Editor’s Note, iii

PLAY

Cry to Heaven: A Play to Celebrate One Hundred Years of Chinese Spoken Drama by Nick Rongjun Yu
Introduction and translation by Shiao-ling Yu, 1

Yutian (Cry to Heaven) is the third Chinese stage adaptation of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin between 1907 and 2007. The first, Heinu yutian lu (Black Slave’s Cry to Heaven) by Zeng Xiaogu, was staged by Chinese students in Tokyo in 1907; the second, Heinu hen (Regret of the Black Slaves) by Ouyang Yuqian, was mounted as part of the fiftieth anniversary of the first production; and the third, Yutian (Cry to Heaven), commemorated the hundredth anniversary of Chinese spoken drama (huaju) in 2007. Each adaptation has a different focus that reflects the social, political, and cultural conditions of its time, and together the works provide a historical view of the development of Chinese spoken drama. The most recent production, by Nick Rongjun Yu, juxtaposes one hundred years of dramatic history with scenes from Uncle Tom’s Cabin, making the American slaves’ struggle to gain freedom a metaphor for Chinese dramatists’ efforts to achieve their own.

Yu Rongjun, also known as Nick Rongjun Yu, is the author of more than twenty
plays, including Renmo gouyang (Dog’s Face), WWW.COM, and Tiantang gebi shi fengrenyuan (The Asylum Next to Heaven). His plays have won many prizes in China and have been performed in Hong Kong, Taipei, the United States, and other countries. Besides being a playwright, he is director of programming and marketing for the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center.

Shiao-ling Yu is an associate professor of Chinese at Oregon State University. Her research interests are Chinese drama (both classical and modern), modern Chinese literature, and Chinese women writers. She is the translator and editor of the anthology Chinese Drama after the Cultural Revolution, 1979–1989 (1996 ), which was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship. Her other publications have appeared in various book anthologies and scholarly journals such as Asian Theatre Journal, TDR: The Drama Review, CHINOPERL Papers, Journal of Chinese Philosophy, The China Quarterly, Concerning Poetry, Renditions, Tamkang Review, Honglou meng yanjiu jikan (Studies of the Dream of the Red Chamber), and Dushu (Reading).

ARTICLES

Paris and the Quest for a National Stage in Meiji Japan and Late-Qing China
Siyuan Liu, 54

Two models in late nineteenth-century Paris foreground the ideological and dramaturgical connections between colonial nationalism in the West and theatre’s role in nation building in Meiji Japan and late Qing China. The first involves manifestations of French nationalism after the Franco-Prussian War as witnessed by Japanese and Chinese diplomats in the 1870s, in particular the Paris Opéra and a panorama titled The Siege of Paris. Such firsthand experiences led to an effort to create national theatres out of traditional theatrical forms. The second instance involves two French colonial war plays seen in 1893 by the Japanese new drama star Kawakami Otojirō, who subsequently appropriated them to stage the First Sino-Japanese War, thus providing a blueprint for performing nationalism in the burgeoning Western-style theatres in Japan and China.

Siyuan Liu is a Franklin Fellow and visiting assistant professor at the University
of Georgia. He received his PhD in theatre and performance studies from University of Pittsburgh and has published several research articles on modern Chinese and Japanese theatre in Theatre Journal, Asian Theatre Journal, and Text & Presentation.

1954: Selling Kabuki to the West
Kevin J. Wetmore Jr., 78

In the face of an increasingly communist Asia, the Japanese government worked in 1954 with American kabuki aficionados and the Azuma Nihon Buyo Company to market kabuki to the United States as an aggressively capitalistic, inherently democratic, brilliantly theatrical form. In doing so, they were not only selling kabuki, but also selling Japan, a former enemy, as a political and military ally. Several strategies were employed to do so: the endorsement of literary and dramatic celebrities, emphasis on exoticizing and feminizing the onnagata role while simultaneously downplaying the homoeroticism, and focus on kabuki as business. Therefore the first “kabuki” brought to the United States was the Azuma Company, which presented a mixture of buyo and kabuki. The group
was led by a female dancer and deemphasized the more challenging aspects of traditional kabuki. The Americans promoting the tour also had an ulterior motivation: to offer a new model to an American theatre grown stale on naturalism in the postwar period.

Kevin J. Wetmore Jr. (PhD, University of Pittsburgh) is an associate professor of theatre at Loyola Marymount University. He is the editor of Revenge Drama in European Renaissance and Japanese Theatre (New York: Palgrave, 2008), the coeditor of Modern Japanese Theatre and Performance (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2006), and the author of other books and many articles on Asian, African, and cross-cultural theatre.

Decade of Dreams: Democracy and the Birth of Nepal’s Engaged Stage, 1980–1990
Carol C. Davis, 94

The decade between 1980 and 1990 was a time of political upheaval and change in Nepal as the populace demanded a voice in the system that governed their lives. It was also an important period in the development of Nepal’s theatre as democracy was won with the help of the fledgling political theatre movement, which began in the university, was taken to the streets, and was emulated throughout the kingdom. Particularly important was the work of Asesh Malla of Sarwanam and Sunil Pokharel of Aarohan. The work culminated in the Jana Andolan (People’s Movement), which climaxed in April 1990. As the citizens of Nepal wrestled absolute power from the hands of their king the relationship between Nepal’s theatre and society was changed forever. This paper illuminates
this exciting period and the people at the forefront of Nepal’s socially engaged
theatre.

Carol C. Davis is an associate professor of theater at Franklin and Marshall College. She is also the founding artistic director of the Nepal Health Project, an educational and charitable theatre company that treks to villages throughout Nepal with plays and workshops on health and hygiene, and teaches creative dramatics to children in the orphanages of Kathmandu. Carol has acted and directed in California and Nepal, and her articles have appeared in Asian Theatre Journal, Theatre Symposium, Mime Journal, Education About Asia, Encyclopedia of Asian Theatre (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006), and Not For Sale: Bearing Witness, Making Politics (Melbourne: Spinifex Press, 2004).

The Singapore Arts Festival at Thirty: Going Global, Glocal, Grobal
William Peterson, 111

The Singapore Arts Festival celebrated its thirtieth anniversary in 2007, an appropriate milestone for taking stock of the country’s premiere cultural event. Under the leadership of Goh Ching Lee since 1999, the festival has sought to carve out a distinctive identity that is Asian and cutting-edge, while providing a model for other arts festivals in the region. By programming international work and commissioning Singaporean work that is slick, glossy, and easily transferable across cultural and geographic boundaries, the festival may be pointing toward a future in which the work circulating at international festivals assumes a form and content that is, in the words of George Ritzer (2007), increasingly “grobal,” that is to say global and accessible, but increasingly devoid of content and removed from any concrete or stable cultural, political, or social context.

William Peterson is a senior lecturer and director of the Centre for Drama and Theatre Studies at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of Theatre and the Politics of Culture in Contemporary Singapore (Wesleyan University Press, 2001) and has published widely on theatre, politics, and religion in Singapore, Aotearoa/New Zealand, and the Philippines.

DEBUT PANEL PAPERS

The Yellow Earth Becomes the Yellow Dragon: Eco-Consciousness in Chinese Theatre of the 1980s
Heather Phillips, 135

Amidst the political and cultural sea change of the 1980s in China, a refined awareness of the environment bubbled to the surface. Throughout this decade, artists and scientists alike searched for ways to convey the urgency of China’s ecological crisis. Playwrights who tackled this issue often looked to the past, rediscovering ecological models in Confucian and Daoist ethics as well as ancient myths and rites. This paper examines two such plays, The Sangshuping Chronicles (1988) and Gao Xingjian’s Wild Man (1983), both of which offer fascinating possibilities for the development of a Chinese eco-poetics
consonant with Una Chaudhuri’s Western-based concept of eco-theatre.

Heather Phillips is a PhD student in the Department of Drama and Dance at Tufts University. In November 2007, she cohosted the ASTR seminar “Ethics in Translation,” and in May 2008 she cohosted a colloquium at Tufts on the translation of plays. This paper represents her first venture into the study of Chinese theatre.

Return From Exile: On Ming Hwa Yuan Gezaixi Company’s Survival in the New Century
Ming-Lun Wu, 148

Within a decade, Ming Hwa Yuan (MHY) built its fame by setting up a new image of gezaixi, Taiwanese “song opera.” MHY is acutely aware of the visual possibilities on stage, the utility of stage technology, and the company’s promotions and marketing are a classic example for commercial theatres in Taiwan. In the first half of this paper, a brief history of gezaixi is the axis on which is sketched the transformation of MHY; in the second half, an outstanding MHY production, The Legend of the White Snake, provides an example for further analysis.

Ming-Lun Wu is a PhD student in the Department of Film, Theatre and Television at the University of Reading, United Kingdom. Her research focuses on gezaixi in Taiwan and issues of influence. Her current working thesis centers on the emphasis of visual elements in gezaixi performances within the context of ideological and political backgrounds. She received her MA from the National Taiwan University.

PERFORMANCE REVIEW

Performance Review Essay: Japanese Theatre in Los Angeles (Shochiku Grand Kabuki—Chikamatsu-za, by Chikamatsu Monzaemon, directed by Nakamura Ganjiro III; Blood! Love! Madness! by Nakamura Kichizo, Kikuchi Kan, and Shimizu Kunio, directed by Brent Hinkley; Hiroshima Maiden, created by Dan Hurlin)
reviewed by Kevin Wetmore Jr., 159

BOOK REVIEWS

Samuel L. Leiter (editor), Encyclopedia of Asian Theatre
reviewed by Andrew T. Tsubaki, 168

Paul Cravath, Earth in Flower: The Divine Mystery of the Cambodian Dance Drama
reviewed by Toni Shapiro-Phim, 170

Alexandra B. Bonds, Beijing Opera Costumes: The Visual Communication of Character and Culture
reviewed by Mei Sun, 174

Li-ling Hsiao, The Eternal Present of the Past: Illustration, Theater, and Reading in the Wanli Period, 1573–1619
reviewed by Megan Evans, 176

Fan Pen Li Chen, Chinese Shadow Theatre: History, Popular Religion and Women Warriors
reviewed by Bradford Clark, 179

Kay Li, Bernard Shaw and China: Cross-Cultural Encounters
reviewed by Alexander C. Y. Huang, 182

Tom Hare, Zeami: Performance Notes
reviewed by Joni Koehn, 184

Laurence Kominz (editor), Mishima on Stage: The Black Lizard and Other Plays
reviewed by Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei, 186

Lorie Brau, Rakugo: Performing Comedy and Cultural Heritage in Contemporary Tokyo
reviewed by Matthew W. Shores, 191

MEDIA REVIEW

Kevin Bird (director), Dewi: Portrait of a Balinese Dancer
reviewed by Kathy Foley, 195

Editor’s Note, iii

PLAY

Three Dollars in National Currency: A One-Act Comedy by Ding Xilin
Introduction and Translation by Christopher G. Rea, 173

Three Dollars in National Currency (San kuai qian guobi 三塊錢國幣, 1939) is a little-known one-act comedy that was written in southwestern China during the third year of the Second Sino-Japanese War by Ding Xilin 丁西林(1893–1974), one of twentieth-century China’s pioneering playwrights. The introduction highlights the play’s significance both as a turning point in Ding Xilin’s creative oeuvre and as a comedic exploration of the geopolitics of wartime China’s ‘‘Greater Rear Area.’’

Christopher G. Rea is a PhD candidate in modern Chinese literature at Columbia University and a visiting fellow at Harvard University. He has published articles on modern Chinese drama and film and is currently completing a dissertation on comic culture in early twentieth-century China.

ARTICLES

America’s Kabuki-Japan, 1952–1960: Image Building, Myth Making, and Cultural Exchange
Barbara E. Thornbury, 193

Visits to the United States by the Azuma Kabuki Dancers and Musicians in the mid-1950s and the Grand Kabuki in 1960 took place against the backdrop of a Cold War imperative to secure Japan as an American friend in Asia. Even before the Occupation officially ended in April 1952, kabuki was being promoted in the United States as the preeminent example of a Japanese culture that could be presented with no reference to the Japan that had been America’s wartime enemy. The discourse that I have labeled America’s kabuki-Japan was shaped by prominent critics and “Japan hands” during the 1952–1960 period, a defining one for cultural exchange and for establishing a new relationship with Japan. With its exoticizing focus on tradition and ahistorical continuity, America’s kabuki-Japan was the product of and is still nurtured by a complex mix of political, cultural, and commercial interests on both the American and Japanese side.

Barbara E. Thornbury (PhD, University of British Columbia) is an associate professor of Japanese in the Department of Critical Languages at Temple University. Her publications include The Folk Performing Arts: Traditional Culture in Contemporary Japan (1997). Research for this article was supported by a Temple University Study Leave (2005).

Fire in the Banana’s Belly: Bali’s Female Performers Essay the Masculine Arts
Catherine Diamond, 231

Balinese performing arts have had remarkable fluidity in their gender presentation, in which female impersonators have predominated. Over the past twenty-five years, however, women have been making inroads in the presentation of female characters, then androgynous characters, and now even some of the more crude male characters. Gamelan wanita, the all-women ensembles that were once a novelty, are now commonplace throughout the island and they are aspiring to ever higher levels of musicality. All-female troupes are performing formerly all-male genres such wayang wong, kecak, and topeng. Solo performers are both exploring the increasingly porous boundaries between masculine and feminine representations and probing the etiology of gender inequality.

Catherine Diamond is a professor at Soochow University in Taiwan whose work on contemporary Southeast Asian theatre has been published in Asian Theatre Journal and numerous other journals. She dedicates this article to Cristina Formaggia, friend and fellow dancer, who passed away in July 2008.

“A Mixed-Blooded Child, Neither Western Nor Eastern”: Sinicization of Western-Style Theatre in Rural China in the 1930s
Siyuan Liu, 272

From 1932 to 1937, Xiong Foxi, a Chinese playwright, director, and theatre professor who had studied theatre at Columbia University, directed the drama division of a high-profile literacy campaign in the villages of Ding Xian County in northern China. There, he and his colleagues staged outdoor productions that used traditional, folk, and Western theatrical techniques and incorporated mass participation of the peasant audience. As a successful experiment in localization and popularization of Western-style theatre, the Ding Xian model stood in sharp contrast to the prevailing trend of Chinese spoken drama as a canonical, didactic, and illusionary theatre aimed toward educated city audiences.

Siyuan Liu is a Franklin Fellow and visiting assistant professor of theatre at University of Georgia. He received his PhD in theatre and performance studies from University of Pittsburgh. He has published research articles in Theatre Journal, Asian Theatre Journal, and Text & Presentation.

The Transfiguration of Indian/Asian Dance in the United Kingdom: Contemporary Bharatanatyam in Global Contexts
Avanthi Meduri, 298

Bharatanatyam in Great Britain is currently identified as a South Asian dance. This understanding of the art as a transnational genre of a geolocal area contrasts with the Indian perspective of the form as an Indian national art of the nation state. This paper traces the development of the term “South Asian” in U.S. academic practice in the post–World War II era and notes the adoption of the term in the British academy and by dance practitioners in the United Kingdom. The South Asian label was transformative in that it transnationalized and hybridized the historical identity of Indian bharatanatyam in the 1980s. This transformation was realized not just through the juxtapositing of local/global terms but through the establishment of local/global institutions. The history and implications of the borrowing are detailed.

Avanthi Meduri is a reader in the dance programs and convener of the new interdisciplinary MA/PGDIP in South Asian dance studies at the University of Roehampton, London. She received her PhD from the Department of Performance Studies, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, in 1996; has published widely; and is the editor of Rukmini Devi Arundale (1904–1986): A Visionary Architect of Indian Culture and the Performing Arts (2005). Trained in bharatanatyam and kuchipudi since childhood, her recent dance-theatre choreography featured a feminist theatre performance of Rukmini Devi’s biography, with the double title Birds of the Banyan Tree, and What is in a Name? Productions were staged in India, the United States, and the United Kingdom in 2004–2005.

Tradition and Transformation in the Pelegongan Dance Repertoire
Azti Nezia Suriyanti Azmi, 329

The pelegongan dance repertoire in Bali remains one of the most performed and rigorously taught forms in Balinese dance. What elements define this form and what degrees of variation within these elements, in turn, are allowable? In other words, what makes a legong dance a legong? For the present study I explore this question by looking at “Legong Gering,” a new legong dance created in 2005 by I Nyoman Cerita for Odalan Bali, a North American touring concert by Çudamani, a performance troupe from Pengosekan village, Ubud, Bali. The study begins with an analysis of the context and visual elements of the piece (including costuming, choreography, and musical accompaniment). It then uses an explicit approach in explaining the motivations behind creation: it defines the pelegongan form and then analyzes how closely “Legong Gering” follows these “standards.” “Legong Gering” is governed by both new and preexisting social and religious concepts.” Legong Gering,” much like the Odalan Bali performance, is an aestheticization of ritual itself. As a corollary to this short study, I also entertain the possibility of studying the “implicit” nature of dance knowledge and creation with reference to the legong dance form.

Azti Nezia Suriyanti Azmi has studied Balinese dance with Ida Ayu Ari Candrawati, Kadek Dewi Aryani, Maskar, and I Nyoman Catra. She attended Wesleyan University as an undergraduate, where she also studied Javanese dance with Urip Sri Maeny while earning a BA in economics. She has served as a dancer, teacher, and coordinator for Gamelan Dharma Swara and coproduced two of their productions at the Symphony Space in New York.

Mock Courts and the Pakistani Bhānḍ
Claire Pamment, 344

Munir Hussain (b. 1949), a prominent bhānḍ (wandering comic), playfully teases at the mise-en-scène of Pakistani politics. This contemporary performer in his anecdotes in performances at weddings draws on the long comedic tradition to form a vibrant critique of the present sociopolitical scenario.

Claire Pamment is an associate professor (Higher Education Commission Foreign Faculty) and head of the Department of Theatre at the National College of Arts, Rawalpindi. Since 2003 she has been living in Pakistan, teaching theatre at Beaconhouse National University and Fatima Jinnah University and initiating numerous national and international theatrical collaborations. She received her MA in dramaturgy from Goldsmiths College, University of London, and is currently an MPhil candidate at the National College of Arts, Lahore. Her thesis is “Bhānḍ as Trickster in Pakistani Theatre.” This paper was awarded second place in the International Theatre Federation’s New Scholar Prize for 2008.

PERFORMANCE REVIEWS

Yuanyang Zhong (Mandarin Duck Tomb), by Zhang Huoding Theatre Workshop, National Peking Opera Theatre of China,
reviewed by Megan Evans, 363

A Dialogue between Sichuan and Beijing Opera, produced by David Wong,
reviewed by Jeffrey Scott, 370

Odalan Bali, created by Çudamani,
reviewed by Kathy Foley, 373

BOOK REVIEWS

Lee Yun-Taek, Four Contemporary Korean Plays, translated by Dongwook Kim and Richard Nichols, with introductions by Richard Nichols,
reviewed by Chan E. Park, 381

Yan Haiping, Chinese Women Writers and the Feminist Imagination, 1905–1948,
reviewed by Amy Dooling, 384

Daphne P. Lei, Operatic China: Staging Chinese Identity across the Pacific,
reviewed by Ashley Thorpe, 387

Kimberly Besio and Constantine Tung, eds., Three Kingdoms and Chinese Culture,
reviewed by Siyuan Liu, 390

David Birch, Interlogue: Studies in Singapore Literature, Vol. 6. Haresh Sharma: The Cultural Politics of Playwriting in Contemporary Singapore,
reviewed by Susan Philip, 392

Joi Barrios-Leblanc, ed., Savage Stage: Plays by Ma-Yi Theatre Company,
reviewed by Kathy Foley, 395

Theresa Jill Buckland, ed., Dancing from the Past to the Present: Nation, Culture, Identities,
reviewed by Kathy Foley, 397

John Wesley Harris, The Traditional Theatre of Japan: Kyōgen, Noh, Kabuki, and Puppetry,
reviewed by Samuel L. Leiter, 398

Color inserts

Editor’s Note, iii

ASIAN THEATRE JOURNAL 2007 LECTURE

Tradition, Change, and Continuity in Chinese Theatre in the Last Hundred Years: In Commemoration of the Spoken Drama Centenary
Colin Mackerras, 1

Commemorating the centenary of the spoken drama’s introduction into China in 1907, the essay takes up several major themes in Chinese theatre over the last hundred years, such as its political and social implications and the tension between foreign and indigenous influences. The essay argues that drama in China during these years can be viewed largely as a microcosm of history, with politics having more impact on drama than the other way around. It also argues that change outweighs continuity, with foreign influences being stronger than indigenous and becoming more so, despite the persistence of nationalism.

This article is the text of the Asian Theatre Journal Lecture, given in New Orleans on 27 July 2007 as part of the Association for Asian Performance Conference, itself part of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education Conference.

ARTICLES

New P’ansori in Twenty-first-century Korea: Creative Dialectics of Tradition and Modernity
Hae-kyung Um, 24

Nearly a century has passed since the first new p’ansori piece The Song of Ch’oe Pyŏng-du was performed at the turn of the twentieth century. While traditional p’ansori, a form of folk musical drama, came to symbolize the cultural and artistic heritage of the Korean nation, new p’ansori, in new millennium, aspires to be a cultural expression that is relevant to the contemporary conditions of everyday life while retaining or even restoring what is considered to be the quintessential p’ansori aesthetics. This article explores the ways in which new p’ansori combines various elements of tradition and modernity in its text, music, and performance style, which, in turn, lead to the polemics of p’ansori aesthetics and the authenticity debate.

Cutud’s Ritual of Nailing on the Cross: Performance of Pain and Suffering
Sir Anril Pineda Tiatco and Amihan Bonifacio-Ramolete, 58

This research investigates the ritual nailing on the cross every Good Friday in Cutud, Pampanga, in the Philippines as a local religiocultural performance. It highlights the ritual’s evolution and historicity of suffering in the context of panata (religious pledge/vow), as a characteristic central to the Filipino people since precolonial times. The roots of the ritual can be traced from pamagdarame (flagellation) and the sinakulo (passion play) written by Ricardo Navarro in 1955. Devotees (participants) of pamagdarame and the sinakulo are participating with intentions of panata. The ritual, manifested through a performance of pain and suffering, allows the devotee’s inner core (kalooban) via his sacrifice to be one with the Supreme Being. The ritual, which has developed into a multifaceted tradition, is not only a religious occasion (an experience of a personal sacrifice or panata for the individual) but also a social drama (an expression of pain and suffering through the performance of Via Crucis o Pasion Y Muerte [Way of the Cross or Passion and Death] and the nailing on the cross performed for the good of others).

Social Change in Kattaikkuttu’s Professional Practice in the Modernizing and Globalizing Society of Tamil Nadu
Esmee Meertens, 77

Kattaikkuttu is a lively South Indian performance tradition. The tradition forms an important part of a Tamil village culture, which is currently changing due to modernization and globalization processes. The social changes that kattaikkuttu performers had to undergo over the last fifty years have affected their social, cultural, economic, and personal development, as well as their position in the field of cultural production in Tamil Nadu. I relate these social changes to the structuralist theories of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, in order to make sense of the power structures. These changes are then linked to the theory on modernization of development of economist Tariq Banuri, giving perspective on the alterations in kattaikkuttu.

DEBUT PANEL PAPERS

Travel and Tabibanashi in the Early Modern Period: Forming Japanese Geographic Identity
Matthew W. Shores, 101

There are three sections in “Travel and Tabibanashi in the Early Modern Period: Forming Japanese Geographic Identity.” The first is about travel in the Edo period (1600–1868). In this section travel and the important role it played in forming the foundations of Japanese identity are presented. The second section is about tabibanashi (travel stories), a subgenre of rakugo, a form of comic storytelling that was especially popular in early modern Japan. The author’s contention is that geographical and cultural information presented in tabibanashi served to educate the common people about travel and social values of the world in which they lived. In the third section a brief summary of tabibanashi and the information that it conveys to its listeners is given. This article presents the initial findings of research that suggest that tabibanashi and rakugo played a much bigger part in helping shape the foundations of Japanese identity than has been thought to be the case until now.

Theatricality and Cultural Critique in Chinese Cinema
Luo Hui, 122

The various ways in which theatre and film interact generate diverse forms of theatricality in Chinese cinema: jingju films, narrative films containing traditional theatrical performances, and films incorporating modern performance types. The significance of theatre in Chinese cinema will be discussed with two questions in mind: (1) to what extent the aesthetics of traditional Chinese theatre cross over from stage to screen and (2) whether filmic representations of theatre generate a critical discourse vis-à-vis state ideology and cultural policies.

Contemporary Yangge: The Moving History of a Chinese Folk Dance Form
Ellen V. P. Gerdes, 138

Since the beginning of its rule, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has consistently claimed that the performing arts “should assist in the process of educating the masses” (Mackerras 1981: 9). The development of yangge dance is particularly linked to the CCP’s policies during both the party’s establishment and the Cultural Revolution. In this paper, I use personal experience and embodied research to complicate the existing conventional historical narrative that asserts the political exploitation of yangge in modern Chinese history.

REPORT

XIVème Festival Mondial des Théâtres de Marionnettes, Charleville-Mézières, France (2006)
Claudia Orenstein, 148

BOOK REVIEWS

Matthew Isaac Cohen, The Komedie Stamboel: Popular Theater in Colonial Indonesia, 1891–1903,
reviewed by Cobina Gillitt, 155

Helen S. E. Parker, Progressive Traditions: An Illustrated Study of Plot Repetition in Traditional Japanese Theatre
reviewed by Julie A. Iezzi, 157

Tomie Hahn, Sensational Knowledge: Embodying Culture through Japanese Dance,
reviewed by Barbara Sellers-Young, 160

Murray J. Levith, Shakespeare in China,
reviewed by Stewart Hawley, 163

Vasudha Dalmia, Poetics, Plays, and Performance: The Politics of Modern Indian Theatre,
reviewed by Sreenath Nair, 165

PERFORMANCE REVIEW

Terracotta Warriors. Written, produced, and directed by Dennis K. Law
reviewed by Kevin J. Wetmore Jr., 169

Editor’s Note, iii

An Addendum to “Myth and Reality: A Story of Kabuki under American Censorship, 1945–1949”
James R. Brandon, v

ARTICLES

Holy Week in the “Heart of the Philippines”: Spirituality, Theatre, and Community in Marinduque’s Moriones Festival
William Peterson, 309

The week-long Moriones Festival on the island of Marinduque, south of Manila, weaves together a complex mix of events including street theatre, processions, religious ceremonies, and a three-night sinakulo that dramatizes the history of salvation with a focus on the Christ story. Present throughout the week’s events are the morions, caped and elaborately costumed local men enacting a vow or panata, whose identities are disguised by large headpieces and full-face carved masks meant to resemble Roman centurions. The leading morion is the Roman centurion Longinus, who according to apocryphal sources, was the lance-wielding soldier present at the crucifixion and whose sight was miraculously restored by Christ’s blood. The ubiquitous morions and the transformation and martyrdom of Longinus provide an active, experiential route into the story of Christ’s sacrifice for many Catholics in Marinduque during Holy Week.

William Peterson is Senior Lecturer and Postgraduate Coordinator in the Centre for Drama and Theatre Studies at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of Theatre and the Politics of Culture in Contemporary Singapore (Wesleyan University Press, 2001) and has published widely on theatre in Singapore, Aotearoa/New Zealand, and the Philippines.

Contemporary Wayang in Global Contexts
Matthew Isaac Cohen, 338

Traditional norms and values stood in the way of radical experimentation with the form of wayang until Indonesia’s postcolonial era. The same impediments did not exist for colonial European artists. Edward Gordon Craig formulated his theories of the über-marionette with reference to wayang, while Richard Teschner adapted wayang puppets for his unique Viennese puppet theatre. This initial encounter of Europe with wayang articulated a pattern of colonial exploitation: Asian products were alienated from their producers and transported to Europe stripped of direct connections to the people and conditions from which they arose.

The 1960s ushered in a new era of intercultural communication. A major influx of Indonesian puppetry came to the United States when a generation of budding American puppet artists received direct tuition from Indonesian puppet masters at California summer schools in the early 1970s. Many subsequently went to Java and Bali themselves for lengthy periods of wayang study and apprenticeship. Some of these artists crossed traditional Indonesian puppets forms with other modes of practice to create complex hybrids. Much of the most interesting contemporary wayang work today is taking place along transnational axes. Wayang has been embraced by international artists and companies in order to tell idiosyncratic myths and celebrate the sacred and the ethereal.

Matthew Isaac Cohen is a senior lecturer in drama and theatre at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is a researcher of Indonesian performance and world puppetry. He has studied wayang kulit in Java for nearly six years, and has performed as a shadow puppeteer in Europe, North America, Israel, and Indonesia. Among his publications are Demon Abduction: A Wayang Ritual Drama from West Java (1998) and The Komedie Stamboel: Popular Theater in Colonial Indonesia, 1891–1903 (2006).

Ninagawa Yukio’s Intercultural Hamlet: Parsing Japanese Iconography
Jon M. Brokering, 370

The efforts of Ninagawa Yukio to draw upon traditional Japanese theatrical techniques in the staging of Western classics arose from his desire to break from the mimetic, Western style of staging plays and to revitalize aspects of classical Japanese theater that had fallen out of use in modern “new theater” (shingeki) drama. Moreover, he wished to divest Shakespeare of the highbrow status it held in Japan and popularize Shakespeare by incorporating familiar imagery from indigenous culture. Owing to their highly visual approach, Ninagawa’s productions have also enjoyed surprising success in the West, where his interpretations provide striking new perspectives on Shakespeare and other classics. Ninagawa has gained worldwide recognition and in Great Britain his work is often hailed as profoundly illuminating. This paper investigates Ninagawa’s production of Hamlet (1998), which ran for eight performances at the Barbican Centre, London, as part of the Barbican International Theatre Event series. In this revival, the author served as backstage interpreter between the Japanese and the British stage crews.

The paper examines four major aspects of Ninagawa’s approach. First, it focuses on his transposition of the play in time and space: as a framing device Ninagawa sets the play in the dressing rooms of a theater, underscoring the themes of pretense and dissembling. Second, the paper examines Ninagawa’s symbolic use of curtains and stairways. Third, it discusses the allegorical use of the Japanese doll tier (hinadan) as a central motif to highlight the hierarchy of the Danish court and the precariousness of power. Finally, it discusses the stage techniques which Ninagawa borrows from kabuki and nō to enhance the production’s theatricality. The warm reception this Hamlet enjoyed in both Britain and Japan demonstrates how Ninagawa Yukio’s stage iconography transcends cultural, linguistic, and political borders.

Jon M. Brokering is professor of drama and theater in the Department of English, Hosei University, Tokyo. He has directed over thirty plays, musicals, and operas in Japan, including The Caucasian Chalk Circle, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Our Town, Raisin in the Sun, The Crucible, and La Bohème. He has also studied nō movement and chanting since 1997 at the Yarai Nō Theater, Tokyo. He has written on William Shakespeare, Arthur Miller, David Mamet, Neil Simon, and Tom Stoppard, as well as intercultural theater. He holds a PhD from the University of London, Royal Holloway, where he wrote his dissertation on Japanese theater directors Suzuki Tadashi and Ninagawa Yukio.

Chinese Theatre, Confucianism, and Nationalism: Amateur Chinese Opera Tradition in Singapore
Lee Tong Soon, 397

In contemporary Singapore a transformation is taking place in the performance of Chinese opera (xiqu) as amateur performers with state support take over roles and repertoire formerly associated with professional companies. The rise of amateur groups can be seen as an outcome of the city-state’s cultural policy and the emphasis on amateur rather than professional presentations is also linked to a long Confucian heritage that emphasizes the scholar-amateur and deemphasizes professionals in artistic performance.

Lee Tong Soon is an associate professor of music at Emory University in Atlanta with an MBA (University of Durham, 2002) and PhD (University of Pittsburgh, 1998). Field research for the article was supported by an Andrew Mellon Predoctoral Fellowship (1996), the Singapore Hokien Huay Kuan Arts and Cultural Scholarship (1997), an International Dissertation Field Research Fellowship (1997), a British Academy Committee for Southeast Asian Studies Award (2000), and the Institute for Comparative and International Studies Research and Program Fund, Emory University (2004).

Dying on the Stage in the Nāṭyaśāstra and Kūṭiyāṭṭam: Perspectives from the Sanskrit Theatre Tradition
Bruce M. Sullivan, 422

The Sanskrit theatre tradition of India has often been regarded as avoiding, even prohibiting, depiction of death on the stage. This article argues that death was both threatened and enacted on the stage, and has always been integral to the Sanskrit theatre tradition, as seen to the present day in Kerala’s kūṭiyāṭṭam tradition. The apparent conflict between “rules” from the Nāṭyaśāstra, the normative text for theatre, and actual dramas is examined, and the surprisingly large number of references in the Nāṭyaśāstra to dramatic uses of death are discussed. For the audience member, seeing depictions of or threats of deaths on the stage can be a significant component of the Indic theatrical experience.

Bruce M. Sullivan (PhD, University of Chicago), professor of religious studies at Northern Arizona University, is a specialist in Hinduism, Indian drama, and Sanskrit literature. He has published four books, including two on kūṭiyāṭṭam with N. P. Unni: The Sun God’s Daughter and King Saṃvaraṇa (1995), and The Wedding of Arjuna and Subhadrā (2001). Support for this research was provided by the Fulbright Association and Northern Arizona University. Thanks are due the participants at the International Seminar on Kūṭiyāṭṭam and Asian Theatre Traditions, held in January 2006 in Trivandrum, Kerala, and sponsored by UNESCO and the government of India.

Performing the Globalized City: Contemporary Hong Kong Theatre and Global Connectivity
Kay Li, 440

This paper looks at how Hong Kong theatre is expressing the city’s relationship to globalization and its own position within a changing international framework. The performances feature the city responding to challenges of globalization and nationalism by resorting to various means of global connectivity. The impact of globalization on presenting the ultralocal, the national, and the global on stage will be examined. These are responses to internal factors such as Hong Kong theatre history and conventions, as well as reactions to external factors such as the resumption of sovereignty over Hong Kong by the People’s Republic of China in 1997. Hong Kong theatre dexterously negotiates the conflicting claims of localism, nationalism, and globalism to create a unique Hong Kong identity as a capitalistic Special Administrative Region within the communist People’s Republic of China. Vignettes of the Chinese diaspora can also be found, with people converging in and diverging from Hong Kong, trying to respond to calls for modernity and globalism without loosing Chinese identity.

Kay Li is President of Asian Heritage Month for the Canadian Foundation for Asian Culture (Central Ontario) Inc. She is also a research associate at the Asian Institute, Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto and the York Centre for Asian Research, York University. In addition, she is visiting scholar at the English Department, University of Toronto, and one of the founders of the International Shaw Society. Her book, Bernard Shaw and China: Cross-Cultural Encounters, will be published by the Bernard Shaw Series of the University Press of Florida in 2007. She has published articles on transnational literary and cultural transmission on Bernard Shaw and Virginia Woolf in relation to China or Hong Kong, and on intersections of arts and technologies in contemporary films.

DEBUT PANEL PAPERS

The Emerging Role of the Director in Chinese Xiqu
Megan Evans, 470

Nō as Sociopolitical Commentary: Staging Chinese Literati in Medieval Nō Theatre
Leo Shingchi Yip, 505

One-tenth of the plays in the current nō repertoire retell stories of Chinese origin or feature a Chinese character, raising the role of China in nō theatre. Through a close reading of the two plays, Sanshō (The Three Laughers) and Hakurakuten (Bai Letian), this paper proposes that one major reason for the staging of China is to voice sociopolitical comments. Although both plays feature well-known Chinese literati, they demonstrate contrasting treatment of the foreigners. Such polarity in the portrayals of the Chinese reveals the different presentation of China in response to the changing sociopolitical climates in medieval Japan.

Leo Shingchi Yip is an assistant professor of Japanese Studies at Gettysburg College. He was a Freeman fellow at Wittenberg University (2004–2005) after receiving a PhD in Japanese Language and Literature from Ohio State University in 2004.

June Watanabe’s Translation/Transformation of Japanese Nō in Contemporary Practice
Judy Halebsky, 518

This paper considers a 2004 performance of Nō Project II ‘Can’t’ is ‘Night,’ a collaboration of Japanese American dancer June Watanabe, Japanese nō master and Intangible Cultural Treasure of Japan Uchida Anshin, composer Pauline Oliveros, and poet Leslie Scalapino. The project, spearheaded by Watanabe, translated nō for a contemporary San Francisco audience, imbuing it with social and political meaning for California viewers. Watanabe translated nō’s internal concentration into a collaborative process she calls “being in the moment.” The performance became a way for collaborators and audience to examine values in art making and sociopolitical practice.

Judy Halebsky is a PhD candidate at the University of California–Davis specializing in the cultural translation of Japanese arts practice.

BOOK REVIEWS

Samuel L. Leiter, Historical Dictionary of Japanese Traditional Theatre,
reviewed by Holly A. Blumner, 531

Robin Ruizendaal, Marionette Theatre in Quanzhou,
reviewed by Bradford Clark, 534

MEDIA REVIEW

Betty Bernhard, Kailash Pandya, and Sasidharan Nair, directors, Shakuntala: A Play by Kalidasa,
reviewed by David Mason, 536

Color Inserts

Editor’s Note, v

PLAYS

Suehirogari (The Fan of Felicity)
Translated and introduced by Andrew T. Tsubaki, 1

Suehirogari (The Fan of Felicity) is one of twenty-three Auspicious Plays (waki kyōgen) in the current kyōgen repertory. This play uses the relationship of a servant to his master, contrast of country simplicity and city trickery, misunderstandings of language, and dance for humor.

Andrew T. Tsubaki’s encounter with kyōgen began in 1968 when Nomura Manzō (VI) toured in the United States. Thereafter, he began studying kyōgen with Manzō’s second son, Mansaku (II), and nō with fourth son, Shirō. He directed his first English-language kyōgen at the University of Kansas in 1970. He translated and directed a number of nō and kyōgen that toured widely in the United States, one of which was performed at the 1992 International Amateur Theatre Festival in Japan. His final kyōgen production in 1998 toured the northern and eastern United States. He retired from the University of Kansas in May 2000.

Shimizu (Spring Water): Translating Shimizu for a Western Audience
Translated by Yuriko Doi and Lluís Valls with Theatre of Yugen
Introduced by Jubilith Moore with Yuriko Doi, 19

This translation of Shimizu (Spring Water) pays attention to issues of haru (stretching) and osaeru (holding down) in the delivery of text. Shimizu is a complex piece. It works best as part of a longer program where the audience can become conversant with kyōgen conventions. Though it initially seems a standard play featuring Tarō Kaja as a trickster, his impersonation of a demon to frighten his master and other aspects make it more appropriate as the third play in a full program.

Yuriko Doi is the founder of Theatre of Yugen, a theatre director, a teacher, and a choreographer. Previous publications include “Silence in the Theatre” Theatron (1970) and “Masks in Fusion Theatre” in Mime Journal (1984). She is a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, the California Arts Council artist in residency, and the Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Outstanding Achievement Award in direction. In Theatre of Yugen’s twenty-seven-year history, she has directed more than forty-five plays, including seventeen kyōgen repertory productions.

Originally from Iqualada, Spain, Lluís Valls has worked since 1993 with Theatre of Yugen, performing on tour in the repertoire of kyōgen comedies as well as many mainstage productions. Most notable are Erik Ehn’s Crazy Horse; Tomio Tada’s modern nō play The Well of Ignorance; and Yuriko Doi’s nō adaptation of W. B. Yeats’s Purgatory. Since 2002 he has worked with Theatre of Yugen’s Joint Artistic team to create the original experimental pieces The Clay Play, Norton, I, Frankenstein, The Old Man and The Sea, and most recently Don Q.

Jubilith Moore is one of the artistic directors of Theatre of Yugen and a graduate of Bard College. She has been with the company, and a student of Yuriko Doi, since 1993. She has also studied nō with Richard Emmert and Matsui Akira (Kita School) in the United States. While under a Japan Foundation Fellowship in Tokyo, she continued training with Richard Emmert, and with Kanze School nō master Nomura Shirō, kyōgen master Ishida Yukio (Izumi School) and with kotsuzumi (shoulder drum) master Kama Mitsuo (Ko School).

Sakon Zaburō (Sakon Zaburō, the Hunter)
Translated and introduced by Micah Auerback, 34

This examination and translation of Sakon Zaburō, the Hunter, offers observations on the textual and performance histories of the play, including remarks on a previous English translation by A. L. Sadler. It discusses one practice from medieval Japanese religion that the play cites—the “Suwa phrase.” Further, it considers Zen and related religious phenomena in Sakon Zaburō, and ends with speculations on the play’s authorship.

Micah Auerback is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Religion at Princeton University, focusing on the history of Japanese Buddhism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Additionally, he maintains a longstanding interest in classical Japanese performing arts, particularly kyōgen. In Kyoto, he has practiced and performed kyōgen as an amateur. In the United States, he has given lectures introducing kyōgen to the general public.

Chakagi Zatō (The Tea Sniffing Blind Men)
Translated and introduced by Carolyn Anne Morley, 50

The Tea Sniffing Blind Men is one of nine kyōgen plays featuring a blind man as shite (main character). It is unique in that it presents a formal community of the blind rather than two or three characters, and shows them conducting a rather unconventional tea ceremony. The characters make up the category of plays known as zatō mono in the Izumi School, and shukke zatō in the Ōkura School.

Carolyn Anne Morley is professor of Japanese language and literature at Wellesley College and the author of Transformations, Miracles, and Mischief: The Mountain Priest Plays of Kyōgen.

Mikazuki (Winnowing Love)
Translated and introduced by Jonah Salz, 61

Mikazuki (Winnowing Love) is an unusually sympathetic and realistic portrait of medieval marriage, when a husband enthralled by poetry parties threatens to ruin the household. The introduction situates the play within other kyōgen featuring female characters, and discusses the improvisatory dynamism of renga linked-poetry parties as metaphor for both marriage and kyōgen performance.

Jonah Salz is director of the Noho Theatre Group, which has since 1981 produced plays by Shakespeare,Yeats, and Beckett interpreted through nō and kyōgen techniques and spirit. He is program director for Traditional Theatre Training, which has introduced foreign and Japanese artists and teachers to classical dance-theatre since 1984. His publications include research in translating comedy, intercultural theatre, and contemporary kyōgen. He has translated or cotranslated traditional kyōgen, the modern nō play Yuya by Mishima Yukio, super-kyōgen by Umehara Takeshi, and contemporary one-man comic Issey Ogata. He is professor of comparative theatre at the Faculty of Communication, Ryukoku University, Kyoto.

Oko Sako (Oko and Sako): Wawashii Woman in the Kyōgen Oko and Sako
Translated and introduced by Minae Yamamoto Savas, 74

In this play, a peasant called Oko accuses Sako, another farmer, of letting his cow graze on Oko’s grass. While Oko’s wawashii (bold) wife offers to help him rehearse his lawsuit, she secretly hopes to dissuade her husband from bringing it to the local steward. The rehearsal satirizes the oppressive feudal justice system as the domineering wife and steward role overlap.

Minae Yamamoto Savas is a PhD candidate in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, Ohio State University. She is currently a visiting assistant professor of Japanese in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at Hamilton College.

Susugigawa (The Washing River): An Instant Classic
Translated by Julie A. Iezzi
Introduced by Jonah Salz with Julie A. Iezzi, 87

Susugigawa is a pivotal play in post–World War II kyōgen. An adaptation of the medieval French farce Le Cuvier and virtually indistinguishable from traditional plays, its success marked the beginning of the “kyōgen boom.” This introduction traces the many permutations of the play, from its first shingeki (modern Japanese theatre) adaption to recent bilingual and English-language kyōgen productions.

Julie A. Iezzi is an associate professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of Hawai‘i, where she teaches Japanese theatre and directs English-language kyōgen and kabuki productions. She has studied kyōgen and the traditional musical genres of nagauta, tokiwazu, and gidayū. Three of her recent translations are included in the four-volume series Kabuki Plays on Stage (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2001–2003).

Jonah Salz teaches comparative theatre at Ryukoku University’s Faculty of Intercultural Communication, outside Kyoto. The director of the Noho Theatre Group and program director for Traditional Theatre Training, he publishes widely on intercultural theatre, translation, and actor training.

Ana (Hole): A Modern Kyōgen Play by Fujita Asaya
Translated and introduced by Gotō Yukihiro, 105

Ana (Hole), written by Fujita Asaya in 1965, adapts kyōgen structure and style to portray a contemporary social problem: three unemployed coal miners struggling to survive in rapidly industrializing Japan of the 1960s. The author analyzes the play’s political sensibility, and its clever use of onomatopoeia and mime.

Gotō Yukihiro is a professor of performance and Asian theatre, and acting chair of the Department of Theatre Arts, San Francisco State University. Besides his research on contemporary Japanese theatre and butō, he has adapted and directed Greek tragedy and Shakespeare using Asian theatre techniques, introducing actors and audiences alike to a fusion of diverse performance traditions and cultures.

Japannequins: A New Bilingual Kyōgen Based on the Traditional Kyōgen Roku Jizō (Six Jizō)
By Osada Sadao, based on an idea by Jonah Salz
Translated, adapted, and introduced by Jonah Salz, 124

This introduction traces the playwrighting and directing processes in the creation of the new kyōgen, Japannequins. The combined suggestions of producers, playwright, director, and actors created humor from intercultural bilingual frictions and depicted the discrepancy between the traditional and contemporary worlds.

Osada Sadao, born in Osaka in 1952, is a recipient of the 1995 Osaka Stage Arts Fellowship. He has revived rakugo and adapted them from Tokyo speech to Kamigata (Kyoto-Osaka) dialect, published compilations of his new rakugo works and his conversations with Katsura Beichō, written explanations of Osaka dialect in rakugo, and collaborated with Shigeyama Akira on “rakugen,” the merging of rakugō stories and techniques with those of kyōgen.

ARTICLE

Kyōgen in the Postwar Era
Written by Seki Kobayashi, Adapted and translated by Shinko Kagaya, 144

The kyōgen world has undergone an amazing transformation since the end of World War II. This translation has been adapted from Seki Kobayashi’s extensive (140-page) chapter “Kyōgen,” in Yokomichi Mario and Seki Kobayashi’s Nihon koten geinō to gendai: Nō kyōgen ( Japanese Traditional Performing Arts and Today: Nō and Kyōgen, 1996).

Seki Kobayashi is professor emeritus of Musashino University, and longtime critic and champion of kyōgen. His numerous publications include Kyōgenshi kenkyū (Study on the History of Kyōgen) and Kyōgen jiten (Kyōgen Dictionary; co-edited with Furukawa Hisashi).

Shinko Kagaya is an associate professor of Japanese in the Department of Asian Studies, Williams College. Her research deals primarily with cross-cultural reception of Japanese theatre, particularly nō and kyōgen.

INTERVIEWS

Trapping The Fox and the Trapper: Maruishi Yasushi’s Challenging Debut
Jonah Salz, 178

With its tension of wildness and self-control, secret teachings, and physical rigor, Tsurigitsune (The Fox and the Trapper) is the most challenging of the kyōgen actors’ “roles of passage.” This analysis of the play’s importance in the training of the young actor is followed by an interview with Maruishi Yasushi, a professional from outside the kyōgen tradition, who premiered the play at a late age, discovering its difficulties and rewards.

Jonah Salz teaches comparative theatre at Ryukoku University’s Faculty of Intercultural Communication, outside Kyoto. The director of the Noho Theatre Group and program director for Traditional Theatre Training, he publishes widely on intercultural theatre, translation, and actor training.

Tradition in Transition: The Shigeyama Chūzaburō Kyōgen Family Looks to the Future
John Kuzel, 197

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Kyōgen in English: A Bibliography
Compiled by Julie A. Iezzi, 211

REPORTS

Authenticity and Accessibility: Two Decades of Translating and Adapting Kyōgen Plays for English and Bilingual Student Performances
Laurence Kominz, 235

Laurence Kominz draws on twenty years of experience teaching and producing student kyōgen plays in English to elucidate the challenges involved in creating authentic and accessible kyōgen performances. The essay explains approaches to translating dialogue, poetry, song, and onomatopoeia for the stage, and discusses bilingual productions and kyōgen for children.

Laurence Kominz is professor of Japanese language and literature at Portland State University. He earned his PhD in Japanese Literature at Columbia University and currently serves as Japan editor for Asian Theatre Journal. Publications include The Stars Who Created Kabuki: Their Lives, Loves, and Legacy (1997) and Avatars of Vengeance (1995). Kominz studies the acting and dance of kyōgen and kabuki, and teaches these performing arts in his college classes.

Theatre of Yugen’s Direction of Kyōgen in English and Kyōgen Fusion Plays
Yuriko Doi with Theatre of Yugen, 247

The award-winning Theatre of Yugen has been performing kyōgen, nō adaptations, and multicultural fusion productions since 1978. This article traces the challenges and developments in the ongoing process of the company’s creation of English-language kyōgen and kyōgen fusion plays.

Yuriko Doi is the founder of Theatre of Yugen, and a theatre director, teacher, and choreographer. She received Masters degrees from Waseda University (Tokyo) and San Francisco State University. Previous publications include “Silence in the Theatre” in Theatron (1970) and “Masks in Fusion Theatre” in Mime Journal (1984). She is a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, the California Arts Council artist in residency, and the Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Outstanding Achievement Award in direction. She has directed more than forty-five plays, including seventeen kyōgen repertory productions.

Muromachi Musicals: Resetting Kyōgen in a Modern Medium
Gart T. Westerhout, 262

Gart T. Westerhout introduces the Osugi Musical Theatre (OMT), located in the mountain village of Osugi (pop. 75), two hours north of Kyoto by train. Formed in 1995 to produce original theatre at the community level, the group takes Japanese theatre, folklore, and history and presents it in a new light. The primarily Japanese group performs in Japanese and has appeared in more than forty different venues, including four overseas tours.

Gart T. Westerhout is an associate professor at Kinjo College in Hakusan, Ishikawa, and the founding director of Osugi Musical Theatre. He writes or adapts the group’s musicals, including composing most of the music. The website of his group is osugimusicaltheatre.com.

A Set of Kyōgen Adaptations: Henry Livings’s Pongo Plays
Anthony Graham-White, 269

This report discusses the transpositions, adaptations, and original departures from kyōgen and music hall that Henry Livings used in creating his delightful popular sketches, Pongo Plays, performed in England in the 1960s and 1970s.

Anthony Graham-White is Professor of Performing Arts at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is a past editor of Theatre Journal (then Educational Theatre Journal) and author of The Drama of Black Africa (1974) and Punctuation and Its Dramatic Value in Shakespearian Drama (1995). His articles “‘Ritual’ in Contemporary Theatre and Criticism” and “The Characteristics of Traditional Theatre” (both 1976) were translated into Chinese for Drama (Beijing) in 1991.

PERFORMANCE REVIEWS

The Drunkard’s Revenge and Love’s Labor. Adapted and directed by Sekine Masaru from William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Performed by Roma Kyōgen, Japanese National Tour, 2005
reviewed by Suzuki Masae, 278

The Kyōgen of Errors. Adapted by Takahashi Yasunari from William Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors, Directed by Nomura Mansai, Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco International Arts Festival, 3 June 2005
reviewed by Kathy Foley, 284

MEDIA REVIEW

In a Thicket. Adapted by Nomura Mansai from the short story by Akutagawa Ryūnosuke
reviewed by Tim Medlock, 287

BOOK REVIEWS

Ronald Cavaye, Paul Griffith, and Akihiko Senda, A Guide to the Japanese Stage: From Traditional to Cutting Edge
reviewed by Holly Blumner, 291

Tetsuo Kishi and Graham Bradshaw, Shakespeare in Japan
reviewed by Daniel Gallimore, 293

Shelley Fenno Quinn, Developing Zeami: The Noh Actor’s Attunement in Practice
reviewed by Margaret Coldiron, 297

Erik Ehn, ed., Theatre of Yugen, 25 Years: A Retrospective
reviewed by Judy Halebsky, 299

Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei, Unspeakable Acts: The Avant-Garde Theatre of Terayama Shūji and Postwar Japan
reviewed by John D. Swain, 301

Jennifer Lindsay, ed., Between Tongues: Translation and/of/in Performance in Asia
reviewed by Thomas M. Hunter, 304

Color Inserts

Editor’s Note, iii

PLAY

Primary Colors: A Play by Mishima Yukio
Introduction and translation by Christopher L. Pearce, 223

Primary Colors (Sangenshoku) is a 1955 play by Mishima Yukio that brings up issues of homosexuality and bisexuality. Its positive treatment of homosexual themes contrasts with the darkness of Forbidden Colors, the author’s novel of the same period. While the play has received only a few professional productions, its poetry and theme help us understand Mishima’s developing aesthetic.

Christopher Pearce is a JET Programme participant currently working as a Coordinator for International Relations for the government of Hyogo prefecture in Japan. He holds a bachelor’s degree in the Japanese language from Portland State University. This translation is printed with the generous permission of the Estate of Mishima Yukio.

ARTICLES

Adaptation and Staging of Greek Tragedy in Hebei Bangzi
Min Tian, 248

This article is a critical study of the adaptation and staging of Greek tragedy in hebei bangzi (Hebei clapper opera). It examines the rationale for these adaptations and contrasts their dramaturgy, staging, and performance with the premises of Greek theatre. The author argues that because of the inherent differences in dramaturgy, staging, and performance between hebei bangzi and Greek tragedy, these adaptations, conceived as a “fusion” of these two theatrical traditions, are, in fact, a displacement of Greek tragedies from their theatrical and artistic contexts and an appropriation of them as raw materials to meet the dramatic, scenic, and performance prerequisites of hebei bangzi. The significance of these adaptations is twofold: first, as they use a complete and authentic form of Chinese xiqu and the stories from Greek tragedy, they are effective in facilitating the understanding of Chinese xiqu in the West; second, they provide yet another approach to performing Greek tragedy and help materialize our modernist imagination of its performance style.

Min Tian earned his PhD in theatre history both from the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing (1990) and from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2000). He has taught at the Central Academy of Drama as lecturer and associate professor and has published articles and reviews in Asian Theatre Journal, Comparative Drama, New Theatre Quarterly, and Theatre Journal. He now works at the University of Iowa.

From Zheng Qiang to Jian Shuiying: The Feminization of a Revolutionary Hero in Maoist Theatre’s Song of the Dragon River
Rosemary Roberts, 265

Since the 1980s, analysis of the representation of women in Maoist theatre has argued that the heroines of the Cultural Revolution “model works” (yangbanxi) were “genderless revolutionaries” “erased” of anything feminine. This article challenges such a view through a case study of Song of the Dragon River in which the male hero of the 1964 spoken drama version was changed to a female in the 1972 yangbanxi adaptation. Evidence is presented that the characterization of the heroine in the latter work conforms closely not only with traditional beliefs in innate female characteristics but also with current Chinese beliefs in the characteristics of successful women in leadership.

Rosemary Roberts is a lecturer in Chinese at the University of Queensland, Australia. She completed postgraduate studies at Beijing University in the early 1980s and has a PhD in Chinese literature from the Australian National University. She has published numerous articles and translations in the field of Chinese literature and culture and is currently writing a book on gender in Maoist theatre of the Cultural Revolution.

Karagöz Co-Opted: Turkish Shadow Theatre of the Early Republic (1923–1945)
Serdar Öztürk, 292

Balinese Legong: Revival or Decline?
Stephen Davies, 314

EMERGING SCHOLARS PAPERS

The Impact of Shinpa on Early Chinese Huaju
Siyuan Liu, 342

Performance of Identity: The Pelegongan Andir of Tista, Bali
Maria Talamantes, 356

In Contact with the Dead: Nora Rong Khru Chao Ban Ritual of Thailand
Parichat Jungwiwattanaporn, 374

REPORT

The New Sakata Tōjūrō’s Grand Kabuki Show and the Rebirth of Kamigata (Kansai) Kabuki
Laurence Kominz, 396

PERFORMANCE REVIEWS

A Gathering of Gamelans and A (Balinese) Tempest, presented by ShadowLight Productions, Cowell Theatre, San Francisco
reviewed by Henry Spiller, 401

Miyagi Satoshi (director), Medea, adapted from Euripides, Ku Na’uka, Biwako Hall, Shiga, Japan
reviewed by Nobuko Anan, 407

BOOK REVIEWS

Qian Ma, Women in Traditional Chinese Theater: The Heroine’s Play
reviewed by Megan Evans, 412

Nandi Bhatia, Acts of Authority/Acts of Resistance: Theatre and Politics in Colonial and Postcolonial India
reviewed by Kathy Foley, 415

Kazuo Ohno and Yoshito Ohno, Kazuo Ohno’s World: From Without and Within
reviewed by Patricia Gallagher, 417

Yoshiko Fukushima, Manga Discourse in Japanese Theater: The Location of Noda Hideki’s Yume no Yuminsha
reviewed by Kevin Wetmore, 419

Eileen Blumenthal, Puppetry: A World History
reviewed by Kathy Foley, 421

BOOKS RECEIVED, 423

Color Inserts

Editor’s Note
Kathy Foley, iii

ARTICLES

Myth and Reality: A Story of Kabuki during American Censorship, 1945–1949
James R. Brandon, 1

American censors during the occupation of Japan after World War II unsuccessfully attempted to eliminate feudal themes and foster new democratic plays in kabuki. Contrary to popular myths, kabuki flourished under the Occupation, “banned” plays were rapidly released, the infamous “list of banned plays” was not significant, most American censors were captivated by kabuki, and credit for Occupation assistance to kabuki should not limited to one man, Faubion Bowers. Using archival records, I show that the Shōchiku Company, the major kabuki producer, successfully resisted the democratic aims of the Occupation. Shōchiku’s “classics-only” policy protected Japanese culture from American contamination and inadvertently fashioned the fossilized kabuki we know today.

James R. Brandon, professor emeritus of Asian Theatre at the University of Hawai‘i and visiting professor at Harvard University (2005), is founding editor of ATJ. He has been writing about kabuki for fifty years. His most recent books are Kabuki Plays On Stage, volumes I–IV, and Masterpieces of Kabuki: Eighteen Plays On Stage, co-edited with Samuel L. Leiter.

Mae Naak and Company: The Shifting Duality in Female Representation on the Contemporary Thai Stage
Catherine Diamond, 111

The duality of female characterization in Thai theatre and film is exemplified by the character of Mae Naak. She is a ghost-woman whose love for her husband transcends death, but monastic Buddhism sees her as consumed by worldly attachment. This character, along with other famous traditional stage figures such as White Snake, Kaki, Sita (Sida), and Busba, is experiencing a change of interpretation in contemporary Thailand, especially as women have become prominent dramatists and have chosen to confront the “good-bad” woman dichotomy in Thai court, popular, and folk theatres. In contemporary productions such characters have been presented in a feminist light, which exposes the misogynistic structures leading to their predicaments. Dramatists such as playwright Daraka Wongsiri and actress-producer Patravadi Mejudhon explore the shifting perspective toward women’s roles in modern Thai culture, influenced by both Bhuddist and Western ideals. The conflict within Mae Naak continues to be relevant to her contemporary counterparts, for though the duality may take on modern public-private dimensions, it remains unresolved and theatrically powerful.

Catherine Diamond is a professor at Soochow University whose work on contemporary Southeast Asian theatre has been published in Asian Theatre Journal and numerous other journals. The author acknowledges Dr. Pornrat Damrhung of Chulalongkorn University for her suggestions on the revision of this article and for her own work on women in Thai theatre. Fieldwork for this paper was partially supported by a research grant from the National Science Council of Taiwan.

Tibetan Folk Opera: Lhamo in Contemporary Cultural Politics
Syed Jamil Ahmed, 149

Lhamo, the popular folk opera of Tibet is a genre in which the contested politics of the Tibetan diaspora and the People’s Republic of China are displayed. This essay notes the practice of the art by the Tibetan refugee community in India and beyond, where it evokes nostalgia for a lost existence and the struggle for a return to the Tibetan Buddhist homeland. Meanwhile the art has been redeveloped in the People’s Republic of China in the wake of the Cultural Revolution and used to support Chinese claims to Tibet. Lhamo presents a case study of a particular art and how it can be articulated to different political and economic ends.

Syed Jamil Ahmed is a professor of theatre at the University of Dhaka with extensive experience as a theatre practitioner. He earned his BA from the National School of Drama (India), his MA from the University of Warwick (UK), and his PhD from the University of Dhaka. He has traveled extensively in Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America; published in RIDE, TDR, and NTQ; and taught at the Antioch College (1990), King Alfred’s College (2002), and San Francisco City College (Fall 2005). His full-length publications in English are Acinpakhi Infinity: Indigenous Theatre in Bangladesh and In Praise of Niranjan: Islam, Theatre and Bangladesh.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Modern Japanese Drama in English
Kevin J. Wetmore Jr., 179

BOOK REVIEWS

Haruo Shirane, ed., Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600–1900
reviewed by Julie Iezzi, 207

Arendie and Henk Herwig, Heroes of the Kabuki Stage
reviewed by Holly A. Blumner, 210

Sy Ren Quah, Gao Xingjian and Transcultural Chinese Theater
reviewed by Alexander C. Y. Huang, 213

Gao Xingjian, Snow in August, translated by Gilbert C. F. Fong
reviewed by Alexander C. Y. Huang, 214

Fan Pen Li Chen, Visions for the Masses: Chinese Shadow Plays from Shaanxi and Shanxi
reviewed by Bradford Clark, 215

Krystyn R. Moon, Yellowface: Creating the Chinese in American Popular Music and Performance, 1850s–1920s
reviewed by Randy Barbara Kaplan, 217

Susan L. Schwartz, Rasa: Performing the Divine in India
reviewed by Mythili Kumar, 220

Color Inserts

Editor’s Note
Kathy Foley, iii

PLAY

Topeng Sidha Karya: A Balinese Mask Dance
Performed by I Ketut Kodi with I Gusti Putu Sudarta, I Nyoman Sedana, and I Made Sidia in Sidha Karya, Badung, Bali, 16 October 2002
Transcribed by I Ketut Kodi; translated by I Nyoman Sedana and Kathy Foley; and introduced by Kathy Foley, 171

After a terrorist bomb exploded in the Sari Club at Kuta Beach, Bali, in October 2002, a topeng performance of Sidha Karya (literally “completing the ritual work”) was presented by I Ketut Kodi and other faculty members from STSI-Denpasar, the Indonesian University of the Arts. The mask dance performance, held at the village of Sidha Kaya in Badung, Bali, was an exorcistic response to the terrorist attack and probed Balinese responses to the event. The introduction gives background on the story and analyzes the way the narrative reflected both current social issues and traditional Balinese philosophy.

I Ketut Kodi is a member of the Padalangan (Puppetry) faculty at ISI, formerly STSI-Denpasar. He is a noted topeng dancer and a puppeteer who performs frequently in Balinese ceremonial performances as well as internationally. He is both a topeng master and a dalang of shadow puppetry. He is one of the first master performers of these arts with a formal education through the tertiary level.

I Nyoman Sedana is a member of the Padalangan Department at ISI, formerly STSI-Denpasar and Secretary of Research and Community Service Division for the institution. He completed an MA at Brown University and a PhD at the University of Georgia. His articles have appeared in Asian Theatre Journal, Asian Music, and Puppetry International. He performs Balinese puppetry and other arts in Bali and internationally.

Kathy Foley is a professor of theatre arts at University of California–Santa Cruz and editor of Asian Theatre Journal.

Support for this work was provided by AMINEF-Indonesia via a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar Grant, UCSC Committee on Research, and Arts Research Institute. The performance was recorded by Dewa Made Darmawan of ISI.

INTERVIEWS

Balinese Mask Dance from the Perspective of a Master Artist: I Ketut Kodi on Topeng
Kathy Foley and I Nyoman Sedana, 199

I Ketut Kodi is one of the most important performers of Balinese topeng (mask) dance. In this interview he shares insight into his education as a performer and his obligations as a mask dancer in contemporary Bali.

Kathy Foley is a professor of theatre arts at University of California–Santa Cruz and editor of Asian Theatre Journal.

I Nyoman Sedana is head of the Padalangan (puppetry) Department at ISI, formerly STSI-Denpasar. He completed an MA at Brown University and a PhD at the University of Georgia. His articles have appeared in Asian Theatre Journal, Asian Music, and Puppetry International. He frequently dances and presents Balinese puppetry in Bali and internationally.

Support for this work was provided by AMINEF-Indonesia via a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar Grant and by the UCSC Committee on Research and Arts Research Institute.

Mask, Gender, and Performance in Indonesia: An Interview with Didik Nini Thowok
Laurie Margot Ross, 214

Contemporary mask performer Didik Nini Thowok carries on a venerable tradition of Javanese female impersonation by a male dancer. His study of cross-gender performance throughout Asia and the world fuels his playful, modern performance, presented in solo mask dances that combine mysterious androgyny and comic sexual impersonation.

Laurie Margot Ross studied topeng cirebon from 1977 to 1978 with Ibu Dasih in Cirebon, West Java, Indonesia. She received her MA in performance studies from New York University and has taught and presented mask performance for many years. She is a PhD candidate in the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Her focus is on sufist elements of topeng cirebon, the psychological aspects of the mask, and the transmission of emotion between the mask wearer and the audience. Ross is a Townsend/Mellon Discovery Fellow and Fulbright-Hays DDRA Fellow conducting fieldwork in Cirebon, West Java.

ARTICLES

Lions, Witches, and Happy Old Men: Some Parallels between Balinese and Japanese Ritual Masks
Margaret Coldiron, 227

The visual and choreographic parallels between Japanese and Balinese mask traditions are striking, and, though the exact interrelationship between masks of these two cultures cannot be proven with historically verifiable data, juxtaposition of the similar genres is useful for understanding mask dance. The masks discussed are the dog/lions Shishi (Japan) and Barong (Bali), the witch-like Hannya (Japan) and Rangda (Bali), and the sacred old men Okina (Japan) and Sidha Karya (Bali). Possible links include cultural diffusion and patterns of human perception. However, the visual language in which these mask characters are expressed and the mythology that delineates them probably comes from Indian Tantric models.

Margaret Coldiron is an actress, teacher, and theatre director. She received her PhD from Royal Holloway, University of London, and is a specialist in actor training and performance ethnography. She is the author of Trance and Transformation of the Actor in Japanese Noh and Balinese Masked Dance-Drama (2004).

Masks, Interface of Past and Future: Nomura Mannojo’s Shingigaku
Yoshiko Fukushima, 249

Kyogen actor Nomura Mannojo developed Shingigaku (“true” gigaku), a performance that, through research in East and Central Asia, attempted to revitalize the mask performance genre of Japan’s seventh to thirteenth centuries. Inspired by twentieth century European work that resurrected commedia dell’arte, he studied the masks and researched performances of Chinese, Tibetan, Bhutanese, Uygur, and Korean culture to devise his 2001 performance. His search for the sources of Japanese theatre in pan-Asian models was cut short by his death in June 2004.

Yoshiko Fukushima earned her PhD at New York University in performance studies. She teaches at the University of Oklahoma and undertakes research on modern Japanese performance.

Only Joking? The Relationship between the Clown and Percussion in Jingju
Ashley Thorpe, 269

The prime function of the clown (chou) in jingju (Beijing “opera”) has often been considered as light entertainment, but there is evidence that could support a different interpretation. The clown is associated with the origin of Chinese acting, and performance shows a fundamental relationship between the clown and drumming which comes from shamanism. While other martial roles share some of the tie to percussion, the improvisational freedom of the clown, the customary verse the clown uses, drumming, and parallels to Taoist ritual music may point back to shamanistic roots. If this is true, the clown’s comedy may come from exorcism and not only joking.

Ashley Thorpe received his PhD from the University of London and currently teaches theatre at Royal Holloway, University of London, and the University of Reading. He has studied jingju in China and performed in the United Kingdom as both a jingju actor and a musician. His book on the role of the clown in traditional Chinese drama is forthcoming from Edwin Mellen Press.

EMERGING SCHOLAR PAPER

The Mardi Gras Boys of Singapore’s English-Language Theatre
Eng-Beng Lim, 293

This short paper is extracted from a larger project that explores colonial and intercultural queer encounters in performance. Focusing on Singapore as a transnational site, I study how Mardi Gras is appropriated and staged in a local English-language production of the same name, as well as in a large-scale queer party in Singapore, regarded as “Asia’s Mardi Gras.” Singapore’s Mardi Gras boys perform the city-state’s uncertain and superficial transformation from patriarchal father-state to “Asia’s new gay capital” in its bid to attract global queer capital in the form of creative talent and pink-dollar industries. Mardi Gras boys are a lens through which to consider the larger social and global ramifications of the staging of queer boys in this global city-state.

Eng-Beng Lim is currently assistant professor of drama studies at SUNY–Purchase College. He received a PhD in theatre, critical studies from UCLA while in residency at the UCLA International Institute as an associate Global Fellow and the UC President’s Dissertation Year Fellow. He received the American Society for Theater Research’s Dissertation Award and Thomas Marshall Fellowship in 2003. Upon graduation in 2004, he was appointed a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington’s School of Drama and Jackson School of International Studies, where he was affiliated with Southeast Asian Studies Center and Undergraduate Asian Studies Initiative.

REPORTS

Chinese-Speaking Theatre in Perspective: A Symposium
Li Ruru, 310

A symposium on the last ten years of Chinese theatre in Hong Kong shows the diversity of modern drama in Taiwan, the People’s Republic, Hong Kong, and Singapore and points to a rapidly changing future.

Li Ruru is author of Shashibiya: Staging Shakespeare in China (2003) and teaches at the University of Leeds.

Woman and the Changing World on Alternative Global Stage: Sixth Women Playwrights International Conference
Manila, 14–20 November 2003
Lucy Mae San Pablo Burns, 324

This review focuses on the sixth Women Playwrights International (WPI) conference and festival, held in Manila, Philippines, in November 2003. Through a discussion of how the WPI festival both interrogates and stages a mainstream international festival, the review explores alternative global theater and its relationship to questions of gender and geopolitics. The article focuses on examples from the work of artists of Asian ethnicity or descent that were featured in the conference.

Lucy Burns was a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California–Santa Cruz. She teaches at UCLA’s Departments of Asian American Studies and World Arts and Culture. Burns is a dramaturge interested in community-based theater projects, and her research interests include Asian American performance, feminist and postcolonial theories, and Filipino Studies. She is currently working on a manuscript on the Pilipino performing body.

Putul Yatra: A Celebration of Indian Puppetry
Sangeet Natak Akademi
New Delhi, March 17–28, 2003
Bradford Clark, 334

A 2003 festival in New Delhi highlighted the state of contemporary Indian puppetry.

Brad Clark is a designer, puppeteer, and professor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

PERFORMANCE REVIEW

Sophiline Cheam Shapiro, director, Samritechak. Royal University of Fine Arts, Phnom Penh
reviewed by Kevin J. Wetmore Jr., 348

BOOK REVIEWS

Eric C. Rath, The Ethos of Noh; Actors and Their Art
reviewed by Margaret Coldiron, 353

Ian Carruthers and Takahashi Yasunari, The Theatre of Suzuki Tadahi
reviewed by Yukihiro Goto, 356

I Wayan Dibia and Rucina Ballinger, Balinese Dance, Drama and Music: A Guide to the Performing Arts of Bali
reviewed by Bulantrisna Djelantik-Soejoto, 361

Margaret Coldiron, Trance and Transformation of the Actor: Japanese Noh and Balinese Masked Dance-Drama
reviewed by Kathy Foley, 362

Henry Spiller, Gamelan: The Traditional Sounds of Indonesia
reviewed by Matthew Isaac Cohen, 365

Andrew N. Weintraub, Power Plays: Wayang Golek Theatre of West Java
reviewed by Matthew Isaac Cohen, 366

Claire Conceison, Significant Other: Staging the American in China
reviewed by John B. Weinstein, 368

Li Ruru, Shashibiya: Staging Shakespeare in China
reviewed by Alexander C. Y. Huang, 371

Color Inserts

Editor’s Note
Kathy Foley, iii

PLAY

Shūshin Kani’iri (Possessed by Love, Thwarted by the Bell): A Kumi Odori by Tamagusuku Chōkun
as staged by Kin Ryōshō translated and annotated by Nobuko Miyama Ochner
Introduction and stage directions by Kathy Foley, 1

Kumi odori is an aristocratic dance-drama developed in 1719 by Tamagusuku Chōkun as part of Okinawan court performance for the ritual investiture of the monarch. Shūshin Kani’iri (Possessed by Love, Thwarted by the Bell) was written for this court presentation and has remained one of the most frequently performed works. The all-male form, which combines music, dance, and narrative, has Okinawan, Chinese, and Japanese roots. Kumi odori’s most important performances for 250 years were in the context of ukwanshin entertainments for the official envoys sent by the Chinese emperor. With the demise of court in 1879, the genre languished until it was designated as an important cultural asset by the Japanese government in 1972. This article gives an introduction to kumi odori based on the practice of Kin Ryōshō, an important twentieth-century practitioner of the form. A translation of the 1719 classic Shūshin Kani’iri (Possessed by Love, Thwarted by the Bell) with stage directions reflecting Kin Sensei’s choreography gives an example of this important art. Shūshin Kani’iri has been a consistent part of the repertoire and was recently presented at the opening of the new National Kumi Odori Theatre (Kokuritsu Kumi Odori Gekijō) in Urasoe-shi near Naha in 2004.

Nobuko Miyama Ochner is an associate professor of East Asian languages and literatures at the University of Hawai‘i at Mänoa. Her recent research has focused on kumi odori and Japanese fiction.

Kathy Foley is a professor of theatre arts at the University of California–Santa Cruz. Her initial research on kumi odori was supported by the East-West Center during the 1976 workshop on Okinawan performing arts at the University of Hawai‘i.

ARTICLES

Performing Furyū Nō: The Theatre of Konparu Zenpō
Beng Choo Lim, 33

Konparu Zenpō is one of several late Muromachi nō practitioners whose plays show a strong emphasis on drama and spectacle. Nō scholars in later generations called these plays furyū nō because of this emphasis, and identified them as representative of the nō theatre produced during Zenpō’s period. This paper examines some of Zenpō’s plays that highlight these furyū characteristics, making reference to earlier plays produced by Zeami and his contemporaries with which present day readers and audiences are probably more familiar.

Beng Choo Lim is an assistant professor of Japanese literature and film in the Department of Japanese Studies, National University of Singapore. Her research interests include premodern Japanese literature and performance, audience-performer dynamics, and comparative performance. She is currently working on a monograph on the medieval Japanese nö practitioner Kanze Kojirō Nobumitsu. She would like to thank an anonymous reader, Yamanaka Reiko, Shelley Quinn, Erika de Poorter, and Scot Hislop for their suggestions on this paper.

The Pendulum of Intercultural Performance: Kathakali King Lear at Shakespeare’s Globe
Diane Daugherty, 52

Kathakali King Lear, presented at London’s Globe Theatre in 1999, is a case study in the possibilities and difficulties of intercultural theatre practice. This article uses Bharucha’s and Pavis’s theories on intercultural theatre to frame its analysis and shows how this production, by a multinational troupe collaborating over ten years, crafted a work that crosses Indian and European cultural borders. Text adaptation, character type assignment, casting, resistance by Indian critics, and refinement of earlier versions are detailed. The ultimate success came as this classical text of Western theatre fused with the physicalization of emotion by kathakali masters. The production illuminated both the Western text and kathakali technique in ways that allowed spectators and performers to experience Lear and kathakali anew, offering a positive model for further intercultural work.

Diane Daugherty is an emerita faculty member of Herkimer County Community College currently living in Kerala, India. She has written extensively on kathakali and kutiyattam in Asian Theatre Journal, for which she has served as associate editor. Her work on aspects of Indian performance has appeared in various journals.

Theatre in a Time of Terrorism: Renewing Natural Harmony after the Bali Bombing via Wayang Kontemporer
I Nyoman Sedana, 73

The bombing of the Sari Club on Legian Street, Kuta, Bali, on 12 October 2002 disrupted the natural balance that is sought for in Balinese religion. This article shows how a technically innovative shadow puppet performance that responds to the disaster is informed by the Balinese conception of the natural balance of human life governed by tri hita karana (three elements of harmony) and dasanama kerta (ten elements that cause harmonious prosperity). These ideas provide a context for healing through performance.

I Nyoman Sedana is a faculty member and chairman of the Pedalangan Theatre Department at the Indonesian Institute of Arts (ISI) Denpasar. He received his BA from the Dance Academy of Arts (ASTI) Denpasar, SSP from STSI-Denpasar, MA from Brown University, and PhD from the University of Georgia. As a Balinese dalang (puppet master) and dancer, Sedana has performed wayang and other Balinese theatrical forms in Europe, Australia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Brazil, and the United States.

Juedixi: An Entertainment of War in Early China
Dallas McCurley, 87

Juedixi is a performance genre of the Western Han (206 BCE–23 CE) that developed from martial rites of the central state in early China. The genesis of this art from competitions and performances dedicated to wu (martiality) and held in autumn and winter is detailed. The relationship of the art to a Han strategem to soften and control nomad opponents is explained. The high point of the genre came under Emperor Wu, who used it to impress local and foreign audiences even as he waged a costly war on the frontier. The genre’s excesses were related to the excesses of the unsuccessful war. Juedixi faded after Emperor Wu, but its legacy of variety performance was inherited by the “hundred entertainments” and wu would later reappear in xiqu as one of the two fundamental categories of performance style.

Dallas McCurley is on the faculty at Queens College–City University of New York. She received a PhD from the University of Hawai‘i at Mänoa with a specialty in Chinese theatre. She has published in Italian and Chinese as well as English, and has staged productions fusing Asian and Western styles in Asia, Europe, and the United States.

DEBUT PANEL PAPERS

Magical Realism and Theatre of the Oppressed in Taiwan: Rectifying Unbalanced Realities with Chung Chiao’s Assignment Theatre
Ron Smith, 107

Chung Chiao’s Assignment Theatre uses ideas culled from Magical Realism and Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed to create work that redresses inequalities of class, gender, ethnicity, and other features in contemporary Taiwan. River in the Heart, a production that grew out of a workshop launched in response to a 1999 earthquake, is an example of his work. The performance empowered a group of Hakka women, called the Shigang Mamas, to represent their perspectives in a public forum, prompting discussion of gender inequality in contemporary Taiwan. For the Shigang Mamas the practice of theatre became a dress-rehearsal for real life, and theatre a rehearsal for revolution.

Ron Smith is a PhD candidate in the Department of Dramatic Art at University of California, Santa Barbara, and adjunct faculty at the Brooks Institute of Photography and Film. He has published two articles on theatre for social change and Theatre of the Oppressed work in Taiwan. He has an MFA in scenic and lighting design and has designed in Taiwan, China, and the United States.

Impersonation, Autobiography, and Cross-Cultural Adaptation: Lee Kuo-Hsiu’s Shamlet
Alexander C.Y. Huang, 122

Lee Kuo-Hsiu’s 1992 Shamlet is a “sham” Hamlet that possesses three palimpsestical levels of signification as it rearranges Shakespeare’s play. The first level is the parody of the Shakespearean text, where scripted technical errors and confusion prevail when a fictional Taiwanese theater company rehearses and performs Hamlet. The second level is (auto)biographical: the stories of the characters of the company portraying Hamlet reflect the chaotic condition of theatre making and living in contemporary Taiwan, where the economics of the arts are vexed and the political future of the island is unclear. At a third level, where the parody of the Western classical text and the autobiographical rendition of contemporary East Asian reality confront each other in scripted improvisations, a new Asian modernity emerges in the articulate voice of Lee Kuo-Hsiu.

Alexander C. Y. Huang is assistant professor of comparative literature at Pennsylvania State University. He has a PhD in comparative literature and a joint PhD in humanities from Stanford University. His research focuses on modern Chinese literature, transcultural performances, Shakespeare, and interactions between writing and other forms of cultural productions.

PERFORMANCE REVIEWS

Robert Wilson, director, I La Galigo, with text adaptation and dramaturgy by Rhoda Grauer and music by Rahayu Supanggah
reviewed by Matthew Isaac Cohen 138

Chen Shi-Zheng, director, Peach Blossom Fan, adapted by Edward Mast from the original play by Kung Shang-Ren
reviewed by Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei 150

BOOK REVIEWS

Mae Smethurst and Christina Laffin, editors, The Noh Ominameshi. A Flower Viewed from Many Directions
reviewed by Stanca Scholz-Cionca, 154

Sui Leung Li, Cross-Dressing in Chinese Opera
reviewed by Ping Fu, 158

Malini Saran and Vinod Khanna, The Ramayana in Indonesia
reviewed by Thomas Hunter, 161

EXHIBIT REVIEW

Kathy Foley and Michael Schuster, curators, Divinities, Demons, Kings and Clowns: Puppetry of India and Southeast Asia
reviewed by Bradford Clark, 164

MEDIA REVIEW

R. V. Ramani, director, Nee Engey: Where Are You?
reviewed by Kathy Foley, 169

Editor’s Note
Samuel L. Leiter, iii

PLAY

MORAL: A Play by Kisaragi Koharu
Introduction by Colleen Lanki; script translated by Tsuneda Keiko and Colleen Lanki; original director’s notes translated by Colleen Lanki and Lei Sadakari, 119

Tokyo playwright Kisaragi Koharu (1956-2000) wrote fast-paced, imagistic plays about consumerist society and the challenges of urban life. She and her theatre group NOISE created performances that used words as rhythms and sounds, and the actors’ bodies as parts of some systematic machine. This translation of MORAL, her most expressionistic and perhaps most well-known play, is the first English language publication of her work.

Colleen Lanki is a professional theatre artist from Canada. She lived in Japan from 1995 to 2001 where she ran Kee Company, a bilingual collaborative theatre group, and studied nô and Nihon buyô. She is currently completing her MFA in Asian theatre at the University of Hawai`i, Manoa, where she directed the English-language premiere of MORAL in October 2003. Tsuneda Keiko was a performer in Kisaragi Koharu’s theatre group NOISE and played the role of Mother in the original productions of MORAL. She now works as a professional translator based in Tokyo. She has translated dozens of plays for major companies and won the 2001 Yoshiko Yuasa award for theatre translation. Lei Sadakari is completing her master’s degree in Asian theatre at the University of Hawai`i, Manoa, specializing in Japanese contemporary theatre.

EMERGING SCHOLARS PAPERS

Diasporic Spaces in K. S. Maniam’s The Sandpit: Womensis
Susan Philip, 177

This essay looks at Malaysian playwright K. S. Maniam’s English-language play The Sandpit: Womensis, and discusses the playwright’s portrayal of the individual’s negotiations with the tensions inherent in Malaysia’s multicultural society. Most Malaysians live in tension between the fluid cultural spaces of their lived reality and the rigid, narrowly defined cultural spaces allowed them by public policy. In this play, Maniam embodies the tension between these two cultural spaces through the characters of Santha (who lives within the prescribed cultural borders) and Sumathi (who feels the constraints of these borders and pushes against them). Finally, Maniam suggests that the only solution, tentative at best, is to find some new space where these apparently opposing views can come together.

Susan Philip is a lecturer in drama at the Cultural Centre, University of Malaya. She is currently on study leave, and is at the Australian National University, Canberra, doing her Ph.D. on the English-language drama of Malaysia and Singapore. She has contributed articles to the Southeast Asian Review of English and to World Wide Englishes.

Karagöz and Hacivat: Projections of Subversion and Conformance
James Smith, 187

This article examines the related shadow puppet traditions of Turkey and Greece, karagöz and karagiozis respectively, relating them to Bakhtin’s theories of carnivalistic performance. The author analyzes how these forms of shadow puppetry were used by various audience communities to negotiate and define cultural boundaries and senses of communal identity.

James Smith is currently working on an MA in theatre studies at the University of Arizona, writing a thesis on contemporary performances of medieval British mystery cycles.

Wayang Wahyu as an Example of Christian Forms of Shadow Theatre
Marzanna Poplawska, 194

This essay discusses the creation of wayang wahyu–a Catholic form of shadow theatre in central Java–and its relation to Church politics of inculturation. It presents a short history and an analysis of performance practice of this unique Christian theatre.

Marzanna Poplawska is a PhD candidate in ethnomusicology at the Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. She received her MA in musicology from Warsaw University in Poland. She spent three and half years in Indonesia, where she learned music and dance and conducted research. This paper will be a part of her dissertation, “The Role of Christian Music in the Processes of Inculturation and the Creation of Identity–An Indonesian Example.”

BOOK REVIEWS

Judy Van Zile, Perspectives on Korean Dance
reviewed by Richard Nichols, 203

Chan E. Park, Voices from the Straw Mat: Toward an Ethnography of Korean Story Singing
reviewed by Andrew P. Killick, 206

Ellen Pearlman, Tibetan Sacred Dance, A Journey into the Religious and Folk Traditions
reviewed by Colin Mackerras, 209

Anoop Chandola, The Second Highest World War: The Rama Theatre
reviewed by David Mason, 211

Jonathan Stock, Huju: Traditional Opera in Modern Shanghai
reviewed by Jing Shen, 212

Samuel L. Leiter, Frozen Moments: Writings on Kabuki, 1966–2001
reviewed by Holly Blumner, 216

MEDIA REVIEWS

Margi, producer, Documentation of Koodiyattam (DVD)
reviewed by Diane Daugherty, 220

Invis Infotech Pvt., Ltd., producer, Know Your Heritage (VCD)
reviewed by Diane Daugherty, 222

Farley Richmond and David Z. Saltz, Kutiyattam: Sanskrit Theatre of India (CD-ROM)
reviewed by Diane Daugherty, 224

Natana Kairali, producer, Kutiyattam Episode: Kamsavadham (The Slaying of Kamsa) (VCD)
reviewed by Diane Daugherty, 225

Vedika, producer, Kathakali: Kottayam Plays (DVD)
reviewed by Marlene B. Pitkow, 226

David E. R. George, Buddhism as/in Asian Performance: Analysis of Meditation and Theatrical Practice (e-book)
reviewed by Barbara Sellers-Young, 230

David E. R. George, The Theatres of Asia: An Introduction (VHS)
reviewed by Samuel L. Leiter, 231

Marty Gross Films, producer, Kabuki Dance I: Bandô Tamasaburô: Kyô Kanoko Musume Dôjôji (DVD); Kabuki Dance II: Bandô Tamasaburô: Sagi Musume (DVD)
reviewed by Samuel L. Leiter, 232