Theatre at the Crossroads of Culture

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.? Never losing sight of.
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For Geertz, culture is the context within which behaviors, processes, events, and institutions can be described. It is a system of inherited, embodied symbols that can be used to communicated, perpetuate, and develop knowledge about life. CULTURE, then, is a semiotic system consisting of layers of meaning that can be interpreted and socially communicated Geertz 5, 14, Finally, I come to the crux of this research: Intracultural theatre, a term which Rustom Bharucha coined, occurs in performances within the nation-state. What is problematic about these definitions of intercultural theatre, including the working definition, is that they rely on geographically bounded distinctions such as national boundaries or global axes.

It also frames intercultural performance as potentially contentious and intrinsically mired in hegemony and appropriation. The theorists cited in this research use performance as the connection point between these theories. This connection can be understood as an analysis of the performance of culture and the performance of self through language. The performance of culture through language will be explored through the work of linguistic anthropologists and folklorists Dell Hymes, Richard Bauman, Joel Scherzer, and Charles Briggs.

Their research shows not only that language, culture, and identity are reflexively connected, but that analyzing language in performance is an ideal method for understanding these connections. This approach was in response to past linguistic and ethnographic endeavors; linguists studied written transcripts all that was available before reliable audio and 9 video recording rather than seeing the communication event in person.

Hymes believed that without the context of these events vital information was lost. Ethnography of communication sometimes called ethnography of speech , therefore takes into account not just individual aspects of linguistics, sociology, or anthropology, but analyzes language within the context from which it arises.

Through this theory, the interrelationship between culture and language can be discovered through ethnographic means, and patterns which only appear due to cultural context are revealed. Hymes also contributed to ethnopoetics, a method of ethnographic research which focuses on the entextualization process by which a text can be recognized by performers and audience as belonging to an artful whole of folklore in performance.

Hymes and others sought to transcribe performed folklore in such a way as to retain the cultural understanding of not just the words but of the context. The way in which the stories are told is just as important as the words themselves and vice versa. Essays in Ethnopoetics present folktales primarily from the Chinookan peoples in Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia.

His method of transcribing these folktales in their original languages and in the English translation reveals their linguistic and cultural patterns. It is evident that the text collections for Takelma, Kathlamet, Clackamas, and Wishram constitute a great part of all that can be known about the language and the way of life of 10 the people identified by those names.

The texts, as intended by those who recorded them, document both linguistic and cultural content. Indeed, they display ways of speaking, of narrating, that are themselves simultaneously linguistic and cultural. Hymes In Vain 8 His observations can be applied to theatrical performance as well. Performance traditions are communication events that emerge from and are a part of the culture. Specific linguistic patterns can be determined because theatrical performance is repeatable and has set cultural standards associated with it. Japanese noh, for example, has linguistic patterns which are specific to Japanese and noh culture.

Hymes, however, would caution against only looking at the text of a noh play in order to understand its cultural properties. In order to recognize how the language functions as a property of culture, it needs to be observed within context. Richard Bauman, who studied with Hymes, also saw the value of analyzing language and culture in performance contexts.

Bauman, along with collaborators Charles Briggs and Joel Sherzer, reiterated that performance cannot be separated from its context. Analyzing the language and the way it is performed therefore allows an analysis of the culture. This is what Bauman and Briggs refer to as the emergent property of performance.

The performer is not restricted to the traditions of that performance style but can develop their own interpretations within the form. This is because performance is a social activity. The interplay between performer and audience allows the language and culture to continue to evolve. It also allows for performance variations within a community depending on the situation and who is performing. In this way, even within a society that shares a common language, there is room for adaptation and change.

This can be applied to theatrical performances as well which are subtly different every time they are performed. It also, in a broader sense, allows traditional performance methods to change with the society and culture. The performance is linked to those linguistic reference points and through a continued performance tradition, creates new references.

Cultural representation in performance is therefore presented in its reflexive intersubjectivity. They argue that identity is primarily a product of the way in which speakers use language in social situations. These discursively constituted identities both conform to broader cultural identities and are specific to the interactions in which they occur. For this research, I will focus on two main concepts of identity and language as a communicative process: In other words, identity is not fixed; it is created primarily from past and present social interactions.

Language and Cultural Practice Among 13 Latina Youth Gangs looks at the way in which Latina teenagers use language to identify with certain cultural groups. The second element of identity as performance that pertains to this research is the idea that identity is not created in a vacuum; it is always related to the cultural and social understanding of the speakers. Bucholtz and Hall provide three categories of these relations: In this study Bucholtz shows that language is often the primary means by which hegemonic ideas about identity can be maintained or disrupted and how ethnicity or gender can be expressed and 4 Hijras are a category of transgendered individuals in Hindu-speaking India who identify as neither man nor woman.

Bucholtz found that the connection between language and ethnicity is so strong that speakers could pass for a member of that ethnicity through language when they could not pass physically.

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Inversely, lack of ability to speak a language was enough to be considered an outsider despite physical appearance, ethnic background, or cultural knowledge. Speakers also chose to hide their multilingualism in order to identify with a more socially prestigious group. The speakers in these social situations presented their identity through language which leant them credibility in that choice. The theories of the linguistic anthropologists and sociocultural linguists presented in this section provide several avenues of inquiry for intercultural theatre. Are intercultural theatre artists beholden to their audience?

Do they have a responsibility to perform in such a way that their audience can understand and evaluate their competency? What happens to performance and language when taken out of their customary context, as is the case in intercultural theatre? What new linguistic reference points are created when performance traditions from two or more cultures are combined?

If language is informing culture and vice versa what happens when the language is changed but the performance tradition stays the same? Does language reshape the performance? How do the characters utilize language to construct identities for other characters? What do the artists say about their own identities in regards to linguistic capabilities? Combining linguistic theories with the field of intercultural theatre has already provided a wealth of questions for this thesis, many of which will be addressed in the two case studies.

How then, have intercultural theatre scholars addressed the function of language? It is also surprising given that the critical discourse of intercultural theatre productions often mentions the utility of language and the repercussions directors and producers experience when they ignore it. The subsequent two sections provide examples of the critical discourse on language use in intercultural theatre, followed by an examination of the theoretical models of intercultural theatre.

For the purposes of this research, and given that the two case studies are contemporary works-in-progress, I will confine this brief review of language in intercultural theatre to the works of Peter Brook and onward. Although these articles are not specifically concerned with language, they do make mention of language in terms of translation and aesthetics in order to appeal to a western audience.

The following articles explore both the intended effects of multiple language use in intercultural theatre productions and the unintended consequences that arise when language is not taken into consideration. These critical reflections of intercultural theatre indicate that language has strong connections to culture and identity. These connections can either be used to good effect in the production, or create challenges for the artists when overlooked.

He sees language use in this production as problematic due to issues with translation and communication. The translation of the Mahabharata into English and French was for the benefit of the French and English speaking audiences, but, as Bharucha argues, it aided neither the audience nor the actors. He points out that translating the text into French and English homogenized the cast and negated the intention of presenting multi-cultural voices.

Although Bharucha does not discuss the issue in these terms, translating the Mahabharata from Sanskrit into English and French also removed it from its cultural context and overlaid it with the contexts associated with English and French. In this production, produced by the Japan Foundation Asian Center, different artists from multiple Asian performance traditions portrayed the main characters. However, Bharucha does not provide a practical solution to these language problems.

He argues that just as western directors have unsuccessfully dealt with the linguistic aspect of foreign culture grammar, metaphor, and semiotics , so too have Asian directors. Shakespeare [in Asian intercultural theatre] is reduced to paraphrase and banality … This reduction of language has a long history in intercultural experimentation, incorporating only experiments in nonverbalism, enforced monolingualism, and the juxtaposition of 7 For example, a Japanese noh actor played King Lear and a Chinese jingju actor played Goneril 18 different languages, with no attempt to establish a mode of communication or translation between performers from different countries and traditions.

During the rehearsal process, Conceison states that she and the other translators for the production became facilitators and negotiators between the two languages, Chinese and English. Despite their role as mediators, and the long hours expected of them, so ill-considered was their position as translators that they received no pay for the project. She also notes that the lack of linguistic consideration during the translation process led to misunderstandings between the American and Chinese artists and difficulties in staging the play.

This is because in English, the mothers are written to have Chinese accents which give them an identity as immigrants. The misunderstandings that occur between the Chinese mothers and Chinese-American daughters are highlighted through their language use. The cultural attributes of the English script were lost once it was translated into Chinese.

This article reports on Chinese plays performed in China in which a reverse translation occurs. This requires any non-Chinese characters to be played by foreigners who speak perfect Chinese in order to maintain the illusion that everyone onstage is speaking English. One way around this issue is to have every actor on stage speak in their native language and create the impression that all the characters can understand one another.

Culture and identity : language use in intercultural theatre - UBC Library Open Collections

The audience then becomes the assessor of how successful the performers are at this illusion. Inter- and Intracultural Theatre Translation. Wilkinson describes this practice as being politically motivated in order to assert an identity associated with the dialect Here, like Bharucha, Wilkinson is identifying intercultural and intracultural theatre through geo-political boundaries; theatre between Switzerland and Germany is intercultural, theatre within Switzerland is intracultural.

In the Taiwanese production Orlando linguistic problems arose when an English translation replaced the Chinese script, written by a jingju playwright for a jingju performer. This caused confusion for the performer and audience alike and asserted an English dominance over the Taiwanese artists. On Not Translating in the Theatre. This, Byczynski argues, is because even individual words or phrases are inseparable from their cultural context The British Columbia productions Jade in the Coal and The Gull were particularly concerned with managing language issues. The production was bilingual, Japanese and English, and language often functioned as an insight into the characters and their identity.

In contrast, the brothers have partially lost their ancestral language and with it part of their connection to their mother and heritage. Waisvisz and Vellino Both of these productions sought collaboration with the different theatrical traditions: The bilingualism was intended to facilitate this artistic exchange and appeal to a diverse audience representative of the cultural and racial communities in the Vancouver area.

Matsui Akira Continues a Tradition of Change. They report that he has taken part in intercultural English versions of noh plays where he experimented with creating new movements outside the conventional noh cannon. Anno and Halebsky state that Akira believes that changing the language or body movement does not change the fact that he is performing noh It also illustrates the emergent property of performing intercultural works in that they can continue to change and adapt, particularly in communities with diverse audiences.

Nevertheless, the models since this time have been an attempt to create a more comprehensive unified theory of intercultural theatre. These theories, however, continue to position intercultural theatre along geographic boundaries, either nation-states or global axes East-West, North-South with language hardly taken into consideration as the underlying connection between the culture and how it is performed.

Although Pavis is concerned with intercultural work from an anthropological perspective, there is no mention of language in this model. Lo, Jacqueline and Helen Gilbert. Helen Gilbert and Jacqueline Lo, in developing their own model of intercultural theatre, approach language as often acting as a tool of hegemony.

Their model from see fig. These cultural interactions operate along a West-East and North-South axis The production takes place somewhere along this continuum, not wholly belonging to one culture or another, but a hybrid of the two. They offer a number of questions on the subject of language, but these questions mainly concern how language can be used as a tool of hegemony rather than connecting it to culture and identity.

Gilbert and Lo suggest that the language used for the text, rehearsal, performance, and audience comprehension all contribute to appropriation and hegemony between artists. Lei argues that this form of intercultural theatre the capitalistic West mining the East for aesthetics and labor is the most dominant form of intercultural theatre in the world today. Therefore, Lei contends, practitioners of intercultural theatre should take advantage of this hegemony in order to revitalize the flow of culture or reconnection of cultures from the East to the West. She advocates for using this model to create intercultural theatre in which interventions like involvement from the local cultures can restore the natural flow of cultural exchange Lei.

The difficulty with this model is that it confines intercultural theatre to an appropriative East-West exchange. Future intercultural productions may not necessarily conform to this model. These three oft-cited models of intercultural theatre present the exchange of culture in performance as occurring between the East and the West. Just as intercultural theorists have purported to be moving away from the idea of tying culture to national boundaries, perhaps it is time to move away from connecting culture to global axes as well.

Hymes, Bauman, Bucholtz and the others previously mentioned are western scholars. As a western scholar myself, it is 26 important to acknowledge that this thesis is being presented from within this context. The linguistic theories used in this research are the product of extensive ethnographic research, but the researchers themselves were still in many ways non-practitioners of the performances they were observing.


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Nevertheless, it is not uncommon in the discourse of intercultural theatre to use theories from various fields of anthropology. Language at Play in the Theatre is an effort to bring language back into the focus of theatre and performance studies. As these scholars have shown, using anthropological or linguistic theories can create new avenues of understanding and analysis.

The scope of this thesis has already been touched on in the definition for language. Language can have many different definitions, particularly when speaking in theatrical terms. Only spoken, rather than gestural, language will be examined. The semiotics of gestural communication is an equally fascinating area of study, but would require its own theoretical framework and could easily constitute a thesis of its own.

The analysis of Kayoi Komachi: A Noh Chamber Opera, one of the case studies for this thesis, will include the music styles of Japanese noh and western chamber opera. The text of this case study the libretto is generally not spoken but sung which requires the musical component to be examined as well.

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Generally, however, only the spoken language of the two case studies will be taken into account. This research will also primarily focus on language use in rehearsal and performance solely between the artists. I would like to dedicate a future study to both sides of the reflexive performer-audience relationship with language. This will allow the focus of this thesis to be on language use by and for the artists. The body of this thesis will include two chapters chapters Two and Three , in which the two case studies will be analyzed and a fourth chapter for conclusions.

Chapter Two will address and analyze language use in Kayoi Komachi: The theories of language in connection to culture will be the main focus of this chapter.


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    5. The third chapter will focus on the second case study Lady Sunrise by Marjorie Chan, another work-in-progress which had stage readings in and , in Vancouver and Toronto. This case study will primarily emphasize language and identity. Both case studies demonstrate the connections between language and culture as well as language and identity in performance, but each case study will serve to specifically highlight one of these relationships.

    Chapter Four will offer conclusions from the analysis of language use in the two case studies, practical applications of the conclusions, and future avenues of inquiry. This thesis will explore how language is tied to culture and identity in such hybrid performance encounters. This workshop production was the result of a collaboration between artists of various disciplines and languages.

    In , Canadian composer Farshid Samandari and Colleen Lanki, a Canadian-born performer, scholar of Japanese theatre arts, and director of many previous fusion plays, began conceiving of a chamber opera that was a merging of western opera and Japanese noh. Lanki and Samandari had previously worked with Yamai Tsunao, a professional noh actor from the Konparu School, who was brought on to play the role of Fukakusa. Lanki had also worked with a number of western opera artists who were invited to participate Lanki Personal Interview. Although the score asked the musicians to occasionally mimic the sound of traditional Japanese instruments, no Japanese musicians or instruments were used.

    The score was written in western music notation and the music director for the preview performance was Canadian Eric Wilson. The artists rehearsed for one week in January of which culminated in the preview performance for an audience of over one-hundred people. Ono no Komachi, the subject of Kayoi Komachi and Sotoba Komachi, was a 9th century Japanese poetess about whom little is known.

    Her poetry and presumed beauty, however, inspired various legends and several noh plays Teele et al. The noh play Kayoi Komachi, also called The Nightly Courting of Komachi or Komachi and the Hundred Nights, tells the story of an old woman who each day brings fruit and firewood to a priest.

    The priest realizes that the old woman is really the ghost of Ono no Komachi. He begins to pray for her spirit but a man enters and orders him not to pray for Komachi lest her spirit be allowed to reach salvation. Fukakusa tells the priest of his one-hundred-night courtship of Komachi.

    His love was so strong for Komachi that in this story, Kayoi Komachi, his spirit is haunting her even after death. Upon finding her sitting on a stupa beside the road, two traveling priests engage her in a religious discussion. Although the priests believe she is mad, Komachi wittily proves herself to be well-versed in Buddhist teachings. Director Colleen Lanki assembled short sections of these two noh plays translated by David Crandall and the four waka and interwove them to form the libretto.

    Farshid Samandari then composed the score. The process was a collaboration between Lanki, Samandari, and the singers in which the libretto and score were adjusted to complement each other. The traditional noh roles were also adjusted slightly to complement the casting of noh actors and opera singers of both genders. These traditional noh roles played by men consist of the shite, the main role, the waki, a supporting role usually a priest , and the ji-utai, the chorus.

    Certain plays also feature a tsure, or companion role to the shite. In the original Kayoi Komachi and Sotoba Komachi the waki are traveling priests. In Sotoba Komachi the shite is Komachi and the tsure is a second priest or attendant. A Noh Chamber Opera the noh role titles are only used for specific characters. Yamai Tsunao, who plays Fukakusa, is a professional shite actor but his character is simply referred to as Fukakusa in the score and libretto. The chorus is divided into the male opera singers and the female noh artists. The male opera singers are referred to as Male chorus in the libretto and simply Chorus in the score while the female noh artists are called Female chorus in the libretto and Ji in the score.

    A Noh Chamber Opera, Komachi is a tormented modern-day woman unable to write poetry. During a visit with a Counselor, she reveals that the spirit or perhaps memory of her lover is haunting her. Her lover Fukakusa enters, and their mutual obsession and hatred for one another is exposed. As in Sotoba Komachi, Fukakusa possesses Komachi and their identities become confused and indistinct. The opera ends with Komachi and Fukakusa relinquishing their attachment to one another, as occurs in Kayoi Komachi, and Komachi is finally able to write her poems.

    The goal of combining the two performance traditions in this noh opera is mirrored in its casting and narrative. The English-speaking artists played traditionally Japanese characters and the characters of Komachi and Fukakusa merged with one another and then came to an amicable parting of ways. This opening introduces the idea that this opera will include both opera and noh, English and Japanese.

    This reveals that Komachi is a modern English-speaking woman who is struggling with her desire for someone or something. The waki is shown not to be a priest as it would be traditional in noh but a modern-day counselor who has come to aid Komachi with her troubles. It is unclear whether this is the memory of Fukakusa or his actual spirit haunting Komachi.

    During this piece, Fukakusa and the Ji chant in Japanese; later Komachi and the Male chorus sing the English translation. At this point in time, the Male chorus is only slightly still aligned 34 with Komachi. Their part remains in English but now they are taking on the thoughts of Fukakusa. Just as in Sotoba Komachi, Fukakusa begins to possess Komachi.

    This possession becomes clear through the use of the languages and musical styles. The English and Japanese, opera and noh are also mixed. At this point Komachi has forgotten who she is. The singing then begins to overlap with Komachi in English and the Ji echoing her thoughts in Japanese. Fukakusa makes the first gesture towards reconciliation when Yamai switches into English and an operatic style of singing.

    Komachi, realizing she has to reconcile with Fukakusa, repeats the line in Japanese in the noh singing style Lanki The chorus returns to its original role as narrators and Fukakusa exits the stage. The opera ends as it begun, with the mixing of the two choruses in their respective languages and styles.

    The following analysis explores how language functioned in Kayoi Komachi: A Noh Chamber Opera as a property of the culture as seen in the libretto, score, and rehearsal process. Language as a property of identity will be briefly examined as it pertains to both the artists involved in the production and the characters of the opera. Along with examples of the connection between language and culture, this case study also shows the emergent and reflexive nature of language in performance, the responsibility a performer has to their audience, and identity as a communicative event.

    A Noh Chamber Opera In order to combine Japanese noh with western opera using artists from both traditions, the languages associated with those cultures also needed to be incorporated. The three spoken or sung languages were Japanese, English, and classical Japanese. For the purposes of this study, the two musical styles of noh and western opera modern staff notation will also be considered languages because of the differences in their notation and implementation.

    As Lanki explained, probably no one in the production understood every language Personal Interview. Samandari, the composer, did not speak Japanese and was only familiar with western music composition. The music director, Eric Wilson, also was not trained in noh nor spoke Japanese. The musicians played western instruments and read from a western notated score. The opera artists from Canada spoke English and sang in English with the occasional line in Japanese. The two women noh artists spoke modern Japanese and performed the opera in classical Japanese, as did Yamai, although he also had several lines in English.

    A translator was hired for the production because the noh artists did not speak English and the opera artists, musicians, music director, and composer did not speak Japanese. The two participants who came closest to understanding the various languages were Lanki and the rehearsal translator Minoru Takano who both spoke English and Japanese and had training in western music and noh.

    In order to accommodate all of the artists involved and the potential mixed audience, the opera needed to capture the essence of the original Japanese in the English lines and also retain enough of the classical Japanese noh scripts. The source plays, Kayoi Komachi and Sotoba Komachi, were chosen because they still exist in the modern noh repertoire Lanki Personal Interview. The noh performers, who only had 37 basic skills in reading western staff notation, could incorporate sections from the noh plays which were already part of their repertoire without having to depend on the score.

    During rehearsals, the performers spoke either English or modern Japanese. The performance itself was a blending of the classical Japanese from the waka and noh plays, and English. Analysis of the artist interviews, score and libretto, and performance footage showed that language held many functions during the process of rehearsing and performing Kayoi Komachi: It was also a unifying idea amongst the artists interviewed that language was important to that hybridization process because language is a part of the culture.

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    As noh artist Mayuko Kashiwazaki explained, Japanese culture would not be the same without Japanese language Email Interview. The poems of Ono no Komachi, like those used in the opera, emphasize this point; it is only reading them in Japanese that their complete meaning can be understood. A translation of her poetry into English represents only the surface level of understanding and not the double meanings embedded in the original Japanese. The hybridization of culture was expressed through language in the translation and content of the libretto, the music composition, and the participation of native speakers during the rehearsal process.

    Significant consideration was taken in deciding on the translators and the most appropriate translation of every word. Sonja Arntzen did the translations of the poetry because of her expertise in Japanese waka poetry. Despite the involvement of expert translators, certain elements of the original Japanese culture and meaning had to be changed in the English version.

    In order to solve this issue Samandari simply kept the line in Japanese which 39 the noh chorus sang. The inclusion of so many cultural and performance experts meant that decisions on the translation and wording of the libretto could be made collaboratively between the translators, composer, artists, and director.

    Notes on who is singing what section and at what time were written in English above each section. In the libretto, it is written as: This concurrence of languages appears several times throughout the opera in which both English and Japanese are sung simultaneously, or slightly staggered.

    What is sung in 40 one language is often sung in the other at the same time, or nearly the same time. The opera singers, in the roles of the Male chorus, the Counselor, and Komachi, all have at least one line in Japanese. The Male chorus especially sings almost as much in Japanese as they do in English. The role of Fukakusa is sung almost entirely in Japanese, which allows the English lines to indicate his possession of Komachi and their shared thoughts.

    The only exception to understanding the narrative could have occurred if an audience member only spoke Japanese and was not familiar with the classical Japanese used in Kayoi Komachi and Sotoba Komachi. Given that this production was held in western Canada, it was assumed that the audience would be comprised of people who spoke at least some English. Lanki wanted both the sounds of the Japanese and English to be heard in the opera Personal Interview.

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    Rehearsal translator Minoru Takano remarked that participating in Kayoi Komachi: A Noh Chamber Opera was an enlightening experience for him because of the presence of the two languages. He recalled that during rehearsal the opera artists asked him for the meaning of a few of the Japanese lines. However, the lines were in classical Japanese and it was not until they were translated into English that he 41 could understand their full meaning. He also felt that the opera was a worthy project because noh as an art form is declining in popularity in Japan.

    Creating an opera in both Japanese and English allowed Takano and the other Japanese audience members to understand and experience their own cultural traditions in a new way. The use of both languages in the libretto also benefitted the participants because it gave them a solid foundation from which to start. In choosing two plays from the existing noh repertoire, the noh artists were assured at least one point of familiarity in a rehearsal process where very few other people would be able to communicate with them directly. They came into the project familiar with the narrative and language of the original noh plays.

    They could also read and follow along with the libretto. Heather Pawsey also felt this same sense of familiarity when singing in English. Although all the opera singers had experience singing in other languages and felt quite comfortable doing so, English was the language which they felt the most connection.

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    Story of a Love A theatrical portrayal of the letters between a struggling seminarian and St. Maurice and Therese is a Blackfriars Repertory Theatre production. It is based on the book by Bishop Patrick Ahern, it has been edited for theatrical presentation by Fr. This article contains content that is written like an advertisement. Please help improve it by removing promotional content and inappropriate external links , and by adding encyclopedic content written from a neutral point of view. October Learn how and when to remove this template message.

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