Performance Studies

1. Performance Studies Week 14 Chapter 8-1 Global and Intercultural Performance (pp. 226-250) Iris Tuan

2. Globalization’s Throughline • While globalization allows “cultural differences” at the level of daily behaviors, its underlying system is unified and transcultural. • Globalization: The increasing interconnection and inter-dependency of economic, social, cultural, technical, and ideological systems. • Intercultural: Between or among two or more cultures. Intercultural performances may emphasize the integrative or the disjunctive. (226)

3. 4 Types of intercultural performance and performance research • 1. process—either “vertical” or “horizontal” • 2. tourist shows • 3. hybrids and fusions that combine diverse cultural elements • 4. community-based performances emphasizing local challenges to globalization • Suzanne Lacy: “new genre public art” • Daryl Chin: “Interculturalism hinges on the question of autonomy and empowerment” (227)

4. Scenarios of Globalization • Globalization feeds on disparities of wealth, power, information, and access. • To win the game of globalization, players must make sure there is no actual “level playing field”(227). • Many outspoken artists like Wole Soyinka and Ngugi wa Thiong’o have been forced into exile.

5. Cultural Impositions and Appropriations • It’s not as simple as one culture imposing itself on the others (230). • Many of the cultural exports in the U.S. are already intercultural. • This very emptiness accounts for America’s cultural accessibility, porosity, and exportability.

6. Is Globalization good or bad? • Good for what? • Bad for whom? • “Cultural bomb” on the struggling peoples of the world • Hard to achieve what Frantz Fanon called their “passionate search for a national culture” (230) • The choices are stark: touristic reformation, commercialization, or extinction

7. Colonial Mimicry • Homi K. Bhabha: “the colonial mimic became almost the same but not quite white; Anglicized, not British”(232-33) • Some were honored by the colonial power • Sometimes were disparaged for “going native” • T. E. Lawrence • “participant observation” method

8. Tourist Performances: Leisure Globalization • To satisfy the rapidly growing market of intercultural, international, intracultural, and intranational tourists, • All kinds of performances have been found, redesigned, or invented. • E.x. Ketchak (235)

9. The Olympics: Globalism’s Signature Performance • The first modern Olympics in 1896 in Athens • The distinction between professional and amateur has all but vanished because every athlete is either paid or sponsored (240) • Olympics combined sport, spectacle, ritual, festivity, performing arts, economics, and politics.

10. Key Notions • Grotowski’s Vertical Transculturalism • Barba’s Horizontal Interculturalism • French directors who stage intercultural performances • Peter Brook • Ariane Mnouchkine

11. Review • Global and Intercultural performance • 1. Grotowski’s “vertical transculturalism” & Barba’s “horizontal interculturalism” (244-246) • 2. colonial mimicry (Homi K.Bhabha and Mohandas K. Gandhi) • 3. tourist shows: leisure globalization • 4. Hybrids and fusions: The Olympics

12. Homework • Recording: 4 types of Intercultural performances (p. 226) • Preview: Ch. 8-2 • Next week (Week 15) submit • (1) the topic of the final presentation and paper • (2) at least 5 annotated bibliography of the final paper