Intercultural performance as a paradigm for identity and discourse

Acknowledgments
First and foremost, I would like to extend my sincerest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr
Yong Li Lan, for all of the guidance and invaluable advice she has given me
throughout this thesis writing process, whilst allowing me the freedom to find my own
way and my own voice. I would like to thank her for all the support and attention she
has shown me, and for encouraging and teaching me to always strive to be better and
aim higher.

I would also like to acknowledge Robin Loon, Kaori Kobayashi, Michiko Suematsu
and the rest of the A-S-I-A team for all their support and encouragement. Your
suggestions and research materials have been very useful in getting me started with
this thesis

Many thanks go in particular to my parents and brother, who have been so patient and
caring towards me during this entire process. Thank you for all the food and love.
Words fail me to express my appreciation to Diego, who has been my constant pillar
of support. I am very thankful for everything you have done for me and all the
encouragement you have given me.

Finally, I would like to thank everybody who has helped me make this thesis possible.
My special thanks go to Jasmin, for always being confident in me, the Girls, who have
listened endlessly to my ideas and complaints, and the Beavers, who have been so
supportive and kind to me whenever I felt overwhelmed and stressed.

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments........................................................................................................... i
Table of Contents ...........................................................................................................ii

Summary .......................................................................................................................iii
List of Figures ...............................................................................................................iii
Chapter One: To be or not to be – The Intercultural Force of Asian
Shakespeare(s) .............................................................................................................. 1
1.1. Limitations and developments in intercultural theatre........................................ 7
1.2. Remembering Hamlet – The intercultural performativity and productivity of a
Shakespearean text ................................................................................................... 22
Chapter Two: Asian Shakespeares – (Re)engaging History Through
Intercultural Shakespeare Performances ................................................................ 29
2.1. Shakespeare in translation – Changing cultural representations from Japanese
tradition to Japan’s modernization. .......................................................................... 36
2.2. Shifting Shakespeare in China – The growth of a modern Chinese theatre. .... 50
2.3. Singaporean Shakespeare – Locating culture within the contexts of “New
Asia”. ....................................................................................................................... 63
Chapter 3: The Play’s the Thing: Identity and intercultural discourse in Asian
Hamlet Performances................................................................................................. 79
3.1. Kurita Yoshihiro’s Hamlet (2007) .................................................................... 82
3.2. Lin Zhao Hua’s Hamlet (1990) ......................................................................... 91
3.3. Ong Keng Sen’s Search: Hamlet (2002) ........................................................... 99
Chapter Four: What is Intercultural Shakespeare? ............................................ 112
Bibliography .............................................................................................................. 119

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Summary
The current debate on intercultural Asian Shakespeare suffers from two major
deficiencies. On one hand, most of the literature on interculturalism tends to adopt a
Eurocentric perspective in analyzing intercultural texts and performances. On the
other hand, critiques of Asian Shakespeare are usually restricted to area studies, and

offer little comparative scope. Thus, this thesis aims to document and differentiate
Asian Shakespeare performance practices from European Shakespeare in the West.
This thesis addresses these shortcomings by starting from a re-examination of the
history of Shakespeare in Japan, China and Singapore. Such a comparative analysis
sheds light on the diverse reasons for and approaches to appropriating Shakespeare in
Asia, and provides a historical overview of how the concept of interculturalism has
developed over time. The notion of Shakespeare’s universality is therefore challenged,
as the intercultural Shakespearean performances discussed suggest how Asian
Shakespeare is not only expanding the boundaries of Shakespeare as a cultural field,
but redefining how we conceptualize “Shakespeare” and modern Shakespearean
adaptations. Following this historical review, the paper moves on to highlighting the
changing dynamics between Shakespeare and Asian Shakespeare performances.
Three Asian Hamlet productions from Japan, China and Singapore are analyzed to
examine how identity and intercultural discourse are constructed and interrogated
through the divergent representations of a single Shakespearean text. The restaging of
Hamlet through various Asian cultural, historical and socio-political contexts
demonstrates that Shakespeare’s text engages with and is suitable for practiced and
performed interculturality. The analysis of these Asian Hamlet performances also
reinforces the significance of the research on performance within the field of
intercultural Shakespeare. The examination of the interaction and exchanges between

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diverse staging strategies and performance traditions within Asian Shakespearean
performances, demonstrates how Asian Shakespeare(s) reveal the potential for new
research directions in the discursive field of intercultural Shakespeare.

iv

List of Figures

Figure 1 ........................................................................................................................ 34

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Chapter One: To be or not to be – The Intercultural Force of
Asian Shakespeare(s)
Shakespeare’s dual canonicity in both theater and literature and his status as a
symbol of high culture and high art have made him a valuable vehicle to transport
local texts to worldwide audiences. It is no surprise that other performance cultures
would employ Shakespeare to communicate diverse cultural and performance
interests globally, since Shakespeare’s prevalence and popularity as the quintessential
Author is constantly reinforced through education, the international entertainment
industry, the worldwide web and globalization. This proliferation of Shakespearean
adaptation and appropriation in Asia, however, is not just a recent phenomenon but
has been practiced since the early 1900s, and the current surge of scholarly attention
in the field of Shakespeare as performance and intercultural medium has raised
several important questions about Asian Shakespeare and intercultural theatre – What
differentiates intercultural Shakespeare from other Shakespearean adaptations and
appropriations? How does the interaction between Shakespeare and varied Asian
performance practices, styles and cultures inform and affect our understanding of
Shakespeare and performed interculturality? And even more simply, what is
intercultural Shakespeare?

With these questions in mind, this thesis aims to examine the interaction
between diverse staging strategies and performance aesthetics within Asian
Shakespearean performances, and demonstrate how these interactions suggest the

potential for new research directions in the discursive field of intercultural
Shakespeare. The relative lack of literature in English that focuses on the study of

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performance in intercultural Asian Shakespeare also calls for the need to distinguish
and document Asian Shakespeare performance practices from European Shakespeare
performance practices in the West. The intercultural Shakespearean performances
discussed in this thesis suggest how Asian Shakespeare is not only expanding the
boundaries of Shakespeare as a cultural field, but challenging how we think about
“Shakespeare” and modern Shakespearean adaptations. Shakespeare’s Hamlet will be
analyzed as it provides an interesting case-study on how a play can be useful and
productive interculturally. The restaging of Hamlet and the re-conceptualizing of
Shakespeare’s iconic character in various Asian contexts offers further insights into
how the dramaturgy of Shakespeare’s text engages with and is suitable for practiced
and performed interculturality. In many ways, the attempt to take on Shakespeare’s
iconic and enigmatic character becomes very much an endeavor to challenge the
authority of Shakespeare and the traditional perspectives on Shakespeare
performances, as Asian directors try to establish their own authority and standpoints
by tackling theatre’s biggest giant. Three Asian Hamlet productions will be closely
studied in chapter three - Ong Keng Sen’s Search: Hamlet (Denmark, 2002), Kurita
Yoshihiro’s Hamlet (Tokyo, 2007), and Lin Zhao Hua’s Hamlet (Beijing, 1990), to
demonstrate how Hamlet is remembered and (re)presented in different cultures
through national histories, cosmopolitan ideologies, or contesting performance forms
and cultural identities. The divergent reproductions of a single text also suggest that
there could be something present in the text and the fictional world of Shakespeare
that encourages such intercultural negotiations and exchanges; this will be further
elaborated in this chapter. The re-presentation and re-imagination of Shakespeare’s
play through these different cultures and histories not only assumes the possibility of

the ideological reproduction of new (intercultural) Shakespeare(s) but also

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demonstrates the potential for constructing the “national” and “cultural” through the
mediation between Shakespeare and history.

To begin seeing the value of Asian Shakespeare as a significant and equal
force to traditional “English” Shakespeare that can challenge, change and expand how
we think about “Shakespeare”, we have to acknowledge that the Shakespeare we
know is not only influenced by the sum of his works but also by the literary criticisms,
artistic responses and academic scholarship surrounding his corpus. As Pierre
Bourdieu suggests, “the producer of a work of art is not the artist but the field of
production as a universe of belief which produces the value of the work of art as a
fetish.”1 This being said, the inaccessibility of live Asian Shakespeare performances
(created by both language and distance), and the limited availability of shared and
translated specialized expertise, criticism and academic literature on these
performances worldwide, may very well lead to a restricted and outdated view in
Western/ Anglo-American Shakespeare Scholarship on what Shakespeare, Asian
Shakespeare, intercultural Shakespeare and contemporary Shakespearean adaptation
and appropriation is, or rather, can be. Therefore, it is imperative to review and build
upon the growing literature of Shakespeare in Asia to not only gain a better
perspective of the cross-cultural processes that have existed since the 1900s, but at the
same time to identify how current ideologies of interculturalism have affected and
effected our understanding and theorizing of past and present Asian (intercultural)
Shakespeare performances. For instance, is there value in naming Asian Shakespeare
as a form of intercultural Shakespeare? Does identifying Asian Shakespeare as
intercultural theatre change the ways we consider Asian performances and foreign
1

Bourdieu, Pierre, The Rules of Art: Genesis and structure of the Literary field, (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1995), Pg 229. Quoted in Massai, Sonia, World-wide Shakespeares: Local
Appropriation in Film and Performance, (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), Pg 6.

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encounters with Shakespeare? How do we start reconsidering intercultural
Shakespeare not just as a subcategory or a reflection of what Shakespeare is not – or
at least not originally, but as a different form of Shakespeare worthy of its own critical
frameworks, based as much on difference as it is on similarities? As the interest in
intercultural Shakespeare performances increases, it is crucial that we start to consider
the development of Shakespeare in Asia from an alternative perspective that
encompasses plurality. Thus, these questions will be thoroughly interrogated in
chapter two of this thesis as the history of Shakespeare in Asia is re-examined and
reassessed through the frames of interculturalism.

An intercultural outlook helps distinguish how various Asian Shakespeares
relate to one another by not only drawing the connections between them, but also by
highlighting the diversity of different Asian Shakespeares within the discourse of
intercultural Shakespeare in Asia, as the reactions to and experiences with
Shakespeare in India for instance, are greatly dissimilar to that of Shakespeare in
China. Although it is important to distinguish between different histories of and
responses to Shakespeare in Asia, it is equally important to establish an approach for
comparative research between Shakespearean performances from different parts of
Asia. This would ensure that Asian Shakespeares are not regarded as separate
phenomena that are not relevant to each other and contribute no added value to the
study of non-Asian Shakespeare(s) and other forms of intercultural theatre. Reviewing history through the perspectives of the present helps us gain a different
understanding of the development of Asian Shakespeare and reassess how and why

Shakespeare was transported to and transfigured by foreign cultures. Thus, history is
not regarded as sealed but is seen as a process of ongoing construction. By tracing the

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histories of Asian Shakespeares and offering alternative viewpoints of those histories,
we are not only building upon the existing literature on intercultural Shakespeare but
also challenging the prevailing notions of a universal Shakespeare.

Accordingly, the retrospective on Asian Shakespeares in Japan, China, and
Singapore will be analyzed from my perspective as the metadata editor of the
international A-S-I-A project – the Asian Shakespeare Intercultural Archive. A-S-I-A
is an international initiative that consists of researchers and practitioners from Japan,
Singapore, and Korea and digital research software developers and website designers
from the US and Singapore. The driving force behind A-S-I-A is to encourage the
collection and generation of research materials in Asian Shakespeare performance,
but also the need to develop a discipline of intercultural research.

The project is aimed at creating a digital online archive consisting not only of
Shakespeare performances and translated scripts from Asia and Southeast Asia (e.g.
Japan, Philippines, Korea, China and Singapore) but also focusing on producing
metadata research material centered around four main aspects of a live performance
event (this metadata schema was conceptualized by Dr Yong Li Lan). 2 The four core
categories of the metadata schema are - Art/ Forms, Reception, Points of Reference
and Production. The metadata and recorded performance materials collected in this
digital archive will allow largely unavailable information to be available to a
worldwide audience as performance scripts and metadata material will be translated
into different Asian languages besides their original and English. The focus on the
research of performance is an important initiative of the archive, as performance is not

2

See chapter two.

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seen here as merely a subsidiary of Shakespeare’s plays but as a vital research
resource to study and critique Shakespeare. The A-S-I-A metadata is intended to
provide researchers with an archive of primary research information to build their
own research upon, and at the same time offer a platform for research exchange
between specialists and a broader non-specialist academic public across boundaries
(i.e. language, education, nationalities and cultural backgrounds), thereby widening
the discursive field. The metadata materials in this digital archive offer users a newly
formulated vocabulary that is designed to enable users to articulate, understand and
analyze intercultural staging strategies through performance. This international
project scheduled to launch in November 2009 exemplifies the intercultural processes
of creating a global online archive that consists of Shakespearean productions and
collaborators from different parts of Asia, and at the same time, embodies the
complexities of intercultural practice, negotiation and exchange between collaborators
and contributors of different cultural backgrounds and specialized knowledge.

My participation in the A-S-I-A project has made me acutely aware of the lack
of critical literature in English on Asian Shakespeare by Asian Shakespearean
scholars and researchers. Unlike intercultural performances from the West, for
instance the works of Robert Wilson and Peter Brook, which have toured around the
world and whose reception (i.e. reviews, academic essays, and performance analysis)
is widely documented and circulated, the current field of Asian Shakespeare
performance studies is more often than not enclosed within a particular cultural and

geographical milieu. Hence, the A-S-I-A project aims to bridge that gap through the
formation of a global multi-modal research platform and archive. It is critical that the
strengths and weaknesses of existing literature on interculturalism are evaluated to

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assess the relevance of current theories and discourses pertaining to Asian
Shakespeare and intercultural theatre in Asia. The analysis in the following section
aims to highlight the shifting paradigms of intercultural Shakespeare and advocate the
need to approach Shakespeare in Asia using intercultural perspectives and models of
research.

1.1. Limitations and developments in intercultural theatre
In this perspective, a negative utopia lies at the root of the world market
discourse. As the last niches are integrated into the world market, what
emerges is indeed one world: not as a recognition of multiplicity or mutual
openness, where images both of oneself and of foreigners are pluralist and
cosmopolitan, but on the contrary as a single commodity-world where local
cultures and identities are uprooted and replaced with symbols from publicity
and image departments of multinational corporations.
Ulrich Beck3

It is impossible to discuss intercultural theatre and Shakespeare in Asia
without addressing the impact and pitfalls of globalization in this area of study.
Globalization has facilitated the transportation of local knowledge, culture, and art to
a world-wide audience, thus promoting the growth and popularity of intercultural
theatre, and some might even argue that globalization has given rise to the
development of intercultural theatre. Despite this, the terms “intercultural” and
“global” should not be mistaken to represent the same thing. Unlike “globalization”

that implies a process of integrating cultural, social, political, economical, and
ideological practices specific to certain localities into a worldwide network to increase
3

Beck, Ulrich, What is Globalization? Trans. Patrick Camiller. (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), Pg 43.

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greater interconnectivity, productivity and interdependency, the term ‘intercultural’
does not necessarily encourage and/or generate such forms of uniformity and
standardization across borders.4 Rustom Bharucha draws our attention to the
persistent global/local problematic of postcolonial critique, as the resistance to the
homogenizing, commoditizing and anti-democratic tendencies of globalization are
issues important to Third world economies, national and indigenous art forms and
post-colonial theatre.5 Ironic to the ethos of globalization, there seems to be a growing
need to (re)establish and (re)define local and national boundaries as geographical
margins begin to dissolve and cultural particularities become less exclusive. While
globalization and postmodern discourses, as Jacqueline Lo asserts, “celebrate the
erosion of national borders and the possibilities of new identities and knowledges as
the result of new flows in capital, culture and people, for many postcolonial societies
[…], the nation as both political project and lived reality remains a central aspect of
social life.”6 This is because international/transnational productions and practices may
run the risk of erasing cultural specificities rather than creating cohesive pluralities (if
even possible). Here, cultural flattening is a significant concern as the global is
increasingly regarded as a force that obliterates local differences, where cultural
(re)production and the commoditization of indigenous art forms as “intercultural”
signifiers divorced from cultural significance or national histories are dominated by
global economies that pander to the tastes and preferences of international/Western
audiences.

4

This definition of globalization is taken from, Schechner, Richard, Performance Studies: An
Introduction, (New York and London: Routledge, 2002), Pg 263.
5
Bharucha, Rustom, The Politics of Cultural Practice: Thinking through Theatre in an age of
Globalization, (Hanover and London: Wesleyan University Press, 2000), Pg 25 -26.
6
Lo, Jacqueline, Staging Nation: English Language Theatre in Malaysia and Singapore, (Hongkong
University Press, 2004), Pg 1.

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Asian performance forms and traditions used in performances this way may
very well reduce Asian Shakespeare to an elaborate all-you-can-eat-Asian Exotica
buffet with plenty of artificial flavoring but consisting of no real substance, leaving
Shakespeare as the star ingredient that holds everything together. Take for example,
the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC)’s “The Complete Works” project, a year-long
play season which ran at Stratford UK in 2006.7 The season consisted of “23 plays
throughout the year” and invited companies from all around the world to showcase
their versions of the plays presented. Many would view this move as an obvious step
towards establishing and presenting a “globalized Shakespeare”, but Criag Dionne
and Parmita Kapadia warn that this international showcase at the RSC Theatre may
not necessarily “produce a genuine pluralism”.8 Instead, Dionne and Kapadia assert
that the RSC’s intentions behind inviting international Shakespeare productions to
perform at the old RSC Theatre’s final season (as it was to be torn down and replaced
by a larger arena-style playhouse) was motivated by economic interests, as the
“gesture to use native voices and ‘responses’ to his work [are seen] as forms of

flexible labor to expand the economic potential of the RSC itself, as the ideology that
promotes a ‘native’ Shakespeare […] subtly reproduces the logic of global capitalism,
a kind of outsourcing of labor at a time of economic expansion.”9 Ironically,
Shakespeare is set up as an instrument to reassert neocolonial rhetoric, as the foreign
reproductions seem to feed into the idea of Shakespeare’s universality. Even though
this reaction may not be the desired effect the RSC aimed for, Shakespeare’s
relationship with other cultures is never a simple one, especially when Shakespeare
carries with him the burdens of being Britain’s national poet, an identity that is

7

Information in, Dionne, Craig and Kapadia, Parmita (eds), Native Shakespeares: Indigenous
Appropriations on a Global Stage, (Ashgate, 2008), Pg 8.
8
Ibid.
9
Ibid, Pg 9.

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continually entangled with notions of colonialism, Western imperialism, and cultural
superiority. These factors are further complicated when discussing Shakespeare,
indigenous art forms and performance traditions and interculturalism, as Daryl Chin
posits in his essay, “Interculturalism, Postmodernism, Pluralism”:

Interculturalism hinges on the question of autonomy and empowerment. To
deploy elements from the symbol system of another culture is a very delicate
enterprise. In its crudest terms, the question is: when does that usage act as
cultural imperialism? Forcing elements from disparate cultures together does

not seem to be a solution that makes sense, aesthetically, ethically, or
philosophically. What does that power prove: that the knowledge of other
cultures exists? That information about other cultures now is readily
available?10

The need to re-define the term “intercultural” and set it apart from other terms
like “international”, “global” and “multicultural” is emphasized here as cultural
borrowing and international collaborative ventures raise ethical issues surrounding
ownership and appropriate cultural representation. The questions posed by Chin are
central issues pertaining to discourses about intercultural theatre as cultural
transference fueled by globalization may not necessarily lead to intercultural
exchanges, even though the “inter” in intercultural suggests the preservation of
cultural distinctiveness and egalitarianism. This is particularly so for intercultural
Shakespeare performances, as Shakespeare tends to overshadow or even consume the
values offered by foreign reproductions. John Barton’s (of the Royal Shakespeare
Company) opinion that Shakespeare’s value is embedded in his text underscores the
10

Chin, Daryl, “Interculturalism, Postmodernism, Pluralism”. In Marrance, Bonnie and Dasgupta,
Gautam (eds), Interculturalism and Performance, (New York: PAJ Publications, 1991), Pg 94.

10


importance audiences and performers place on Shakespeare’s text as a source that not
only directs performances but also acts as a means to understand them:

the clues in the text are much richer and more numerous than at first appears.
[…] If the textual points are ignored, then it’s pretty certain that
Shakespeare’s intentions will be ignored also or at least

twisted…Shakespeare is his text. So if you want to do him justice, you have
to look for and follow the clues he offers.11

The tendency for global audiences to use Shakespeare as a (or the only) point
of reference to understanding onstage action in intercultural performances is amplified,
especially when the accessibility to familiar performance styles, traditions, common
history or language is reduced. In this way, Shakespeare becomes the cultural
touchstone, and our familiarity with his work becomes a language “we all
understand”.12 This elevated view of Shakespeare as a “cultural touchstone” and
taken-for-granted assumptions of Shakespeare’s universality is particularly counterproductive when considering intercultural Shakespeare, as Shakespeare gets firmly
positioned as the central motivation for such (inter)cultural productions globally,
whereas the value and contributions of Asian reproductions to Shakespearean studies
become underrated. Instead, we need to reassess the value of Asian Shakespeare as a
means to approach and think about Shakespeare differently. As John Russell Brown
suggests, Shakespeare, when experienced in foreign circumstances and alternative
cultural environments, “can bring in new sightings of the imaginative vision that

11
12

Barton, John, Playing Shakespeare (London: Methuen, 1984), Pg 167-168.
Sanders, Julie, Adaptation and Appropriation, (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), Pg 52.

11


created the plays, and new ways in which we can call them our own.”13 Thus,
translating Shakespeare’s plays to another language and context, changes how we
engage with the text in performance, and alters our perception of the text as it brings
the performance text closer to the political and social consciousness of present-day

audiences since the translations are usually aligned to contemporary expressions and
contexts which include topical significance. Besides this, Shakespeare plays in a
foreign language, as Brown suggests, tend to be more political and polemical partly
because directors seem to emphasize their chosen political interpretation without the
use of Shakespeare’s language but with the help of visual signs.14 Likewise in New
Sites for Shakespeare, as a result of his travels to Asia, Brown proposes an alternative
way of approaching Shakespeare via Asian performance forms – a non-English way,
where Shakespeare’s text can be understood in a foreign language and other forms of
performance.15 Though it is valuable to acknowledge the importance of non-verbal
representations of Shakespeare in Asian theatre as a means of understanding
Shakespeare from a different perspective, the danger of generalizing and exoticizing
Asian Shakespeare as a non-verbal/physically expressive form (that can release
“Shakespeare” from his words) and defining Shakespeare through/as his language, is
the reification of binary structures between East and West, performance and text.
Brown’s praise of Asian performance practices and their performative potential to
change how Shakespeare is presented, in this sense, can be regarded as a one-way
cultural exchange as he neglects to recognize the changes Shakespeare has made to
the culture that appropriates him. Nonetheless, Brown’s views on Asian theatre(s) as
an alternative model to staging and relating to Shakespeare’s plays consolidates the
13

Brown, John Russell, “Foreign Shakespeare and English-speaking audiences”. In Kennedy, Dennis
(ed), Foreign Shakespeare: Contemporary Performance, (Cambridge University Press, 1993), Pg 25.
14
Ibid, Pg 26 -27.
15
Brown, John Russell, New Sites for Shakespeare: Theatre, The Audience, and Asia, (London and
New York: Routledge, 1999).

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awareness that the study of Asian performance forms is important to understanding
the changes to traditional Shakespeare scholarship.

In a similar way, Dennis Kennedy’s examination of Shakespeare’s
proliferation across cultural boundaries in his essay, “Shakespeare without his
language”, goes beyond thinking of Shakespeare as the transcendent humanist and
emphasizes how the transference of Shakespeare’s texts to other foreign environments
“require[s] not only linguistic translation but also cultural adaptation”16 to make
Shakespeare performances relevant to specific and local audiences. Departing from
Anglophone critics that commonly assume Shakespeare’s worldwide popularity is
part of his comprehensive and universal appeal, Kennedy asserts that Shakespeare
without his language on a foreign stage has led to vast changes to how Shakespeare is
(re)conceptualized, (re)presented and staged, consequently redefining the meanings of
his plays in the process. Though Kennedy focused mainly on Western Shakespeare
productions (particularly European productions) to illustrate how cross-cultural, nonEnglish interpretations impact how one understands Shakespearean text(s), he more
importantly encourages us to approach Shakespeare through means besides his
original language or performance traditions, and thus provokes us to reconsider
modern non-traditional Shakespearean performances through the frameworks of
interculturalism.

Despite Kennedy’s claim that “in the end Shakespeare doesn’t belong to any
nation or anybody: Shakespeare is foreign to all of us”,17 Shakespeare’s global
currency, cultural capital and international mobility is fueled by his status as the Bard
16
17

Kennedy, Introduction.
Ibid.

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of ‘great literature’ and continues to signify ‘Englishness’, cultural nationalism and
high culture; and thus complicate ideologies of nationalism and cultural identity
within the context of interculturalism. At the same time, it is also Shakespeare’s
‘Englishness’ and the history of exporting Shakespeare (the national icon of Britain)
worldwide as part of colonialism and cultural imperialism that makes Shakespeare
useful for intercultural practice as the appropriation of Shakespeare often serves as a
counter-performance to contest and challenge Shakespeare’s cultural authority, and a
means to establish and interrogate the status of contemporary cultural identities.
Shakespeare’s long-term status as a symbol of cultural hierarchy and a benchmark for
high art perpetuates a sense of difference between ‘us’ and ‘them’ and may very well
prevail despite the growth of intercultural performances worldwide if we do not
evaluate and question the political-cultural implications of performed interculturalism
within Asian Shakespearean productions in Shakespearean studies.18

The boundaries of defining intercultural performance can sometimes be
problematic, especially with the increase of touring productions and international
collaborations. If labeled too loosely, the notion of intercultural performances can
start to include any performance that simply has an international cast, transnational
production crew, or are multicultural adaptations/ productions, that do not take into
account the distinctive cultural interactivity and exchange(s) that can take place in
intercultural performances. For instance, Julia Holledge and Joanne Tompkins
characterize intercultural performances as “the meeting in the moment of performance
of two or more cultural traditions, a temporary fusing of styles and/or techniques

18

Joughin, John J. (ed), Shakespeare and National Culture, (Manchester and New York: Manchester
University Press, 1997), Pg 273.

14


and/or cultures”;19 although this definition does give us an insight into the
performative potential of intercultural performances, it can also be a description for
most multicultural or multiracial production (where there is no real initiative to
promote or produce cultural negotiations or cultural interactions). If this is the case,
most Asian or non-western adaptations of Shakespeare could fall under this particular
definition of intercultural performance. This loose definition of intercultural
performance can also be mistaken as equivalent to postmodern eclecticism where
unique cultural practices and cultural exchanges are neglected. The term intercultural,
however, calls to mind a more dynamic relationship between cultures and
performance forms, where intercultural Shakespearean productions can represent
more than just any non-traditional version or variation of an original Shakespearean
play by promoting the performative potential for creating alternative perspectives on
cultural performance and traditions. The shortcoming of this definition is thus the
failure to recognize the possibility of forming (rather than just the “temporary fusing
of”) new and hybrid styles, techniques and identities that can materialize through the
process of intercultural performance.

Patrice Pavis offers 6 distinct varieties of theatrical interculturalism, 1)
Intercultural theatre, 2) Multicultural theatre, 3) Cultural Collage, 4) Syncretic theatre,
5) post-colonial theatre and 6) The “Theatre of the Fourth World”, that are
characterized and distinguished by the different forms of cultural interactions and
exchanges. To Pavis, multicultural theatre refers to the “cross-influence between
various ethnic or linguistic groups in multicultural societies” which has been “the
source of performances utilizing several languages and performing for a bi- or

19

Holledge, Julia and Tompkins, Joanne, Women’s Intercultural Performance, (London: Routledge,
2000). In Worthen, W.B, Shakespeare and the Force of Modern Performance, (Cambridge University
Press, 2003), Pg 127.

15


multicultural public”, and is set apart from intercultural theater as the cross-cultural
staging in multicultural theatre borrows various cultural signs without there being a
direct relationship or coexistence between the cited cultural sources.20 As distinct
from multicultural theatre, Pavis asserts that intercultural theatre creates hybrid forms
that draw upon “a more or less conscious and voluntary mixing of performance
traditions traceable to distinct cultural areas”, where the hybridization process often
makes the original forms no longer readily distinguished.21

While Pavis’s definition of intercultural theatre seems more specific, his
opinions on hybridity can be somewhat limiting, as performance hybridity may not
(and perhaps should not) always eliminate the original form. Should performances
that fuse and mix performance traditions and genres without completely erasing the
source form be disregarded as legitimate intercultural performances or do they
immediately get categorized under multicultural theatre? Ong Ken Seng’s Desdemona
which re-conceptualizes Shakespeare’s Othello from a female perspective, challenges
Pavis’s notions on hybridity, and expands the boundaries of what can be regarded as
intercultural performaces. This international production deconstructs and reconstructs
the original text through the use of contemporary media and mediums (i.e. video
recording, live-feeds, and incorporated performance art), languages and indigenous
Asian art forms. Ong’s Desdemona produces a complex visual spectacle that
dismantles Othello and removes the traditional performances forms from their cultural

contexts, but still manages to retain links to both the original text and the adapted
Asian source cultures. This production not only demonstrates how intercultural
performances can preserve the distinctiveness of the performance traditions used, but
20

Pavis, Patrice (ed), The Intercultural Performance Reader, (London and New York: Routledge,
1996), Pg 8.
21
Ibid.

16


at the same time shows how intercultural meaning can arise through discordance.
Even though it is beneficial to consider intercultural theatre as a means to create new
hybrid forms of performance styles and genres, it is important not to perceive
hybridization in intercultural theatre only as a harmonious jointing of separate
performance traditions and cultures. Pavis’s definition of hybridization which tends to
be based on Western practices and intercultural models of “universality”, does not
take into consideration the notion that hybridization can stem from cultural
differences. It is through this form of hybridity based on diversity, as Homi K.
Bhabha suggests, that cultural meaning can become plural and complex, as “the aim
of cultural difference is to re-articulate the sum of knowledge from the perspective of
the signifying singularity of the ‘other’ that resists totalization – the repetition that
will not return as the same, the minus-in-origin that results in political and discursive
strategies where adding-to does not add-up but serves to disturb the calculation of
power and knowledge, producing other spaces of subaltern signification”.22 In view of
that, hybridization in performance practice should not simply be regarded as a force
which only creates new forms that have no links to the original or the past. On the
contrary, intercultural Shakespeare performances always refer to a point of time or

origin, as Shakespeare through intercultural reworking(s) is always made to signal at
history, or what has come before, and intercultural Shakespeare performances more
often than not signal at the present-ness of a new cultural interpretation. Following
Pavis’s definition of hybridization, “Shakespeare” in intercultural Shakespeare
performances is immediately cancelled as a (re)source for cultural reproduction, and
traditional Asian art forms may also run the risk of simply becoming aesthetic
markers of culture since their historical, geographical and cultural significance might
22

Bhabha, Homi K., “DissemiNation: time, narrative, and the margins of the modern nation”. In
Bhabha,Homi K. (ed), Nation and Narration, (London and New York: Routledge, 1990), Pg 312.

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get erased. While hybridization is an important concept when discussing
interculturalism in theatre, Pavis’s definition proves inadequate when understanding
cultural processes and exchanges in intercultural Shakespeare performances.

Another weakness of this assessment of interculturalism in performance is also
the failure to see the process of creating the performance and the actual experience of
the live performance as an essential part of the intercultural negotiation between
cultures. The final product therefore should not be the only way one can assess the
intercultural-ness of a performance, instead one should also take into account the
processes that take place between the director, designers and performers when
conceiving the performance, and the spectator and the performance during the live
event. The background of the creators undoubtedly effects the interaction of cultures
while creating the performance and during the live performance. Additionally, the
positionality of the spectator also plays an important part in determining the levels of
intercultural exchange within intercultural theatre. This does not mean however, that

there are no forms of criteria to comprehend and evaluate (inter)cultural
collaborations and that “anything goes”. As Bharucha cautions, “we may need to
develop in this regard a respect for imperfection in our shaping and viewing of
inter/multi-cultural collaborations, which should not be equated with the valorization
of half-knowledge that so often passes as ‘expertise’ among the aficionados of ‘other’
cultures”.23 Instead, what this calls for is for us to recognize that the complicatedness
of negotiating between varying cultural frames and the difficulties in establishing a
clear-cut paradigm of understanding the intercultural is an essential part in furthering
research on interculturalism and intercultural research.

23

Ibid, Pg 41.

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Developing on Pavis’s terminology, Richard Schechner offers a more welldefined description of ‘intercultural’ and refers to intercultural performances as
interactions “between or among two or more cultures”. To Schechner, intercultural
performances may also “emphasize what connects or is shared or what separates or is
unique to each other”. 24 He further classifies intercultural performances in two
categories separated by different forms of cultural interactions: integrative and
disruptive. Integrative intercultural performances fall under the umbrella of hybrid
performances that are based on the assumption that people from different cultures can
work together to produce “hybrids that are whole and unified” based on reciprocity
where no one culture or performance genre consumes or overwhelms the other.25 This
form of intercultural performances involves the negotiation between various cultures
resulting in the formation of new meaning(s) and aesthetics, as cultural practices and
ideas are re-evaluated, re-interpreted and reconfigured. This framework when
studying intercultural Shakespeare is particularly useful as Asian Shakespeare

performances can be placed alongside Shakespeare, and seen as a driving force that
can enable the expansion of Shakespeare as a global cultural field. On the other hand,
Schechner asserts that not all intercultural performances present utopian ideals and
aim for integration, and they may instead expose the complexities and possibilities of
performances that move beyond national, cultural and artistic borders by highlighting
problems like power relations or cultural misappropriations in intercultural
performances. Following this description, the use of Shakespeare in intercultural
performances can play a vital part in revealing often ignored issues concerning the
tensions, hidden agendas and inequalities of intercultural exchange and international
collaborations.
24
25

Schechner, Pg 263.
Ibid, Pg 304 -310.

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Schechner also underscores a need to study and approach interculturalism with
caution as he addresses the complicated relationship between art, aesthetics, tradition
and culture during the process of thinking about and conceptualizing intercultural
performances, emphasizing how this process is not a “one-way street”.26 In the essay
“After Appropriation”, Craig Latrell likewise calls for a new brand of interculturalism
that does not view “intercultural transfer” or “artistic borrowing” as something done
“by” the West “to” other cultures. Latrell suggests that intercultural borrowing is not
just a one-way process and that non-western cultures should not be regarded as
passive viewers and receivers but active manipulators of these foreign images.27
Although it is useful to foreground the position of non-western cultures as equal
opportunity players in the global marketplace (especially when thinking about

Shakespeare and Asian adaptation/ appropriation), one must be careful not to pit the
West against the East, thereby reinforcing artificial dichotomies and reductive modes
of thinking that are counterproductive to intercultural studies. By looking at the terms
‘Asian’ and ‘Western’ through monolithic frames of cultural references, one
inadvertently positions them as oppositions where the former represents all that is
politically and culturally desirable and the latter as evil and anathema to the welfare of
the nation.28 This mode of cultural essentialism inadvertently negates the
distinctiveness and divergence of various types of Asian and Western performance
traditions and arts forms, and ignores internal contradictions prevalent in each
performance culture and cultural history. Asian art forms when analyzed through
lenses tainted by Orientalist fantasies can be simply reduced to represent the physical,
musical, ritualistic, and spiritual, in essence, all things non-verbal. One must also be
cautious when engaging in intercultural research not to assume that Western and
26

Ibid, Pg 302.
Latrell, Craig, “After Appropriation”. TDR: The Drama Review, 44(2), Winter 2000, Pg 44-47.
28
Lo, Pg 28.
27

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