Theatre at the Crossroads of Culture [Paperback]

Western culture has a long and fraught history of cultural appropriation, a history that has particular resonance within performance practice. Patrice Pavis asks what is at stake politically and aesthetically when cultures meet at the crossroads of theatre.?
A series of major recent productions are analysed, including Peter Brook's Mahabharata, Cixous/Mnouchkine's Indiande, and Barba's Faust. These focus discussions on translation, appropriation, adaptation, cultural misunderstanding, and theatrical exploration. Never losing sight of the theatrical experience, Pavis confronts problems of colonialism, anthropology, and ethnography. This signals a radical movement away from the director and the word, towards the complex relationship between performance, performer, and spectator.
Despite the problematic politics of cultural exchange in the theatre, interculturalism is not a one-sided process. Using the metaphor of the hourglass to discuss the transfer between source and target culture, Pavis asks what happens when the hourglass is turned upside down, when the `foreign' culture speaks for itself.Pavis analyses the political and aesthetic consequences of cultures meeting at the crossroads of theatre, looking at productions including Brook's Mahabharata, Cixous/Mnouchkine's Indiande, and Barba's Faust.Preface, 1 TOWARD A THEORY OF CULTURE AND MISE EN SC?NE, 2 FROM PAGE TO STAGE: A DIFFICULT BIRTH, 3 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE OF MODERN DRAMA: THE CASE OF POSTMODERN THEATRE, 4 ON THEORY AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS AND ITS LIMITED INFLUENCE ON CONTEMPORARY DRAMA WHETHER MAJORITY OR MINORITY, 5 THEATRE AND THE MEDIA: SPECIFICITY AND INTERFERENCE, 6 TOWARD SPECIFYING THEATRE TRANSLATION, 7 DANCING WITH FAUST: REFLECTIONS ON AN INTERCULTURAL MISE EN SC?NE BY EUGENIO BARBA, 8 INTERCULTURALISM IN CONTEMPORARY MISE EN SC? NE: THE IMAGE OF INDIA IN THE MAHABHARl#i