About Conference

As capitalist modernity in Western Europe started to spread to the rest of the world, modern secularized theatre and its underlying moral and world views also spread to different corners of the world. “Asia” as a geopolitical concept, was also invented by the expansion of Western modernity. During the age of European exploration and imperialist ambitions, Europe rose and became the dominant global power, a new modern Western identity was constructed through the Orientalist invention of Asia as the other. Along with a series of dichotomized concepts, such as modern/pre-modern, civilized/backwardness, masculine/feminine…etc., a masculine expansionist Western imperialist identity was constructed and secured. 

Under this kind of historical condition, various civilizations in Asia were coerced into this global expansion of Western modernity. Modern Theatre, a quintessential Western European institution, was also introduced into various Asian countries. With the introduction of Modern Theatre, pre-existing indigenous theatrical performances in Asia became “traditional performing arts.” In the Chinese-speaking areas, xiqu was invented as a traditional form as opposed to xiandaixiqu, a spoken form modelled upon the West; in Japan with the introduction of shinpai and shingeki, No and Kabuki became traditional performing arts. This invention of dichotomized traditional and modern theatrical forms happened in all Asian countries. This invention process also involves political revolutions, the rise of modern nation states, the formation of modern nationalistic subjects, and the advent of modern capitalist market system and other social, economic and political structural changes. After WWII, postcolonial nationalism rose in Asia and heralded in numerous newly independent states. Meanwhile, with the advent of the Cold War, the confrontation and tension between the socialist bloc and capitalist camp also created rifts and enmity in Asia until the 1980s when the new global capitalist logics loosened up geopolitical tensions in Asia and intensified the process of globalization. It is under this new historical condition that we witnessed the rise of Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, an intellectual attempt to open up avenues for scholars to revisit the historical problem of Asia’s encounter with Western modernity and further seek possibilities to overcome Western modernity and enable the agency of localized cultural subjectivities.              

With this intellectual spirit, this conference attempts to bring in Inter-Asia theatrical dialogues concerning the split of traditional and modern theatrical forms in Asia. Through these cross-examinations, this conference hopes to further the possibilities of Inter-Asia theatre studies. That is, after reviewing each other’s dialectical relationships between traditional and modern theatres, will we find new perspectives to re-narrativize the historiography of one’s own modern theatre formation? How are these new perspectives and discourses related to the changing geopolitical relationships and patterns of cultural exchanges in Asia? How might the aesthetic divide between the traditional and the modern entail epistemic shift and political tensions within a specific historical condition? Between tradition and modernity, how do Asian modern and contemporary theatres face the conundrum between postcolonialism and postmodernism?