Performance And Cosmopolitics »

HELEN GILBERT is Professor of Theatre at Royal Holloway, University of London, and co-convenor of the College's interdisciplinary Postcolonial Research Group. Her books include Sightlines: Race, Gender and Nation in Contemporary Australian Theatre (1998), Post-colonial Drama: Theory, Practice, Politics (with Joanne Tompkins, 1997) and Postcolonial Plays: An Anthology (2001).

JACQUELINE LO is Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities and Convenor of the Literature, Screen and Theatre Studies Graduate Program at the Australian National University. She is the author of Staging Nation: English Language Theatre in Malaysia and Singapore (2004).

Performance and Cosmopolitics is a ground-breaking study of cross-cultural theater in the Australasian region.

List of Illustrations vii

Series Editors' Preface viii

Acknowledgements ix

Introduction: Performing Cosmopolitics 1

New cosmopolitanisms 4

Theatre matters 11

Cosmopolitanism in Australia 14

Locating Australasian theatre 17

1 (Anti-)Cosmopolitan Encounters 21

Aboriginals and Asians on the colonial stage 21

Staging Otherness 26

White Australia or piebald possibilities? 32

Miscegenation and its discontents 39

2 Indigenizing Australian Theatre 47

Bicentennial blues 50

Reconciliation: a bran nue dae? 56

Sharing histories and sorry business 60

Awakenings: indigenous arts showcased 66

Indigeneity and commodity culture 72

3 Asianizmg Australian Theatre 82

Eastward ho! 85

Staging Asia 89

Embodying Asia 97

Trading (with) Asia 105

4 Marketing Difference at the Adelaide Festival 112

5 Crossing Cultures: Case Studies 131

Aboriginal body cultures and the canonical stage 131

The Floating World - a cultural barometer 142

Australian appropriations of the Suzuki Method 154

6 Asian Australian Hybrid Praxis 166

7 Performance and Asylum: Ethics, Embodiment, Efficacy 186

Conclusion: Cosmopolitics in the New Millennium 207

Notes 213

Bibliography 221

Index 236