ABSTRACT

In 2014, I founded Scene/Asia, a platform of critique and dialogue for Asian contemporary performances. The main objective of the project was to extract performance tropes and concepts cultivated on the Asian soil; we tried to build a pool of knowledge that uses ‘Asian theatre [and not Western theatre] as method’, to cite Rossella Ferrari, who, in turn, borrowed from Kuan Hsing-Chen. Taking this three-year project as an empirical basis, this paper argues, in a hybrid language consisting of fieldwork reports, discussion outcomes, curatorial procedures and scholarly analysis, that the three pillars of Western canonisation in theatre – institutionalisation, historicisation and the ensuing commodification – may be ‘useful’ to the West, but a priori contradict the raison d’être of traditional Asian performances. The paper demonstrates this by referring to traditional Asian pop-up theatres and a text by Japanese ethnologist Orikuchi Shinobu, who argues that Japanese entertainers were originally ukare-bito (drifting people). Finally, this paper demonstrates an analysis of Malaysian theatre director Mark Teh’s Version 2020: The Complete Future of Malaysia (2017) as a contemporary Asian theatre piece that brings into relief ‘Asian theatre as method’ by adopting what Teh calls the ‘dispersive dramaturgy’.

摘要

2014年，我创立了Scene / Asia，这是一个针对亚洲当代表演的批评和对话平台。该项目的主要目的是提取在亚洲土壤上栽培的性能比喻和概念。我们试图建立一个使用“亚洲剧院（而非西方剧院）作为方法”的知识库，以引用罗塞拉·法拉利（Rossella Ferrari）的话，后者又是从关庆辰那里借来的。以这个为期三年的项目为经验基础，本文以包括实地考察报告，讨论结果，策展程序和学术分析在内的混合语言认为，西方戏剧化的三大支柱–制度化，历史化和随之而来的商品化–对西方可能“有用”，但先验与亚洲传统表演的存在理由相矛盾。本文通过提及传统的亚洲弹出式剧院和日本民族学家织田信忍的文章来证明这一点，他辩称日本演艺人员本来是ukare-bito（流浪者）。最后，本文展示了对马来西亚剧院导演马克·德（Mark Teh）的《2020年版本：马来西亚的完整未来》（2017年）的分析，该作品是当代亚洲戏剧作品，通过采用Teh所说的``分散戏剧''，使``亚洲戏剧作为方法''得到了缓解。 。