Theatre After Empire

Emphasizing the resilience of theatre arts in the midst of significant political change, Theatre After Empire spotlights the emergence of new performance styles in the wake of collapsed political systems.

Centering on theatrical works from the late nineteenth century to the present, twelve original essays written by prominent theatre scholars showcase the development of new work after social revolutions, independence campaigns, the overthrow of monarchies, and world wars. Global in scope, this book features performances occurring across Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. The essays attend to a range of live events?theatre, dance, and performance art?that stage subaltern experiences and reveal societies in the midst of cultural, political, and geographic transition.

This collection is an engaging resource for students and scholars of theatre and performance; world history; and those interested in postcolonialism, multiculturalism, and transnationalism.

The Introduction ("Framing Latine Theatre and Performance") of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

Introduction Megan E. Geigner and Harvey Young; 1. Dr. See-Through and His Kin: East African Theatre in the Interregnum Joshua Williams; 2. Between Empire and Dictatorship: The Decolonial Dreams of Raúl Leis Katherine A. Zien; 3. Absurdist Theatre Goes Postcolonial: Trans-Contextuality, Absurd Jokes, and Evocation in (Post)Colonial Plays Mina Kyounghye Kwon; 4. History Plays: Performing the Anti-Apartheid Movement on Contemporary South African Stages Gibson Alessandro Cima; 5. Brendan Brehan’s Depictions of Mid-Twentieth-Century Irish Failure Eleanor Owicki and Megan E. Geigner; 6. Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Development of Western Turkish Theatre and the Pursuit of Identity Elif Baş; 7. Towards a New African Personality: The National Theatre Movement of Ghana from Nkrumah to Rawlings David Afriyie Donkor; 8. Rediscovering Tradition in Modern Asian Theatre Siyuan Liu; 9. The Empire Lingers: Staging Zainichi Korean Lived Experiences in Contemporary Japan Jessica Nakamura; 10. Toward a Third Performance: Dance, Exile, and Anti-Imperialism in Fernando Solanas’ Tangos: El exilio de Gardel Victoria Fortuna; 11. Bollywood Effects: Feeling Brown with Meena Kumari Kareem Khubchandani; 12. Sounding Asian American: Geeks and Superheroes in Qui Nguyen’s Vietgone Esther Kim Lee

Megan E. Geigner is an assistant professor of instruction in the Cook Family Writing Program at Northwestern University. She researches the performance of racial, ethnic, and national identity. She is co-editor of Makeshift Chicago Stages: A Century of Theater and Performance.

Harvey Young is Dean of the College of Fine Arts at Boston University. His books include Embodying Black Experience and Performance in the Borderlands.