Introduction
Encountering the Immediate Other: Towards Inter-Asia Theatre Studies
Walter Jen-Hao Hsu*, Deniz Bașar**, S Anril Tiatco***
As the editors of this special issue, we first came together in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, on 7 – 8 September 2024 for the “International Conference: Towards Inter-Asia Theatre Studies: Modernity, Historical Conditions and Changing Ways of Seeing” hosted by the National Sun Yat-Sen University. Through the invitation of the conference’s organiser, Walter Jen-Hao Hsu, we collaborated to curate this special issue of Critical Stages/Scènes critique. This special issue examines patterns of modernisation and the development of tradition on stage across multiple Asian countries since the 19th century, and considers how different Asian theatre artists influenced one another during key moments in history, with or without limited, controlled influence from Western cultures. The aim of this collection is to question what Inter-Asia theatre has been and continues to be.
The emergence of secularised theatre in the historical development of Western Europe is a vital aspect of global modernity. As capitalist modernity spread from Western Europe to the rest of the world, primarily through colonialism, modern secularised theatre and its viewpoints also expanded worldwide. Simultaneously, influenced by Western modernity, Asia emergedas a geopolitical concept and as the Oriental Other in Europe. Consequently, so-called Western Modern Theatre was introduced to various Asian countries, where their traditional performance styles were reclassified as pre-modern. This modern/traditional perspective has resonated across many Asian nations, although through different processes.
For example, in Chinese-speaking regions, xiqu was developed as a traditional form, unlike xiandaixiqu, which is a spoken style modelled after Western traditions. In Japan, with the introduction of shinpai and shingeki, noh and kabuki became established traditional performing arts. In the Philippines, American influence led to the development of komedya, sarsuwela, and sinakulo as traditional theatre forms. In contrast, American shows, especially musical theatre, came to represent modern and contemporary styles. In some Western Asian countries, such as Türkiye, older performance forms, such as Ortaoyunu, Meddah, and Karagöz, were nearly abandoned until their recent rediscovery and reinvention.
This reinvention process also involved political revolutions, the rise of modern nation-states, the formation of modern nationalist identities, and the emergence of a capitalist market system, along with other social, economic, and political structural changes. After World War II, postcolonial nationalism emerged in Asia, leading to many newly independent states. With the onset of the Cold War, rivalry and tension between the socialist bloc and the capitalist camp sparked divisions and hostility across Asia. These tensions persisted until the 1980s, when a new global capitalist framework began to reduce geopolitical conflicts in the region and accelerate globalization.
Since the socio-political mindset of Western colonialism influenced these processes, the primary focus of these cultural policies was on the intellectuals of emerging Asian nation-states. In many cases, they learned about other Asian performance paradigms through Western orientalist historiography, if they learned about them at all. Under these new historical conditions, we have seen the rise of intercultural performance and Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, artistic and intellectual efforts aimed at creating pathways for scholars to revisit the historical challenges of Asia’s encounter with Western modernity and to explore ways to empower localized cultural identities by moving beyond Western modernity.
In this special issue, we explore new perspectives to reframe the historiography of Asian modern theatre history. At the same time, we examine how these perspectives and discourses connect with shifting geopolitical relationships and patterns of cultural exchange in Asia. The special issue also aims to critically analyse the aesthetic divide between traditional and modern theatre, questioning whether this divide signifies an epistemic shift and political tensions within a specific historical context. Finally, in the context of tradition and modernity, the special issue examines how various Asian modern and contemporary theatres confront the tension between post-colonialism and postmodernism.
We have categorised the articles for this special issue into three sub-themes. The first sub-theme, Transformation of Traditions vis-a-vis Western Theatre, includes three essays which examine how local performance traditions transform or reinvent themselves in response to the introduction of Western forms, including Shakespeare, French mime, and eco-theatre. In seeking to establish their relevance vis-à-vis these imported forms, such traditions are often compelled to confront self/other and Western/non-Western dialectics in the ongoing negotiation and construction of new cultural identities.
The first essay under this sub-theme is “Transhistorical Dialogues: Recanonizing Shakespeare on the Contemporary Turkish Stage [Part 1]” by Burak Urucu, who explores how Turkish performing arts traditions, such as ortaoyunu, Karagöz shadow puppet plays, and meddah, are integrated into five recent Shakespeare adaptations created by independent companies from Istanbul. As part of an ambitious project, Urucu also develops a model to understand the adaptation strategies used in these performances. By analysing these select adaptations, Urucu also explains the mechanics of their rewriting process, which is influenced by metatheatricality, re-canonisation, and repertoire. This timely and well-researched project is divided into two parts; the first part appears in this issue, while the second will be published in the June 2026 issue of Critical Stages. Due to its comparative structure, which includes multiple rewriting strategies and traditional aesthetics, this study is poised to encourage broader discussions about temporality, cultural memory, and transhistorical performance studies.
This essay is followed by Yiping Huang’s “Cross-Cultural Reinterpretation: The Evolution of Mime in 1980s China.” In this essay, Huang examines the introduction and transformation of Western mime in mainland China during the 1980s within the framework of the state’s effort to build socialist cultural modernity. Using Wang Jingyu’s Chi Ji (Eating Chicken) as a case study, the article shows how this Western body-based theatrical form was reinterpreted within the realist tradition of Chinese theatre. While Chinese mime retained certain visual and technical features of French mime blanche, it was aesthetically reconfigured into an alternative realist, text-based practice. This cultural translation secured the form’s legitimacy within the national cultural system and helped integrate it into the existing Chinese theatre system. At the same time, it demonstrates how Chinese mime, as a distinctive practice of the 1980s, selectively absorbed and reworked elements of Western theatrical aesthetics, creating a unique mode of Chinese theatrical practice.
In “Performing Ecology—Dap-ay as a Performative Model in the Aanak di Kabiligan Community Theatre’s Staging of Balitok: Voices from the Mines,” the third essay under this sub-theme, Roger Federico introduces an eco-theatre, a socially engaged theatre prevalent in the Anglophone theatrical world, rooted in Indigenous traditions. Drawing on the Indigenous community in the Cordillera Mountains of Northern Luzon, Philippines, where Federico is also a member, he suggests that Asian communities should recognise the rich cultures of their indigenous peoples as an epistemological framework when considering their nation’s role in the current global environmental crisis. In the essay, the political concept of dap-ay, featured as a dramaturgical device in Balitok: Voices from the Mines, is proposed as a model for crisis management. Thedap-ay in this Philippine region serves as a gathering place for elders to meet, resolve conflicts and discuss community issues, and is grounded in traditional knowledge, including environmental concerns.
The second sub-theme examines how traditions change in response to the diverse needs and pressures of local settings, whether through the rise of cultural nationalism, the growth of market-driven entertainment, or shifts in cultural policy under colonial or postcolonial governments. While each text focuses on how local traditions evolve, a subtle underlying theme is the persistent presence of a globalising West and its various methods, both external and internalised, for constructing the Other. In this context, the essays in this sub-theme reflect on the Transformation of Traditions in relation to Changing and Challenging Narratives of Nationalism.
The first entry under this sub-theme is Tove Johanna Bjoerk’s “‘Traditional’ Kabuki – from Business Practice to National Policy,” in which she analyses how the world of Kabuki constructed its tradition through the publication of theatre chronicles and actors’ genealogies from the mid-eighteenth to the late nineteenth century, as well as through a series of deliberate omissions in its historiography. It was common practice in early modern publications to highlight the continuity of actors’ lineages as a means to reinforce Kabuki’s respectability as a family enterprise.
After the Meiji Restoration, however, the Kabuki world shifted its narrative toward “a culture born from the people, which had been resisting feudal authority,” as noted by the author, and framed it as a national form of performance rather than a collection of family-run enterprises. Therefore, tracing the legacies of inventing a tradition over centuries to fit different political, social and economic circumstances, Bjoerk’s article explores some of the dominant trends in Kabuki historiography, and also addresses multiple strategic omissions in its history, such as the disappearance of its foremother, Okuni, in early modern publications and her reappearance in the twentieth century.
Deniz Bașar’s interview with New Zealand based Kurdish playwright, theatre critic, and dramaturg Fatma Onat is the second essay under this sub-theme. In the interview, Bașar documents and unpacks the remarkable journey of Onat, an artist and cultural critic who emerged and carved out a space for herself by challenging the hegemonies embedded in Türkiye’s artistic world, in subtle and not so subtle ways. As a companion piece to this interview, this special issue also rescues an essential set of erased archives from Onat’s theatre review oeuvre through their English translation, accompanied by contextual explanations. These translated theatre reviews written by Onat highlight the connections of these early 2010s plays to the immediate political realities in Türkiye at the time these plays were staged. This collection offers a fragment of Onat’s larger body of work, capturing a small part of what has been lost in Türkiye’s theatre ecosystem and in its broader cultural life over the past decade.
The third and final entry under the sub-theme, Kang Yin-Chen’s “A Woman with Two Husbands: A Play with Two Displays—Ways of Seeing Taiwanese Kua-a-hi during the Japanese Colonial Period,” focuses on Takayoshi’s script and compares it with the Columbia Records versions of A Surprising Case in Hok-tsiu. Her discussion raises issues of political correctness and the survival strategies of kua-a-hi during the pre-war period in Taiwan. Her analysis highlights contrasting attitudes, both among the Japanese colonizers and within the local colonised, toward kua-a-hi, leading to different representations of the same play. Ultimately, this case offers an insightful example of how kua-a-hi was perceived and staged in its early years during the Japanese colonial period, contrasting with its current role as a treasured symbol of Taiwanese national culture.
The essays for our final sub-theme, Intercultural Theatre Practices in Inter-Asia Contexts, analyse intercultural theatre practices within Inter-Asia settings, reaching into the contemporary era. Each addresses the persistent issues of unequal power dynamics as long standing key concerns in intercultural theatre discussions. By revisiting the distinctions of self/other and West/Non-West, these contributions respond to decolonial discourses within Intercultural Theatre studies and offer new perspectives on networked theatre practices across Inter-Asia. Additionally, some articles build upon earlier postcolonial and decolonial debates by introducing ethical frameworks developed through emerging South-South relationships.
The first essay in this sub-theme is Laura MacDonald’s “Musicals, Actors, and Audiences in the Seoul-Tokyo Musical Theatre Exchange,” which interrogates the multi-dimensional impact of the artistic relationship between South Korean and Japanese musical theatres. For MacDonald, this requires an expansion of East Asian theatre historiography. Drawing on a range of twenty-first-century trends and events, supported by personal interviews with stakeholders, performance analysis, and media coverage, the essay examines the symbiotic relationship between the two musical theatre industries, especially the ongoing exchanges of performers, musicals, and audiences across the Sea of Japan. In MacDonald’s analysis, while the two countries have a strained relationship rooted in historical conflicts, musical theatre has profitably bridged gaps and transcended ambivalence.
In the second essay, “Perceiving Audible Spectatorship: Audience Awareness, Migrant Emptiness, and Inter-Asian Resonance in the Worldless play Request sa Radyo,” Popo Amascual highlights audience engagement and participation through unintentional, meaningless sounds while experiencing the play. She compares the emptiness often felt by Asian blue-collar migrants in the Anglophone world to the play’s deafening silence. The play is a Filipino adaptation of Radio Concert by the German playwright Franz Xaver Kroetz, first produced in 1971. Typically seen as a silent and hyper-realistic performance, it depicts a middle-aged woman going through her evening routine before taking her own life. The play uses a woman’s ordinary, daily actions to explore themes of loneliness, desperation, and middle-class alienation without dialogue. Playing the radio provides the only noise and dialogue in the play, temporarily breaking the silence. When the radio is turned off, however, the same emptiness returns: the spectre of the world which the migrant left behind comes back to haunt her. The only way to escape this is to fall into deep silence forever, by committing suicide. Implicitly, readers are invited to reflect on the question of how many developing Asian nation-states fail to provide proper care and to uphold their citizens’ right to live with dignity.
The third essay, Beri Juraic’s “Voices In-between: Three Contemporary Asian Theatre Makers Crossing Borders,” explores a perspective on contemporary theatre making based on the practices of three Asian theatre makers: Jarunun Phantachat (Thailand), Yudai Kamisato (Japan), and Josha Serafin (Philippines). These theatre makers operate independently of mainstream institutions and major theatre companies. Their works also aim to go beyond identity politics by challenging Western ideas of interculturalism and transculturalism. Through Phantachat’s immersive performances, Kamisato’s auditory dramaturgies, and Serafin’s linguistic ambiguity, Juraic presents a dramaturgical approach called the dramaturgy of crossing borders. He argues that this dramaturgical theory and practice reflect a theatre making process similar to a journey to and from the homeland. This approach also embodies an aesthetic stance of allegorically crossing borders by using the spatial-temporal positioning and engagement of spectators and performers within the theatre space.
Yuko Nobe’s “What a Blue Daisy Can Bring to Contemporary Vietnamese Theatre: Translated Performances of Vietnamese Drama” is the fourth essay in the third sub-theme. Nobe examines how internationalisation can help revitalize contemporary Vietnamese Kịch nói by analysing Lưu Quang Vũ’s 1987 play Hoa cúc xanh trên đầm lầy (Blue Daisy in the Swamp) and its 2018 revival by the Youth Theatre in Hanoi. She traces the historical development of modern Vietnamese theatre through shifting global and local conditions. Focusing on the modern globalised world, this paper also discusses broader issues of internationalisation through a case study of her own project, the translation and staging of Blue Daisy in the Swamp in Japan, demonstrating how this inter-Asia collaboration fosters new mutual understanding between Japan and Vietnam.
Closing the sub-theme and the entire special topic section is Jen-Hao Walter Hsu’s “Whose Intercultural Theatre?: A Case Study of NSYSU-Chula Summer Intercultural Theatre Program,” which investigates the power dynamics of cultural flows within intercultural theatre practices in Inter-Asia contexts. Using his own pedagogical experience as a case study, Jen-Hao Walter Hsu first examines how an experimental intercultural theatre summer program, co-organised by National Sun Yat-Sen University in Taiwan and Chulalongkorn University in Thailand, was reshaped through critical reassessments of interculturalism informed by the perspectives of Inter-Asia People’s Theatre. To illuminate this transformation, the author traces the long-standing theatrical connection between Taiwan’s Assignment Theatre, led by Chung Chiao, and Thailand’s Anatta Theatre, directed by Tua Pradit Prasartthong. This collaboration was directly responsible for the program’s reorientation. Ultimately, the author argues that the aesthetic strategies and cultural politics animating this inter-Asia partnership not only recalibrated the program’s pedagogical vision but also foregrounded three interrelated concerns: the self–other dynamics underlying cultural identity formation; the revolutionary potential embedded in folk theatre traditions; and the capacity of bottom-up performance practices to engage with the politics of everyday life. The paper concludes by evaluating the extent to which this intercultural program succeeded, or failed, to achieve these aims.
In addition to selecting the papers mentioned above, during the abstract submission process we also accepted four essays that explore their dramaturgical concepts included in the Inter/National Reflections section of the journal. In Critical Stages, this section features reflections on the artistic processes of international theatre makers. The papers are shorter than typical essays but are equally rich in content. They provide perspectives on how theatre making and dramaturgical processes differ and, at the same time, offer insight into how these artists influence contemporary performance practice. A notable aspect of these four essays is the inter-Asia perspective on theatre making and dramaturgy.
Filipino dramaturgs Sir Anril Tiatco, Jem Javier, and Gaby Asanza outline their dramaturgical framework for ecotheatre through their production of Joshua So’s Sa Gitna ng Digmaan ng mga Mahiwagang Nilalang Laban sa Sangkatauhan, directed by José Estrella, which can serve as a model for inter-Asia ecodramaturgy. In the essay, “A Dramaturgical Manifesto of a Filipino Eco-theatre: Indigenous Narratives for a Socially Engaged Performance,” Tiatco, Javier and Asanza encourage ecotheatre creators to shift from thinking about Indigenous peoples to thinking with them, since these communities often have advanced systems for predicting weather and disasters using natural signs and observations. Although this practice is common among Indigenous groups worldwide, it is particularly prevalent in East and Southeast Asia.
In “Between Mother Tongue and English: Creating a Community of Asian Diaspora Experiences through Documentary Theatre,” Yibin Yang and Yejia Sun reflect on their experience of collaborating in the New York production of Tongue, which, as they note, cultivated a community whose members challenge the idea of English as a universal and global language. In the play, they created a theatre that offered a space to reclaim the mother tongue, especially within the diasporic experience of East Asians. As they mention in the essay, the theatre “proves to us that despite this ever-dividing world we are living in, it may offer us a glimpse of hope for connections at times we don’t fully understand, or don’t need to be fully understood.”
Jon Louie Lavaro’s “Reliving the Past: Reflections on Reenactments by Dulambuhay Philippine Playback Theatre and Tanghalang Tatsulok” explores how the improvisational techniques of Dulambuhay Philippine Playback Theatre, where he performs, and the community theatre Tanghalang Tatsulok in his hometown of Bataan, Central Luzon, Philippines, encourage audience members to recall shared cultural memory as a vital part of cultural identity and development. For Lavaro, these community theatre groups foster historical awareness at both personal and collective levels. These reenactments, often used as educational tools, are very common across Asian regions, especially during celebrations of their independence from European and American colonisers and the end of World War II, which profoundly affected and divided their communities (particularly in East and Southeast Asia) both literally and figuratively.
Finally, Dennis Gupa’s “Balik/Balik: The Undoing of Self/Exoticization in Teaching/Performing/Staging Igal/Pangalay in Canada” offers a reflection on Gupa’s relational and artistic link between Asia, especially the Philippines, and Canada, describing it as a liminal relationship within his theatrical work as a creator and professor of performance and theatre. In exploring this connection, Gupa considers how self exoticisation of identity appears in teaching and performing Indigenous forms outside their original context. He also raises a broader question of how Eurocentric frameworks of performance making continue to influence and circulate within marginalised communities in diasporic settings, and what the limits are of decolonial practices within Western performance institutions and spaces.
To conclude, the working process of compiling these essays has also been a formative learning experience for us as editors of the special issue. Coming from different cultural backgrounds, we have gained substantial insights into diverse performing arts traditions through the review and discussion of individual papers. At the same time, we have come to recognise that, despite our differences, we share pressing concerns about the critical understanding of cultural identities and representations, particularly in relation to the underlying politics of how the self is constituted through encounters with the other. This collective journey is, in effect, a milestone in the journey toward the formation of inter-Asia theatre studies, as well as a conversation toward building inter-Asian mutual understanding. Through engaging with an infinite array of others, we arrive at renewed understandings of ourselves and continually reinvent our positions towards more ethical places under the persistent and ever-shifting spectre of the West in an increasingly globalized world.
Cover photo: This is a production photo from Venedikli Tacir (2025), showing the casket scene with (left to right) Hacivat, the Moroccan Prince, Portia, and Karagöz. It was taken, with permission, from Burak Urucu’s article published in this issue, “Transhistorical Dialogues: Recanonizing Shakespeare on the Contemporary Turkish Stage.” Courtesy of Öteki Tiyatro & Hayalî Tasvir. Karagöz puppeteer: Mehmet Ali Dönmez.
*Jen-Hao Hsu (Walter) is an associate professor in the Theatre Arts Department at National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan. He earned his PhD in Theatre Arts from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. He has published academic articles on modern and contemporary Chinese theatre studies in journals in Australia, Taiwan and mainland China. His research looks at the formations of modern and contemporary theatres/performances in the Chinese-speaking world, especially in relation to critical topics of modernity, sexuality and nationality.
**Deniz Başar is a theatre researcher and playwright from Turkey. She received her PhD from Concordia University’s Humanities Department in 2021; she was a FRQSC post-doctoral fellow in Boğaziçi University during the years 2021-2023. Parts of her research on puppetry and political performativity have been published in anthologies and journals since 2019. She is currently working on two edited volumes about performative politics on and off stage in Turkey with her colleagues Dr. Eylem Ejder and Dr. Pieter Verstraete.
***S Anril Tiatco is a full professor of dramaturgy and performance studies at the University of the Philippines Diliman. He was a recipient of the Asian Cultural Council New York Fellowship in 2024. An elected member of the International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR), he is the past immediate convener of the IFTR’s Asian Theatre Working Group. Tiatco is also currently an editor of Contemporary Theatre Review.
Copyright © 2025 Walter Jen-Hao Hsu, Deniz Bașar, S Anril Tiatco
Critical Stages/Scènes critiques, #32, December 2025
e-ISSN: 2409-7411
This work is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution International License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
