Table Of Content“Collectively, the essays in The Politics of Interweaving Performance Cultures
offer a provocative argument for rethinking the paradigms that structure the
scholarly assessment of how diverse performative cultures interact, how they
are interwoven, and how they draw—indeed how they are dependant—upon
each other. Reading this book, one cannot help but feel that its essays are
opening the fi rst round of what will become a very signifi cant debate.”
—James Harding, University of Warwick, UK
This page intentionally left blank
The Politics of Interweaving
Performance Cultures
This book provides a timely intervention in the fi elds of performance studies and
theatre history, and to larger issues of global cultural exchange. The authors offer a
provocative argument for rethinking the scholarly assessment of how diverse per-
formative cultures interact, how they are interwoven, and how they are dependent
upon each other.
While the term ‘intercultural theatre’ as a concept points back to postcolonial-
ism and its contradictions, The Politics of Interweaving Performance Cultures
explores global developments in the performing arts that cannot adequately be
explained and understood using postcolonial theory alone. The authors challenge
the dichotomy between ‘the West and the rest’—where Western cultures are ‘uni-
versal’ and non-Western cultures are ‘particular’—as well as ideas of national cul-
ture and cultural ownership.
This volume uses international case studies to explore the politics of global-
ization, looking at new paternalistic forms of exchange and the new inequalities
emerging from it. These case studies are guided by the principle that processes of
interweaving performance cultures are, in fact, political processes. The authors
explore the inextricability of the aesthetic and the political, whereby aesthetics can-
not be perceived as opposite to the political; rather, the aesthetic is the political.
Erika Fischer-Lichte is Professor of Theatre Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin.
From 1995 to 1999 she was President of the International Federation for Theatre
Research. She is a member of the Academia Europaea, the Academy of Sciences at
Göttingen, the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and the National Academy
of Sciences Leopoldina at Halle. She is also director of the International Research
Center “Interweaving Performance Cultures” (since 2008) and spokesperson of the
International Doctoral School “InterArt” (since 2006). Among her many publica-
tions are Global Ibsen. Performing Multiple Modernities (2010), The Transforma-
tive Power of Performance: A New Aesthetics (2008, German 2004), and Theatre,
Sacrifi ce, Ritual. Exploring Forms of Political Theatre (2005).
Torsten Jost studied theatre as well as journalism and communication studies
in Berlin. He is a research associate at the International Research Center “Inter-
weaving Performance Cultures,” Freie Universität Berlin, where he is working
on his PhD thesis on the plays of Gertrude Stein, about which he has published
numerous essays in German.
Saskya Iris Jain studied at Berlin’s Freie Universität and Columbia University, and
holds an MFA in Fiction from Boston University, where she was the recipient of
the 2010 Florence Engel Randall Award for Fiction and the Robert Pinsky Global
Fellowship for travel to Iran the same year. As well as writing fi ction and non-
fi ction, she has translated and edited numerous essays and books for publishers in
Europe and the US.
Routledge Advances in Theatre and Performance Studies
1 Theatre and Postcolonial Desires 10 Movement Training for the
Awam Amkpa Modern Actor
Mark Evans
2 Brecht and Critical Theory
Dialectics and Contemporary 11 The Politics of American Actor
Aesthetics Training
Sean Carney Edited by Ellen Margolis and
Lissa Tyler Renaud
3 Science and the Stanislavsky
Tradition of Acting 12 Performing Embodiment in
Jonathan Pitches Samuel Beckett’s Drama
Anna McMullan
4 Performance and Cognition
Theatre Studies and the 13 The Provocation of the Senses in
Cognitive Turn Contemporary Theatre
Edited by Bruce McConachie Stephen Di Benedetto
and F. Elizabeth Hart
14 Ecology and Environment in
5 Theatre and Performance in European Drama
Digital Culture Downing Cless
From Simulation to Embeddedness
Matthew Causey 15 Global Ibsen
Performing Multiple Modernities
6 The Politics of New Media Edited by Erika Fischer-Lichte,
Theatre Barbara Gronau, and
Life®™ Christel Weiler
Gabriella Giannachi
16 The Theatre of the Bauhaus
7 Ritual and Event The Modern and Postmodern
Interdisciplinary Perspectives Stage of Oskar Schlemmer
Edited by Mark Franko Melissa Trimingham
8 Memory, Allegory, and 17 Feminist Visions and Queer
Testimony in South American Futures in Postcolonial Drama
Theater Community, Kinship, and
Upstaging Dictatorship Citizenship
Ana Elena Puga Kanika Batra
9 Crossing Cultural Borders 18 Nineteenth-Century Theatre and
Through the Actor’s Work the Imperial Encounter
Foreign Bodies of Knowledge Marty Gould
Cláudia Tatinge Nascimento
19 The Theatre of Richard Maxwell 29 Theatre Translation in
and the New York City Players Performance
Sarah Gorman Edited by Silvia Bigliazzi, Peter
Kofl er, and Paola Ambrosi
20 Shakespeare, Theatre and Time
Matthew D. Wagner 30 Translation and Adaptation in
Theatre and Film
21 Political and Protest Theatre Edited by Katja Krebs
after 9/11
Patriotic Dissent 31 Grotowski, Women, and
Edited by Jenny Spencer Contemporary Performance
Meetings with Remarkable Women
22 Religion, Theatre, and Virginie Magnat
Performance
Acts of Faith 32 Art, Vision, and Nineteenth-
Edited by Lance Gharavi Century Realist Drama
Acts of Seeing
23 Adapting Chekhov Amy Holzapfel
The Text and its Mutations
Edited by J. Douglas Clayton & 33 The Politics of Interweaving
Yana Meerzon Performance Cultures
Beyond Postcolonialism
24 Performance and the Politics Edited by Erika Fischer-Lichte,
of Space Torsten Jost and Saskya Iris Jain
Theatre and Topology
Edited by Erika Fischer-Lichte
and Benjamin Wihstutz
25 Music and Gender in English
Renaissance Drama
Katrine K. Wong
26 The Unwritten Grotowski
Theory and Practice of the
Encounter
Kris Salata
27 Dramas of the Past on the
Twentieth-Century Stage
In History’s Wings
Alex Feldman
28 Performance, Identity and the
Neo-Political Subject
Edited by Matthew Causey and
Fintan Walsh
This page intentionally left blank
The Politics of Interweaving
Performance Cultures
Beyond Postcolonialism
Edited by
Erika Fischer-Lichte, Torsten Jost and
Saskya Iris Jain
І
і Routledge
Cl Taylor Si Francis Group
NNEEWW YYOORRKK LLOONNDDOONN
First published 2014
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an informa business
© 2014 Taylor & Francis
The right of Erika Fischer-Lichte, Torsten Jost and Saskya Iris Jain to be
identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for
their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77
and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The politics of interweaving performance cultures beyond postcolonialism
/ edited by Erika Fischer-Lichte, Torsten Jost and Saskya Iris Jain.
pages cm. — (Routledge advances in theatre and performance studies ; 33)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Performing arts—Political aspects. 2. Performing arts—History—
21st century. 3. Theater and society. 4. Intercultural communication.
I. Fischer-Lichte, Erika editor of compilation. II. Jost, Torsten, 1981–
editor of compilation. III. Jain, Saskya Iris, 1982– editor of compilation.
PN1590.P64P65 2013
306.4'84—dc23
2013031013
ISBN13: 978-0-415-72268-1 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-1-315-85814-2 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by IBT Global.
Contents
List of Figures xiii
Acknowledgements xv
Introduction: Interweaving Performance Cultures—
Rethinking ‘Intercultural Theatre’: Toward an Experience
and Theory of Performance beyond Postcolonialism 1
ERIKA FISCHER-LICHTE
PART I
Strategies and Dynamics
1 Postcolonial Modernity: Theatre in Morocco and the
Interweaving Loop 25
KHALID AMINE
2 Cultural Interweaving in Mexican Political Cabaret 42
GASTÓN A. ALZATE
3 Farewell and Welcome Back, My Concubine:
Female Impersonation on the Chinese Stage 60
SHEN LIN
4 Performing Orientalist, Intercultural, and Globalized
Modernities: The Case of Les Naufragés du Fol Espoir
by the Théâtre Du Soleil 77
BRIAN SINGLETON
