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Transcultural Theater outlines the idea of a transcultural theater as enabling an approximation to and an interaction with the foreign and the alien. In consideration of the allure of fundamentalist and populist movements that promote the development and practices of xenophobia worldwide, this book makes a powerful plea for the art of theater as a medium of conviviality with (the) foreign(er) that should not be underestimated. This study contributes to transcultural experience, artistic practice, and education in the medium of theater. The book’s investigation extends far into space and time and pays particular attention to the relationship between aesthetic experience, artistic practice, and academic representation. This book is for scholars and students as well as for all those working in the cultural field, especially in the field of cultural transfer.
A reclusive painter living in exile in Paris, Gao Xingjian found himself instantly famous when he became the first Chinese language writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature (2000). The author of the novel Soul Mountain, Gao is best known in his native country not as a visual artist or novelist, but as a playwright and theater director. This important yet rarely studied figure is the focus of Sy Ren Quah’s rich account appraising his contributions to contemporary Chinese and World Theater over the past two decades. A playwright himself, Quah provides an in-depth analysis of the literary, dramatic, intellectual, and technical aspects of Gao’s plays and theatrical concepts, treating Gao’s theater not only as an art form but, with Gao himself, as a significant cultural phenomenon. The Bus Stop, Wild Man, and other early works are examined in the context of 1980s China. Influenced by Stanislavsky, Brecht, and Beckett, as well as traditional Chinese theater arts and philosophies, Gao refused to conform to the dominant realist conventions of the time and made a conscious effort to renovate Chinese theater. The young playwright sought to create a "Modern Eastern Theater" that was neither a vague generalization nor a nationalistic declaration, but a challenge to orthodox ideologies. After fleeing China, Gao was free to experiment openly with theatrical forms. Quah examines his post-exile plays in a context of performance theory and philosophical concerns, such as the real versus the unreal, and the Self versus the Other. The image conveyed of Gao is not of an activist but of an intellectual committed to maintaining his artistic independence who continues to voice his opinion on political matters.
David MacDougall is a pivotal figure in the development of ethnographic cinema and visual anthropology. As a filmmaker, he has directed in Africa, Australia, India, and Europe. His prize-winning films (many made jointly with his wife, Judith MacDougall) include The Wedding Camels, Lorang's Way, To Live with Herds, A Wife among Wives, Takeover, PhotoWallahs, and Tempus de Baristas. As a theorist, he articulates central issues in the relation of film to anthropology, and is one of the few documentary filmmakers who writes extensively on these concerns. The essays collected here address, for instance, the difference between films and written texts and between the position of the filmmaker and that of the anthropological writer. In fact, these works provide an overview of the history of visual anthropology, as well as commentaries on specific subjects, such as point-of-view and subjectivity, reflexivity, the use of subtitles, and the role of the cinema subject. Refreshingly free of jargon, each piece belongs very much to the tradition of the essay in its personal engagement with exploring difficult issues. The author ultimately disputes the view that ethnographic filmmaking is merely a visual form of anthropology, maintaining instead that it is a radical anthropological practice, which challenges many of the basic assumptions of the discipline of anthropology itself. Although influential among filmmakers and critics, some of these essays were published in small journals and have been until now difficult to find. The three longest pieces, including the title essay, are new.
Wolfgang Welsch demonstrates for the first time that transculturality – the mixed constitution of cultures – is by no means only a characteristic of the present, but has de facto determined the composition of cultures since time immemorial. The historical transculturality is demonstrated using examples from the arts. While transculturality was often viewed with reservation where political, social, or psychological levels were at stake, it was rather welcomed and appreciated in the field of art. The book therefore demonstrates the historical prevalence of transculturality via all areas of art and does so with respect to all cultures and continents of our world.
Gao Xingjian has been lauded for his inventive use of Chinese culture in his paintings, plays, and cinema, however he denies that his current work participates in any notion of Chinese. This book traces the development of these forms and how the relate and interact in the French language plays of the Nobel Laureate.
Spielraum: Teaching German through Theater is a sourcebook and guide for teaching German language and culture, as well as social, cross-cultural, and multi-ethnic tensions, through dramatic texts. This book presents a range of theoretical and practical resources for the growing number of teachers who wish to integrate drama and theater into their foreign-language curriculum. As such, it may be adopted as a flexible tool for teachers seeking ways to reinvigorate their language classrooms through drama pedagogy; to connect language study to the study of literature and culture; to inspire curricular rejuvenation; or to embark on full-scale theater productions. Focusing on specific dramatic works from the rich German-speaking tradition, each chapter introduces unique approaches to a play, theme, and genre, while also taking into account practical issues of performance.
Bertolt Brecht in Context examines Brecht's significance and contributions as a writer and the most influential playwright of the twentieth century. It explores the specific context from which he emerged in imperial Germany during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as Brecht's response to the turbulent German history of the twentieth century: World Wars One and Two, the Weimar Republic, the Nazi dictatorship, the experience of exile, and ultimately the division of Germany into two competing political blocs divided by the postwar Iron Curtain. Throughout this turbulence, and in spite of it, Brecht managed to remain extraordinarily productive, revolutionizing the theater of the twentieth century and developing a new approach to language and performance. Because of his unparalleled radicalism and influence, Brecht remains controversial to this day. This book – with a Foreword by Mark Ravenhill – lays out in clear and accessible language the shape of Brecht's contribution and the reasons for his ongoing influence.
This is the authoritative reference work in the field. An interdisciplinary set, it investigates the extensive history, design and methods of case study research.
Toward the end of the twentieth century, in art as well as ritual studies, cultural turns contributed to elaborating a broad definition of ritual and rituality. Rituality is now generally regarded as one of the master keys to understanding not only cultures in general but also arts in particular. Poetic rituality sheds light on the liminal characteristics of the art form and references to ritual practices, ritual forms and structures that are set in motion in a way that allows special aesthetic characteristics and semantic aspects to arise. The contributors to the volume - theatre and literary studies scholars as well as students from Yale, Bielefeld, Károli University, and the Grotowski Institute - had the opportunity to share their related works in the course of several recent international academic events.
In the past thirty years, the Sino-Jewish encounter in modern China has increasingly garnered scholarly and popular attention. This volume will be the first to focus on the transcultural exchange between Ashkenazic Jewry and China. The essays here investigate how this exchange of texts and translations, images and ideas, has enriched both Jewish and Chinese cultures and prepared for a global, inclusive world literature. The book breaks new ground in the field, covering such new topics as the images of China in Yiddish and German Jewish letters, the intersectionality of the Jewish and Chinese literature in illuminating the implications for a truly global and inclusive world literature, the biographies of prominent figures in Chinese-Jewish connections, the Chabad engagement in contemporary China. Some of the fundamental debates in the current scholarship will also be addressed, with a special emphasis on how many Jewish refugees arrived in Shanghai and how much interaction occurred between the Jewish refugees and the resident Chinese population during the wartime and its aftermath.