Global Chinese Theatre: A Transnational Perspective скачать в хорошем качестве

Global Chinese Theatre: A Transnational Perspective

The 1980s was a most important decade for global Chinese theatre. In large part prompted by changes in regional geopolitics, the search for a local identity peaked among the Chinese communities in East and Southeast Asia. This period coincided with the rise of the professional careers of four important diasporic director-playwrights—Gao Xingjian 高行健 (b. 1940), Danny Yung Ning Tsun 榮念曾 (b. 1943), Stan Lai Sheng-chuan 賴聲川 (b. 1954), and Kuo Pao Kun 郭寶崑 (1939–2002)—whose efforts shaped the contemporary Chinese-language theater scenes across China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore. While the geopolitical conditions of the Cold War imposed ethno-nationalist identities across the region, in contrast, these dramatists weaved together native, foreign, and Chinese elements in their theater praxis to give voice to the local. At the same time, by performing cultural identities alternative to the ones sanctioned by their own states, they also debunked the notion of a unified “Chineseness.” This talk highlights the key role theater and performance played in suturing identity in the diaspora and circulating people and ideas across geographical space, well before cross-strait relations were yet to thaw. This lecture is sponsored by a grant from the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York, co-organized by the East Asia Program and the Department of Asian Studies, and co-sponsored by the Southeast Asia Program at Cornell University.