Theatre at the crossroads of culture / Patrice Pavis ; translated by Loren Kruger.

ISBN:

9780203359334

9780415060370

9780415060387

Title:

Theatre at the crossroads of culture / Patrice Pavis ; translated by Loren Kruger.

Author:

Pavis, Patrice, 1947-

Personal Author:

Pavis, Patrice, 1947-

Uniform Title:

Théâtre au croisement des cultures. English

Publication Information:

London ; New York : Routledge, 1992.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (vii, 219 pages) : illustrations

General Note:

Translation of: Théâtre au croisement des cultures.

Local Note:

eBooks on EBSCOhost

Subject Term:

Drama.

Intercultural communication.

Theater and society.

Format:

Electronic Resources

Electronic Access:

Click here to view

Publication Date:

1992

Publication Information:

London ; New York : Routledge, 1992.

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Shelf Number	Material Type	Copy	Shelf Location	Status
306.484 22	1:E-BOOK	1	1:ONLINE	Searching... Unknown

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.

Reviews (1)

Choice Review

These previously published essays are basically focused on the relationship between theater and culture, but the promise of the title is not realized. The text, sometimes difficult to follow, is not helped by the few visual charts, which are often impossible to understand. Some of the chapters or units are only distantly related to the main focus; for example the tangent of "On Theory as a Fine Art and Its Limited Influence on Contemporary Drama" may be very important to the writer, but only distantly related to the matter of interculture/theater concerns. Intercultural appropriations in form and content in drama are probably inevitable. Pavis has attempted to explain and catalog these changes, and fairly openly advocates increased cross-cultural activities, at the same time realizing the problems and potential of such activity. The thesis of the collection seems important and worthy of considerable attention, but somewhere between the writing, the translation, or the lumping of the essays together, what results is confusing and disappointing. C. C. Harbour; University of Montevallo

Preface	p. vi
1 Toward a Theory of Culture and Mise En Scène	p. 1
2 From Page to Stage: a Difficult Birth	p. 24
3 The Classical Heritage of Modern Drama: the Case of Postmodern Theatre	p. 48
4 On Theory as One of the Fine Arts and Its Limited Influence on Contemporary Drama Whether Majority or Minority	p. 75
5 Theatre and the Media; Specificity and Interference	p. 99
6 Toward Specifying Theatre Translation	p. 136
7 Dancing with Faust: Reflections on an Intercultural Mise En Scène by Eugenio Barba	p. 160
8 Interculturalism in Contemporary Mise En Scène: the Image of India in the Mahabharata, the Indiade, Twelfth Night and Faust	p. 183
Index	p. 217

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Table of Contents