Theatre at the Crossroads of Culture

<p>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.?<br> A series of major recent productions are analysed, including Peter Brook's <em>Mahabharata</em>, Cixous/Mnouchkine's <em>Indiande</em>, and Barba's <em>Faust</em>. 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.<br> 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.</p> Preface, 1 TOWARD A THEORY OF CULTURE AND MISE EN SCÈNE, 2 FROM PAGE TO STAGE: A DIFFICULT BIRTH, 3 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE OF MODERN DRAMA: THE CASE OF POSTMODERN THEATRE, 4 ON THEORY AS ONE OF THE FINE ARTS AND ITS LIMITED INFLUENCE ON CONTEMPORARY DRAMA WHETHER MAJORITY OR MINORITY, 5 THEATRE AND THE MEDIA: SPECIFICITY AND INTERFERENCE, 6 TOWARD SPECIFYING THEATRE TRANSLATION, 7 DANCING WITH FAUST: REFLECTIONS ON AN INTERCULTURAL MISE EN SCÈNE BY EUGENIO BARBA, 8 INTERCULTURALISM IN CONTEMPORARY MISE EN SCÈ NE: THE IMAGE OF INDIA IN THE MAHABHARATA, THE INDIADE, TWELFTH NIGHT AND FAUST, Index