Performing Southeast Asia: Performance, Politics and the
Contemporary is an important reconsideration of the histories and
practices of theatre and performance in a fluid and dynamic region
that is also experiencing an overarching politics of complexity,
precarity and populist authoritarian tendencies. In a substantial
introductory essay and essays by leading scholars, activists and
practitioners working inside the region, the book explores
fundamental questions for the arts. The book asks how theatre
contributes to and/or addresses the political condition in the
contemporary moment, how does it represent the complexity of
experiences in peoples' daily lives and how does theatre engage in
forms of political activism and enable a diversity of voices to
flourish. The book shows how, in an age of increasingly violent
politics, political institutions become sites for bad actors and
propaganda. Forces of biopolitics, neo-liberalism and religious and
ethnic nationalism intersect in unpredictable ways with decolonial
practices - all of which the book argues are forces that define the
contemporary moment. Indeed, by putting the focus on contemporary
politics in the region alongside the diversity of practices in
contemporary theatre, we see a substantial reformation of the idea
of the contemporary moment, not as a cosmopolitan and elite
artistic practice but as a multivalent agent of change in both
aesthetic and political terms. With its focus on community activism
and the creative possibilities of the performing arts the region,
Performing Southeast Asia, is a timely intervention that brings us
to a new understanding of how contemporary Southeast Asia has
become a site of contest, struggle and reinvention of the relations
between the arts and society. Peter Eckersall The Graduate Center
City University of New York Performing Southeast Asia - with
chapters concerned with how regional theatres seek
contextually-grounded, yet post-national(istic) forms; how history
and tradition shape but do not hold down contemporary theatre; and
how, in the editors' words, such artistic encounters could result
in theatres 'that do not merely attend to matters of cultural
heritage, tradition or history, but instead engage overtly with
theatre and performance in the contemporary' - contributes to the
possibility of understanding what options for an artistically
transubstantiated now-ness may be: to the possibility, that is, of
what might be called a 'Present-Tense Theatre'. C. J. W.-L. Wee
Professor of English Nanyang Technological University Performing
Southeast Asia examines contemporary performance practices and
their relationship with politics and governance in Southeast Asia
in the twenty-first century. In a region haunted historically by
strongman politics, authoritarianism and militarism, religious
tension and ethnic strife, the chapters reveal how contemporary
theatre and performances in the present reflect yet challenge
dominant socio-political discourses. The authors analyse works of
political commitment and conviction, created and performed by
Southeast Asian artists, as modes and platforms of reaction and
resistance to the shifting political climates that inform
contemporary life in urban Southeast Asia. The discussions center
on issues of state hegemonies and biopolitics, finance and
sponsorship, social liberalism and conservatism, the relevance of
history and tradition, and globalisation and cultural practice.
These diverse yet related concerns converge on an examination of
the efficacies of theatre and performance as means of political
intervention and transformation that point to alternative
embodiments of political consciousness through which artists
propose critical options for rethinking the state, citizenship,
identity and belonging in a time of seismic socio-political change.
The editors also reframe an understanding of 'the contemporary' not
simply as a temporal adjective but, in the context of present
Southeast Asia, as a geopolitical condition that shapes artistic
and performance practices.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
