Note that for each week, this syllabus provides a mixture of open-access and non-open-access resources. Instructors can choose which ones to use based on their and the student’s institutional support for access.

Week 1  Introduction and Overview

• Look over: Democracy in Difference: Debating Key Terms of Gender, Sexuality, Race and Identity
• Prompts: What do you think of when you think of “Asian Theatre and Performance”? Why do you choose this course? What are your interests in the performance of Asian identity?

 

Week 2  Glimpses of the Orient

• Madama Butterfly: What makes it such a powerful opera? (The Royal Opera): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v04ezmJi_iw
• Show Clips – M. BUTTERFLY, Starring Clive Owen and Jin Ha: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xh5nSdqeVY4
• BUTTERFLY; René Gallimard & Song Lili’s first encounter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-0LOQDGABo
• Wisenthal, Jonathan. “Inventing the Orient.” A Vision of the Orient: Texts, Intertexts, and Contexts of Madame Butterfly, edited by Jonathan Wisenthal et al., University of Toronto Press, 3–18.

 

Week 3  Performing Feminine Asia for A Western Audience

• “I’d Give My Life for You”by Eva Noblezada — Miss Saigon, Tonys 2017: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7gz7PlFHk8
• Tator, Carol, et al. “Miss Saigon.” Challenging Racism in the Arts: Case Studies of Controversy and Conflict, University of Toronto Press,141–58.
• Shimizu, Celine Parreñas. 2005. “The Bind of Representation: Performing and ConsumingHypersexuality in ‘Miss Saigon’.” Theatre Journal (Washington, D.C.) 57, no. 2, 247–265.
• Staszak, Jean-François. “Performing race and gender: the exoticization of Josephine Baker and Anna May Wong.”Gender, Place & Culture 22, no. 5, 626-643.

 

Week 4  Rejuvenating Western Theatre with the East

• Artaud, Antonin. 1976 (1931). “On the Balinese Theater”. Salmagundi 33/34,103-114.
• Brecht, Bertolt. “On Chinese Acting,” in Martin, Carol, and Henry Bial. 2005. Brecht Sourcebook. Hoboken: Routledge,13-20.
• Sands, Maren. 2005. “The Influence of Japanese Noh Theatre on Yeats.” Phantasmagoria.

 

Week 5  Intercultural Theatre: What is it?

• Donath, Stefan, Richard Gough, and Christel Weiler. 2020. “Editorial: Practices of Interweaving,” Performance Research25, 1-9.
• Lo, Jacqueline, and Helen Gilbert. 2002. “Toward a Topography of Cross-Cultural Theatre Praxis.” The Drama Review 46, no. 3, 31-53.
• From Fischer-Lichte, Erika, Torsten Jost, and Saskya Iris Jain, eds. 2014. “Introduction.” The Politics of Interweaving Performance Cultures: Beyond Postcolonialism. New York: Routledge.
• Gomes, R. C., & Duarte, P. D. Q. 2017. “The Dramaturgy of the Body in the Indian Theater as a Visible Poetry.” Revista Brasileira de Estudos da Presença 7, no. 1, 154-183.

 

Week 6  The Multitudes of Interculturalism

• Peter Brook’s Mahabharata: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhqkRGISQr8
• Pavis, Patrice. 1992. Chapter 8 “Interculturalism In Contemporary Mise En Scène: The Image of India In The Mahabharata, The Indiade, Twelfth Night And Faust.”Theatre at the Crossroads of Culture, 178-209.
• Bharucha, Rustom. 1993. “Chapter 4. Peter Brook’s Mahabharata: a View from India.” Theatre and the World: Performance and the Politics of Culture, 69-87.

 

Week 7  Asianizing the Western Cannon: Asian Shakespeare

• Lear, by Ong Kang Sen: http://a-s-i-a-web.org  (Productions— Lear—The Japan Foundation—Director: Ong Kang Sen—1997) (See Resources for further instructions on registering for the digital archive)
• Yong,Li Lan. 2010. “Shakespeare Here and Elsewhere: Ong Keng Sen’s Intercultural Shakespeare.” Shakespeare in Asia: Contemporary Performance, 188-215.
• Tang, Renfang. 2019. “East Meets West: Identity and Intercultural Discourse in Chinese huaju Shakespeares.” Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance 20, no. 1, 61-81.
• Choi, Boram. “The Poetics of Body: Representing Cultural Imaginations in Yang Jung-Ung’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream.’” Multicultural Shakespeare 25, No. 40, 75-94. 2022.

 

Week 8  Synthesizing Asian Identity in Contemporary Intercultural Theatre

• Liu, Siyuan. “Jade in the Coal and the Performance of Theatrical Interculturalism.” In Asian Canadian 5 Theatre – New Essays on Canadian Theatre Vol. 1, edited by Nina Lee Aquino and Ric Knowles, 195-207. Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 2011.
• Phillip B. Zarrilli, 2007. “For whom is the King a King? Issues of Intercultural Production, Perception, and Reception in a Kathakali King Lear.” Critical Theory and Performance,108-33.
• Donnery, Eucharia. 2009. “Testing the Waters: Drama in the Japanese University EFL Classroom.” Scenario: A Journal of Performative Teaching, Learning, Research 3, no. 1, 17-33.

 

Week 9  Assignment Workshop 1: Present on An Asian Intercultural Theatre Work/Troupe

Each group of students presents (for 15min) an Asian intercultural theatre work/troupe with a focus on the analysis of the intercultural elements. See specific requirements on the “Requirements” page.

 

Week 10  Diaspora Studies: What is It?

• William Safran, 1991. “Diasporas in Modern Societies.” Diaspora 1, no.1, 83-99.
• James Clifford, 1994. “Diasporas.” Cultural Anthropology 9, no.3, 302-344.
• Maglana, Matthew Constancio. 2016. “Understanding Identity and Diaspora: The Case of the Sama-Bajau of Maritime Southeast Asia.” Jurnal Sejarah Citra Lekha 1, no. 2, 71-80.

 

Week 11  Performing Asia in Diaspora

• Lee, Hyunjung. 2016. “An Eternal Parting: Staging Internal Diaspora, Performing South Korean Nationalism.” Theatre Research International 41, no. 3, 231–244.
• Liu, April. 2019. “The Politics of Memory and Migration.” Divine Threads: The Visual and Material Culture of Cantonese Opera.
• Sengupta, Ashis. 2012. “Staging Diaspora: South Asian American Theater Today.” Journal of American Studies 46, no. 4, 831–854.
• Wong, S. L. C. (2010). Dancing in the Diaspora: Cultural Long-Distance Nationalism and the Staging of Chineseness by San Francisco’s Chinese Folk Dance Association. Journal of Transnational American Studies 2, no.1.

 

Week 12  Asian Theatre in the Age of Globalization

• Savran, D. 2014. “Trafficking in Transnational Brands: The New ‘Broadway-style’ Musical.” Theatre Survey 55, no. 3, 318-342.
• Kim, H. 2020. “Reckoning with Historical Conflicts in East Asian Theatre Festivals: The BeSeTo Theatre Festival and Gwangju Media Arts Festival.” In R. Knowles (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to International Theatre Festivals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 192-206.
• Alcantar, Monica. 2021. “Shakespeare on the Edge of Intercultural Theatre: Lear Dreaming by Ong Keng Sen, a New Nō Performance.” Antropologia e Teatro. Rivista di Studi 13, 121-155.

 

Week 13  Transposition and Transmission: Asia in Theatre Translation

• Peghinelli, Andrea. 2012. “Theatre Translation as Collaboration: A Case in Point in British Contemporary Drama.” Journal for Communication & Culture 2, no. 1.
• Geraldine Brodie. “Theatre translation” in Mona Baker and Gabriela Saldanha, eds., Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, 3rd ed. London: Routledge, 584-588.
• Weihong Du. “S. I. Hsiung: New Discourse and Drama in Early Modern Chinese Theatrical Exchange.” Asian Theatre Journal 33, no. 2, 348-68.
• Zheng, Da. 2017. “Creative Re-Creation in Cultural Migration.” Metacritic Journal for Comparative Studies and Theory 3, no.1, 26-44.
• Takiguchi, Ken. 2016. “Translating Erased History: Inter-Asian Translation of the National Changgeuk Company of Korea’s Romeo and Juliet.” Journal of World Languages 3, no. 1, 22–36.

 

Week 14  Decolonial Asia

• Hino, Aya. 2019. Expatriating the Universal: A Decolonial Imagination beyond Authentic “Asia”. International Quarterly for Asian Studies 50, no. 3-4, 31-54.
• Fortier, Mark. (2014). “Post-Colonial Theory.” Theory/Theatre : An Introduction. Routledge. 130-143.
• Varney, Eckersall, P., Hudson, C., and Hatley, B. 2013. “Modern Drama and Postcolonial Modernity in Indonesia.” Theatre and Performance in the Asia-Pacific: Regional Modernities in the Global Era. Palgrave Macmillan. 49-63.
• Lieder, K. Frances. 2015. “Not-Feminism: A Discourse on the Politics of a Term in Modern Indian Theatre.” Asian Theatre Journal 32, no. 2, 598–618.

 

Week 15  Assignment Workshop 2: Performing Ethnic/Cultural Identity for a Multicultural Audience

• THEATRE REPLACEMENT PRESENTS BIOBOXES: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBf5KL54d7Y
• Solga, Kim. 2010. “Artifacting an Intercultural Nation : Theatre Replacement’s BIOBOXES.”TDR : Drama Review 54, no. 1, 161–166.

Each student will workshop within a group and create within the class time a short performance that engages with the theme of their own or others’ ethnic/cultural identity and perform for their classmates on a voluntary basis at the end of the class. See specific requirements on the “Requirements” page.