Performance and Cosmopolitics Cross-Cultural Transactions in Australasia [Hardcover]

This ground-breaking study of cross-cultural theatre in the Australasian region focuses on theatrical events and practices in avant-garde and mainstream contexts. It explores the cultural and political dimensions of Australia's engagement with Asia and sheds light on international arts marketing and trends in cross-cultural performance training.Acknowledgements Introduction: Performing Cosmopolitics (Anti)Cosmopolitan Encounters Indigenizing Australian Theatre Asianizing Australian Theatre Marketing Difference at the Adelaide Festival Crossing Cultures: Case Studies Asian Australian Hybrid Praxis Performance and Asylum: Ethics, Embodiment, Efficacy Conclusion: Cosmopolitics in the New Millennium Bibliography Index

Winner of the Australasian Association for Theatre, Drama and Performance Studies Rob Jordan prize

Shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Literary Awards Gleebooks Prize and Biennial Prize for Literary Scholarship

'This brisk and succinct narrative inflects and counters the valorization of cosmopolitanism in global cultural discourse. Its major achievement is to locate diverse cosmopolitan practices within the embattled national imaginary of Australasian theatre. In countering official nationalism and legitimized xenophobia at intensely local and regional levels, it offers substantial evidence of how cosmopolitics can be put into practice at ground levels. This book is immediate and relevant.' - Rustom Bharucha, author of The Politics of Cultural Practice and Theatre and the World

'This is an important book for the breadth of discussion of theatre work that it offers...The book provides a priceless record of a great deal of neglected, ephemeral and courageous theatre practice. It is particularly valuable in its ground-breaking study of Asian-Australian theatre-a topic which has here for the first time been given the attention that it so clearly deserves.' - Adrian Kiernander, Tom Burvill and MaryroselÃ*