More Tools for Analyzing "Intercultural" Performance

To continue to set a foundation for our work this semester and give us more ways of approaching some of the performance we'll be examining, we read some chapters from a 1996 collection of essays called The Intercultural Performance Reader. The essays are dense and difficult, and as I read I kept reminding myself that cross-cultural exchange and globalization are very different than they were almost 15 years ago. Still, this collection identifies some interesting problems with regard to defining, understanding and evaluating performance that crosses cultural boundaries; and it offers some useful histories to scholarship about this kind of theater.

The first essay was the introduction to the collection by Patrice Pavis entitled "Towards a Theory of Interculturalism in Theatre." One thing he points out that I find particularly important to keep in mind is that all intercultural exchange is based on an ethics of "Otherness" or "alterity," which we discussed at the beginning of the semester. He also writes, at one point, that "the foreign is only the familiar lying in wait," which I find to be a useful and interesting concept. It raises the question for me, though: if I'm always trying to make things familiar, doesn't that mean I am denying difference or trying to ignore it? Is there a way to accept difference without making everything "like me" or "my own"? I'd like to think that there is, but maybe we can discuss it over the course of the semester ...

Pavis, and others in the collection, use Peter Brook and Ariane Mnouchkine, both European theatre artists, as examples of directors who have Intercultural exchange as a goal in their work. In addition to this work, he identifies a number of different categories that seem to fall under the umbrella of "intercultural exchanges in theatre practice" (1), but first emphasizes the importance of defining "culture." It can involve, he writes, a number of different things:

• semiotics: a system of symbols through which people make meaning
• the specific 'inflections' that mark a group's representations, feelings, and behavior, which can be seen on the bodies of actors or performers
• that which is "artificial" or clearly formal as opposed to "natural"
• a system of techniques, conventions or traditions that are passed down through tradition
• exchanges of power, as in colonial and post-colonial uses of culture to conquer or resist

Pavis then moves on to look at things with which intercultural theatre is often associated:

• gatherings of artists at international festivals (which, he suggests, run the risk of reinforcing superficial understandings of the cultures represented);
• intracultural theatre, which often involves reclaiming and using "old" or lost national performance traditions to understand changes in one's own nation
  
• transcultural, which looks for similarities to discover a kind of universal language of theatre
• ultracultural, which looks to a mythic origin for all theatre, usually attempting some combination of theatrical forms to do so;
• pre- and post- cultural, which seems to mean reaching for a form that happens before people become acculturated, or looking for a de-colonized new form that moves beyond the power struggles implied by culture (he also identifies the term metacultural, which is somehow related to these two, although I find it particularly difficult to understand).

He then identifies a number of different forms this kind of theatre takes:

• a voluntary hybrid of forms that can be traced back to separate regions,
  
• "multicultural" theatre that uses several different languages and performance styles in one piece for the sake of a language of many different cultural backgrounds,
  
• "cultural collage," which uses de-historicized fragments of cultures in an expressedly apolitical, aestheticized way,
• "syncretic" theatre, which reinterprets differing cultural material creating new forms
• post-colonial theatre, which examines a mixture of cultural elements with an indigenous or formerly colonized perspective
• and theatre by pre-colonial cultures who have become "minority" cultures after colonization (such as the Maori in New Zealand).

There are also a number of kinds of interaction between cultures: seduction, misinterpretation, appropriation, etc.

Finally, Pavis suggests that an important series of questions can be asked to assess this kind of work, and these are the things I find most useful in his article.

• First, what are the "foreign" elements? (stories, storytelling styles, dramatic structure, metaphors, etc.?)
• How has the work been prepared? Have the actors trained to do this, for example?
• What form has been chosen for the work? How has culture been represented?

I've summarized this essay in bullet points, here, because I feel like simplifying it may help students think of ways to write here on the blog about what we're doing in class: again, the essay becomes another tool for assessing and creating "world" theatre.

We also read an essay in this collection by Erika Fischer-Lichte, "Interculturalism in Contemporary Theatre," which I will mention more extensively in a future post, but one thing I want to point out about that chapter here: before she talks about Intercultural theatre in the late 20th Century, she points out that drawing on "non-European" forms has a long history for European and American theatre artists seeking to revive their work or to resist the aesthetic or political principles of more popular work of the time: Brecht, for example, drew on Chinese theatre; Artaud was influenced by Balinese theatre; etc. At the same time, Japanese theatre drew on "Western" forms, especially in attempts to modernize. And in both cases there were developments well beyond those earlier encounters with "interculturalism" throughout the twentieth century. I think one of the differences now ... and it's a big one ... is the development of global capitalism and a "world" culture.

Finally, we're moving through a unit on Nigerian, and more specifically Yoruba, theatre and performance. But before we began this, we read an essay by Biodun Jeyifo, who begins the section in this collection about intercultural theatre from a non-European perspective with an essay called "The Reinvention of Theatrical Tradition: Critical Discourses on Interculturalism in the African Theatre." This is another tough one, but very useful in a number of ways. I'm going to outline the discourses he explains in bullet points, as well, again in an attempt to make use of it more easily.

Beginning with a reference to Peter Brook's visit to Africa and pointing out that Brook had in mind when he went preconceptions about the continent, he first discourse Jeyifo identifies is that there is no native dramatic tradition in Africa, or that any traditions are of a "proto-dramatic" or "quasi-theatrical" sort, or that any development of drama in Africa is because of "Western" influence. The gist of this discourse is, essentially, the lack of theatrical tradition in pre-colonial Africa.

The second discourse, which Jeyifo positions as a reaction against this Eurocentric image of Africa, is the "Afrocentric" celebration of African theatre tradition. This conversation includes the introduction of a new set of criteria for defining and assessing theatre, one that is not based on European assumptions. This includes the celebration of orality over written texts as means of transmission, for example. The idea behind this Afrocentric discourse is that the criteria of, say, England when deciding what is and is not dramatic or theatrical is not criteria appropriate to Africa at all. Jeyifo refers to this as a sort of reinvention of theatrical tradition.

The third discourse attempts to get beyond the duality that lies behind the "Western/African" dichotomy and focuses on hybrid expressions. In this conversation, scholars ask questions like "Which African and European sources do we find operative and combined in any given African theatrical expression? What motivates the interaction of the 'foreign' and 'indigenous,' for instance, an escapist nostalgic retreat into neo-traditionalism or a liberating and genuine exploration of the range and diversity of styles?" etc.

I know that these first articles we read were tough, but I hope that they will give us some good questions to ask as we move ahead looking for our own theatrical tools. I think we've already done some productive exploration of the rituals and plays we've examined thus far.

Jeyifo

I found the article a little frustrating this week. There are a couple of reasons for this. I know this is a 500 level course and we are in an academic setting but wow he’s uses a lot of elevated diction and paper to say what he can say in one sentence. The history of Nigeria being a verbal one makes it difficult to pin down actual Nigerian theatrical history. There are both several things to consider about this statement and things that support this statement.
The British Drama League formally decided that there is no indigenous drama in Africa, but failed to give credit for performance based in ritual dance as well as several other examples. The problem that is faced by historians seeking to research Nigerian performance is that Nigerians suffers from three influences on it culture that cannot be ignored.
Jeyifo spoke of several responses in terms of African theatre and what has both influenced and created it. Nigeria was colonized by Britain the colonization of this country led to its culture being transferred to the native population in many ways shapes and forms. This resulted in warping and altering any already existing theatre that existed in Nigeria before the advent of colonial rule. Another thing that must be considered is that even before Britain entered the picture, is that trading brought others into the country and contact with these cultures also could have changed theatre of Nigeria.
I agree whole heartedly with this assessment. It is a historical fact that no matter where white European settlers have gone they have wrought a path of destruction. I like to think of what happened to Nigeria like removing the center card on a house of cards. We did the same thing to Iraq when we removed Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. The existing tyrannical regimes served a function of keeping other tyrannical elements from each other’s throats. I’m not excusing colonialism but it’s a phenomenon that has continued to persist. America still alters other cultures without even blinking. I had a philosophy professor once say that we didn’t invade Afghanistan to liberate it or even battle the Taliban. We invaded so that we could continue selling them blue jeans and Coca-cola. This is ironically what Al Qaeda was angry about in the first place. But I think he was referring to the relationship Christianity has to capitalism.
I digress however; Jeyifo’s second thesis speaks of a sort of Counter Reformation. He refers to this counter reformation as nothing more than the deliberate result of Nigeria rebelling against the colonial culture it had assimilated. Both this and the previous thesis results in the third thesis. This thesis says that almost all of African drama today is the direct result or derivatives of western drama.
This conclusion however in my opinion doesn’t give much thought to religious drama and dance that is most decidedly African in origin. No matter how much the western world has influenced a culture it cannot be denied that some of the African dance rituals. I know the Yoruba have a very rich culture of music and dance. That is theatre

Interculturism in Contemporary Theatre: Cultural Respect vs. the Aesthetic

This article presented me with something of a dilemma. I’ve always been an ‘art first’ kind of guy. But I found myself on the fence with this one. Fischer begins the article referring to Goethe’s development of intercultural Shakespearean productions in the Weimer Republic. Goethe brought in everything Shakespeare, Racine, Calderon, Corneille, Gozzi, and Goldoni. I will admit was a little perturbed by the alteration of the original texts of Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet. He didn’t do this for the sake of aesthetics however and I think that’s why it bugs me. Goethe edited the plays for the sake of moral standards and the aesthetics of the Weimar Republic. I think this was my biggest problem with it. This is not the only time that the works of Shakespeare have been altered to suit their audience. I’ve heard of production in the 1700’s which altered the ending of Romeo and Juliet so that Juliet wakes up before Romeo drinks the poison. They basically gave it a happy ending.

Then I find myself on the other side of the aisle when I read about the work of Peter Brook and Robert Wilson. Somehow it seemed to me that the incorporation of the local traditions of the area in which you are performing was very respectful. I can understand how someone would find it offensive if they gave no frame of reference to the ideas and traditions in their works. But I would like to make to points of argument to this.

1) To offend is obviously not the artist’s intention. No artist seeks to alienate his audience (well maybe Brecht but he meant this in a much different way). To say that this is intentionally offensive is false. The fault with that conclusion lies with the audience. This brings me to my next point.

2) We as artists cannot worry about offending the audience. Theatre is a subjective art form. It is entirely in the hands of the audience whether a piece of art is offensive. If we were worried about that nothing would ever get done.