIAN THEATRE JOURNAL","volume":"37 1","pages":"109 - 89"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88412994","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":"Contemporary Group Theatre in Kolkata, Indiaby Arnab Banerji (review)","authors":"Kristen Rudisill","doi":"10.1353/atj.2022.0013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/atj.2022.0013","url":null,"abstract":"(discussed in chapter 2) comes closest to this senseof thedisplacementof the dramatic in contemporary object theatre. ARICA’s work is multisensory and provokes a sense of crisis: “the whole stage . . . move(s) persistently like a life form” (p. 44). As Boyd notes, ARICA’s work is perhaps the furthest away from conventional theatre of the examples discussed in the book and the company is less well-known. Nonetheless, ARICA is an excellent example of how object theatre can create new dramaturgicalperspectives that connectwith themes suchas the vibrancy of matter and the Anthropocene. Overall, in Japanese Contemporary Objects, Manipulators, and Actors in Performance Boyd shifts the discussion from puppetry to object performance and its materiality. There is an illuminating ethnographic focus on questions of labor, action, materialism, interculturalism and adaptation, technology, translation, and how to reinterpret the history of puppets and repertoire in Japan for contemporary times and audiences. The book is detailed in its discussion of newmaterialism and intermediality that is matched by forensic descriptions of plays and performances. In fact, much of book is dedicated to exploring these themes in terms of practice, looking in detail at the creative processes of and in the manipulation of material forms by artists in contemporary Japan. The book explores how actors are now in the theatre in the plural sense, not only as people playing roles, but in the Latourian sense of how things act in relation to each other.","PeriodicalId":42841,"journal":{"name":"ASIAN THEATRE JOURNAL","volume":"153 1","pages":"227 - 229"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-03-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78205385","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":"Scenes of Objection: Performance and Protest in Manipur","authors":"J. Menon","doi":"10.1353/atj.2021.0028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/atj.2021.0028","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article examines three scenes of protest, from a short story, a theatre production, and a public protest, respectively. It argues that these scenes demonstrate the power of embodied objection to function as voice when speech itself is unheard. The screaming, naked bodies in these scenes exceed liberal conceptions of agential voice and reconceptualize vulnerability and exposure as a mode of political action.","PeriodicalId":42841,"journal":{"name":"ASIAN THEATRE JOURNAL","volume":"11 1","pages":"424 - 440"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-10-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73312006","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":"Establishment of “Drama” Orientation: Transition of the Research Paradigm of Chinese Dramas in the 1920s and 1930s by Yifan Zhang (review)","authors":"Weiyu Li","doi":"10.1353/atj.2021.0038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/atj.2021.0038","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42841,"journal":{"name":"ASIAN THEATRE JOURNAL","volume":"78 1","pages":"587 - 590"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-10-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75677746","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}