Interculturalism and Performance Now: New Directions?

383 Pages·2019·4.598 MB·English

by  Charlotte McIvor, Jason King

CONTEMPORARY PERFORMANCE
INTERACTIONS
SERIES EDITORS: ELAINE ASTON · BRIAN SINGLETON
Interculturalism
and Performance Now
New Directions?
Edited by
Charlotte McIvor · Jason King
Contemporary Performance InterActions
Series Editors
Elaine Aston
Lancaster University
Lancaster, UK
Brian Singleton
Trinity College
Dublin, Ireland
Theatre’s performative InterActions with the politics of sex, race and class,
with questions of social and political justice, form the focus of the
Contemporary Performance InterActions series. Performative InterActions
are those that aspire to affect, contest or transform. International in scope,
CPI publishes monographs and edited collections dedicated to the
InterActions of contemporary practitioners, performances and theatres
located in any world context.
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14918
Charlotte McIvor • Jason King
Editors
Interculturalism and
Performance Now
New Directions?
Editors
Charlotte McIvor Jason King
Drama and Theatre Studies Irish Heritage Trust
National University of Ireland Dublin, Ireland
Galway, Ireland
Contemporary Performance InterActions
ISBN 978-3-030-02703-2 ISBN 978-3-030-02704-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02704-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018964711
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
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Cover illustration: The Company of Terra Nova Productions, “Belfast Tempest.”
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To Rustom Bharucha, whose critiques, questions, and hope as expressed
through theory and practice have driven debates over interculturalism so
centrally for so many years. Your mark on this volume—particularly the
animating impact of your political and ethical conscience—runs
throughout.
A
cknowledgements
We would like to thank the Irish Research Council for the 2014–2015 Starter
Research Grant which enabled us to convene the symposium that led to this
volume. We would also like to thank Drama and Theatre Studies and the
Moore Institute at National University of Ireland, Galway, for co- hosting
this event, particularly Patrick Lonergan, Daniel Carey, and Martha
Shaughnessy. We would also like to acknowledge additional funding from
NUI Galway’s School of Humanities Research Incentivisation Fund and the
Returning Grant for Academic Carers, (Vice President for Equality and
Diversity) in supporting both that event and the completion of this volume.
We would like to express our sincere thanks to Contemporary
Performance InterActions series editors, Brian Singleton and Elaine Aston,
for their support of this project and incisive feedback. At Palgrave
Macmillan, I would like to thank Tomas René, commissioning editor for
the Literature & Theatre List, and give thanks also to Jen McCall, former
editor, for her role in securing this volume. I would also like to thank
Vicky Bates, for her editorial assistance and guidance, as well as my anony-
mous reviewers.
Further thanks go to NUI Galway colleagues who directly supported
the completion of this volume through your collegiality and kindness at
key stages, particularly Patrick Lonergan, Marianne Ní Chinnéide,
Muireann O’Cinneide, Catherine Morris, Maura Stewart, and Ian Walsh,
with wider thanks to colleagues and students in Drama and Theatre
Studies and English particularly. Thank you to Aoife Harrington for your
help in processing the rights for this volume’s reprinted materials. Thanks
also to Siobhán O’Gorman, Catherine Ming T’ien Duffly, Michelle Baron,
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Emilie Pine, Tanya Dean, Matt Moore, and Shannon Steen for your sus-
tained support as academic co-travellers and dear friends.
The completion of this volume in its final stages would not have been
possible without the copy-editing and critical feedback of Justine Nakase
(also a contributor to this volume), and we are incredibly grateful for her
intellectual rigour and unbelievably keen eyes.
We are particularly grateful to Andrea Thompson and Terra Nova
Productions for their permission to reproduce an image from their produc-
tion of Belfast Tempest for the cover of this volume. We would also like to
thank the other companies, artists, and individuals who have permitted their
images to be included or created them for the purpose of this volume.
We would also like to acknowledge Johns Hopkins University Press and
the University of Michigan for their permission to reprint material in this
volume:
Cabranes-Grant, Leo. “From Scenarios to Networks: Performing the
Intercultural in Colonial Mexico.” Theatre Journal 63: 4 (2011), 499–
520. © 2011 The Johns Hopkins University Press. Reprinted with per-
mission of Johns Hopkins University Press.
Knowles, Ric. Performing the Intercultural City. 130–151. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 2017. © 2017 University of Michigan
Press. Reprinted with permission of University of Michigan Press.
The biggest thanks of course go to the intrepid thinkers and patient
collaborators whose work is featured in this volume. This volume came
together across continents, time zones, years, and pivotal life events for
many of us whose work is included here. Thanks to each and every one of
you for your patience, your intellect, and your vision—we cherish the dia-
logues and debates we have had with you, and look forward to the new
conversations that this volume will hopefully inspire. We would also like to
recognize our interlocutors at the 2015 symposium whose work does not
appear here: Rustom Bharucha (to whom this book is dedicated),
Prarthana Purkayastha, and Victor Ramirez Ladron De Guevara.
We would like to conclude with our most personal thanks to our friends
and wider families who have encouraged us throughout this project—
Adela Neth, Joan Brown, Maryanne, Richard and Eamon McIvor,
Venyamina Maciverra, Gail and Ali Haghjoo, Roya, Hooman, Darioush,
and Shireen Karbasion—your support is never taken for granted. And to
close, to our partners and children—Ramin and Theodore Haghjoo, and
Kerry, Aislinn, Nathalie, and Fergus King—thank you for your daily faith
in us and support of our work.
P I
rAise for nterculturalIsm and
P n
erformance ow
“This book is a timely and important intervention as it introduces new perspectives
and developments in interculturalism and performance. The collection of essays
ignites dialogues on the ways the discourse should be understood beyond simplis-
tic binaries and brings new appreciation to the role of cultural interchange in the
performing arts today.”
—Marcus Tan, National Institute of Education, Singapore
ix
c
ontents
1 Introduction: New Directions? 1
Charlotte McIvor
Part I New Interculturalism as Methodology 27
2 From Scenarios to Networks: Performing the
Intercultural in Colonial Mexico 29
Leo Cabranes-Grant
3 Routes and Routers of Interculturalism: Islands, Theatres
and Shakespeares 61
Alvin Eng Hui Lim
4 Rethinking Interculturalism Using Digital Tools 89
Julie Holledge, Sarah Thomasson, and Joanne Tompkins
xi