COMPLETION REPORT
Butoh Shakespeare in Southeast Asia
Su Mei Kok(+1)
Senior Lecturer
Department of English
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
University of Malaya
Butoh has been described as Japan’s greatest contribution to modern theatre, and its influence has
extended to the ways in which Shakespeare’s plays are staged. However, there has been no study
dedicated to the relationship between butoh and the Bard, or to comparing the usage of butoh acrossmultiple adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays. The first of such studies, this project sought specifically tofocus on Southeast Asian productions of Shakespeare which employ butoh. It compared the work ofwell-known Singaporen director, Ong Keng Sen, with the lesser-known output of Lee Swee Keong, adirector and butoh dancer from Malaysia. Although Ong’s Search: Hamlet (2002) which featured butoh
dancer Carlota Ikeda is well known among Shakespearean scholars, Lee’s sustained engagement withShakespeare has resulted in a substantial body of work which is unparalled in Asia in bringing together
butoh and Shakespeare. Besides acting with KL Shakespeare Players in David Glass’s Tempest (Mar2019), Lee has directed the Shakespeare Meets Butoh series comprising Plots of a Tyrant (2016),
Laments of the Dead (2016), Star-crossed Lovers (Nov 2018), and Old Lear (2019).
In this study, artistes and directors were interviewed to uncover their reasons for delving into butoh andtheir experiences of approaching Shakespeare through butoh. Textual and performance analyses exploredthe significances of the convergence of butoh movements and Shakespearean dialogue at selected
moments in performances. The study revealed that Malaysian artistes were drawn to butoh because of its
striking visual beauty, as well as its Asian origins, in contrast to other contemporary dance forms which
originate in the West. The antithetical relationship between the emphasis on wordplay in Shakespearean
drama and butoh’s emphasis on the visual and visceral was discovered to be the most fruitful aspect ofbringing together these genres. It opened up new ways for Shakespearean actors to experience andexpress their characters by moving them beyond the formal elements of verse and diction. Additionally,butoh artistes like Lee manifested a playful disregard for Shakespeare’s cultural status in the West andfor scholarly interpretations of his plays, thereby allowing them to engage more deeply with the narrativeand emotive aspects of these works. The study also revealed that productions were more likely to draw
on the many facets of butoh to enrich the performance of Shakespearean texts when butoh artistes weredirecting or given substantial freedom to interpret their roles within the performance. By contrast,
directors steeped in Shakespeare tended to employ butoh in superficial ways to represent the aberrant‘Other’ in opposition to the male, Caucasian norm.
This study is significant to the growing field of Asian Shakespeare because it suggests one way in which
Asian actors and directors can engage with Shakespearean texts in a productive, decolonized manner. It
also highlights another way in which Japanese culture is contributing to the global trajectory ofShakespearean performances. Whereas kabuki, noh, and Japanese cinema have long been acknowledged
as enriching the global performance of Shakespeare, butoh should now also be recognised as exerting
significant force.

Publication of the Results of Research Project:
Verbal Presentation (Date, Venue, Name of Conference, Title of Presentation, Presenter, etc.)
7 Novermber 2020, Sejong University Seoul and on Zoom (hybrid)
Conference: Intersections in Shakespeare (4th Biennial Conference of the Asian ShakespeareAssociation)
Paper: “Butoh Shakespeare under the Wings of Asian Directors”
Presenter: Su Mei Kok
Thesis (Name of Journal and its Date, Title and Author of Thesis, etc.)

Book (Publisher and Date of the Book, Title and Author of the Book, etc.)