“ Interculturalism ” and “ International Co-production: ”
For a Historically Accurate Appreciation of Pratthana［1］Tadashi Uchino

What Is Intercultural Theater?
As for how to call the creative form of a performance work such as Pratthana - A Portrait of Possession, aseemingly unobjectionable term of “international co-production” is most often used as far as I could find［2］.
Whenever I see the term, I personally sense a kind of emotive repulsive register, because an expression“international co-production” sounds awkward or it sounded as such once in the near past. Because of theborderless nature of globalization, the framework of nation-states that characterized the modernity was
nullified, and accordingly, the concept of international seemed to have lost its substance. In fact, in theperforming arts, the geographical movement of artists became intense after the 1980s, and a genre calledinterculturalism or intercultural theater, which intentionally avoided the reference to nation-states appeared.
The genre is not necessarily unfamiliar to Japan, where Peter Brookʼs Mahabharata (1985), which is considered to be a representative work of the genre, a nine-hour production based on the Indian epic “Mahabharata,”
was shown (1988) to commemorate the first anniversary of the opening of the Saison Theater (1987-1999) inTokyo. The performance was originally produced in French for the Avignon Festival, but when the world tour
was organized, the language was changed to English. The production took the form of actors of various nationalities participating, and it was more or less the product of zeitgeist filled with anticipation of the end of theCold War structure (globalization) from perestroika to the collapse of the Soviet Union. I remember the work
never invited any controversy in Japan, but from the time of the first performance, it was meant to be strongly
criticized by the postcolonial critics, who were appearing and beginning to dominate the discursive space inEnglish-speaking spheres.

1of Possession: The Official Guide (Tokyo: Hakusuisha, 2019), pp. 113-121. There are some parts where I
made some revisions because of the nature of thecontent of the original.
2

For example, a press release from the premiere in
Bangkok said: “This work is an international
co-production project started by two artists of thesame generation who were both born in the 1970s.”(https://www.jpf.go.jp/j/about/press/2018/003.html).
On the other hand, there is a debate about two
Japanese notations for the concept. As it is irrelevant
in English, we would not go further into the issue.

3
4

Edward Said, Orientalism, NY: Vintage Books, 1979.

“Can the Subaltern Speak?,” in Cary Nelson and

Lawrence Grossberg eds., Marxism and theInterpretation of Culture, University of Illinois Press,
1988.
5

Rustom Bharucha “Peter Brookʼs Mahabharata: aview from India.” first appeared in Theater, Vol. XIX,

No. 2, Spring, 1988, but has since been rewritten
many times.
6

There were two main issues. The question of ownership of the so-called “Indiaʼs epic poem Mahabharata,ʼ”i.e., who owns “it” and who has the right to use, edit, enjoy and create a derivative version from “it.” Secondly,
there was the question of a re-emergence of the old colonial mentality by Peter Brook, born in the former
colonial power of England, who was de-contextualizing the representative epic of the former colony of India“in the name of art” and transplanting it to the European theater market, thereby depriving it of its “uniqueness.”

This article is a translation of my own writing inJapanese with the same title in Pratthana: A Portrait

Ric Knowles, Theatre and Interculturalism. NY:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

7

Patrice Pavis, Theatre at the Crossroads of Culture,
London: Routledge, 1992. Here, the Pavis presents an“hourglass model” that will be much discussed in theyears to come. According to Fisher-Lichte, the first
appearance of the term was in E. Fischer-Lichte (etal.), The Dramatic Touch of Difference: Theatre, Own
and Foreign, Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1990
(Erika Fischer-Lichte et al., The Politics of

The origin of postcolonial criticism was, as is ʼwell known, the publication of Edward Saidʼs Orientalism(1978)［3］, a landmark book that relentlessly and empirically theorized the so-called colonialist sentiments of
the orientalists in Europe. With perestroika followed by the collapse of the Soviet Union, the postcolonial
criticism, such as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in “Can the Subaltern Speak?”［4］gained considerable influencein the humanities in the 1990s. Critical terminologies such as “cultural imperialism” “cultural appropriation”
and “neo-colonialism” began to be used frequently. Many were harsh criticisms by scholars with some commitment to a political identity in the former colonies and the spearhead of the Brook criticism was Rustom
Bharucha from India［5］.

Interweaving Performance Cultures London:
Routledge, p. 92). The notion is best explained inJapanese by Yokoyama Yoshiji (http://onpam.
net/?p=2728).
8Daphne P. Lei, “Interruption, Intervention,

Interculturalism: Robert Wilsonʼs HIT Productionsin Taiwan.” Theatre Journal 63 (2011), pp. 571-586.

Leiʼs definition of “HIT” is “a specific artistic genre
and state of mind that combines First World capitaland brainpower with Third World raw material andlabor, and Western classical texts with Eastern
performance traditions” (p. 571). Here, Ray mentions

As Rick Knowles has briefly traced the history in his Theatre and Interculturalism (2010)［6］, critics from the“third world” including Bharucha criticize allegedly experimental artists like Brook, Ariane Mnouchkine inFrance and Robert Wilson in the U.S., while Patrice Pavis, whose foundation is on the Western humanist
liberalist tradition̶a theoretical and ethical ground for the Western modernists̶uses the universality of art
as a shield to counter such criticism［7］. In the 1990s, when globalization was accelerating due to the fall of the
Berlin wall, not only did many works emerge that could be categorized into and/or branded as “intercultural
theatre” and “theatre of interculturalism,” theoretical and political debates about them became more lively
with increasing precision and intellectual rigor. This led, for example, for Daphne P. Ray, a theatre studies
scholar, to group them and name them “HIT” or “hegemonic intercultural theater.”［8］“Interculturalism” and “International Co-production:” For a Historically Accurate Appreciation of PratthanaPeter Brook, Ariane Mnouchkine, Richard Schechnerand Tadashi Suzuki, the Contemporary Legend
Theater of Taiwan, and “to a certain extent,”

Singaporeʼs On Keng Sen. It was in 2011 and the

purpose of this paper is not to criticize HIT
unilaterally from a postcolonial point of view, but tomake a more objective evaluation, including what was
actually achieved in the field.

1One point to note here is that what postcolonial criticism is concerned with is not an obvious sense of discrimination, such as baseless disrespect. The problem is the opposite: the attitude of respecting and admiring the“other” culture. Because of that unilateral admiration and worshiping of the “other” culture -- at the very least,that is the “gesture” -- without any mutual grounds, they are attacked this time as the appropriation of thetarget culture. That you worship someone doesnʼt mean that you can pick and borrow arbitrary parts; issues of“ownership” and “de-contextualization” mentioned above. In addition, the basic stance of postcolonial
criticism after the post-structuralism is to make the political unconscious an issue, and “I donʼt mean that” or“There is no such intention” does not work. In other words, the problem was the educational and social systemor the language system itself that internalized and fixed the “sense of discrimination” that had penetrated todeeper level of human mind.
Thus, relentless critique came from the former colonies over the notion of “intercultural theatre” at the end of
the Cold War, condemning the Eurocentric universality of art, cultural appropriation, and cultural exploitation. It may have been that this subversive intellectual enterprise only reinforced the dichotomy, as pointed out
by Knowles. Or rather, it may be better to say that it is at this stage that “two sides” have finally become
conscious of each other. This is because political or economic asymmetry was unashamedly exposed in theperformance/scene of “intercultural theatre,” whether it be “the self vs. the other” “contemporary vs. tradition” or “the West and the Rest,” as “the West” always was the source of funding the intercultural theatre
projects.

9

In the latter part of the book Knowles advocates theconcept of “Intercultural Performance Ecology” andtries to discuss the increasing number of “Global

emergence of new rhizome-like (in large numbers,
without hierarchy, horizontal) intercultural
performance from the bottom.” As a newintercultural performance, “Embracing collaborationand solidarity across practical and material
differences within the ecology of local, urban,
national and global intercultural performance”(p. 59),
instead of “HIT.” He takes the case of his hometown,

Toronto, Canada.
10 P. Farfan and R. Knowles, “Editorial Comment:

A good deal of time has passed since then, and these controversies seem now to have been forgotten, because,
as Knowles has already mentioned in the second half of his book, in 2010, there has been, a tremendous
cultural shift, a phenomenon that we may call the excessive speed of the subsequent globalization process,which has brought about a great deal of the reality of multiculturality in the world［9］. Conflicts framed in toolarge a category such as “the West and the Rest” lost their meaning and the main concern for postcolonialconsciousness spread into more micro-level identity politics or social, artistic, and cultural practices related tocommunity issues. For example, in the “intercultural theatre” feature (Theatre Journal, December 2011) that
included Rayʼs article using the term HIT as mentioned earlier, the discourse that criticized HIT was defined as“classical intercultural theory” (William Petersen)［10］. That is to say, the focus is not on critique of HIT
anymore, but is more on the collection of essays about “intercultural performance,” not “intercultural theatre,”then emerging in a wider geographical area. Thus, it can be seen here that the extension of domain or genre ofpractices from “theatre” to “performance” in 2011 was attracting a different kind of theoretical and sociological academic interests［11］.

Special Issue on Rethinking Intercultural
Performance,” Theatre Journal, vol. 63, no. 4, 2011,

From Intercultural Theater to “Interweaving Performance Cultures”

n.p.
11 From this point on, this article shifts it focus to

Fischer-Lichteʼs theory, but Knowles and other North

American-based “interculturalism” theorists have justpublished the following collection of essays, arguingthat (as we shall see, it also has a momentum to go
beyond postcolonial criticism) “interculturalism” ismore important for the refugee and diaspora
communities than the Fischer-Lichte-like criticism ofinterculturalism. (Charlotte McIvor and Jason King
(eds.), Rethinking Interculturalism and Performance

The concept of “interweaving performance cultures” advocated by German scholar Erika Fischer-Lichte has
emerged in response to the changing environments at the end of the 2000s. Hers was not only an invention ofa concept, but she founded an international and interdisciplinary research institute with that name in 2008 at
the Free University of Berlin. The institute invited researchers and artists from all over the world as short-term
fellows until 2018 and came up with a wide variety of interdisciplinary academic achievements. Note also thatthe full name of the institute is International Research Center “Interweaving Performance Cultures,” that is, it
has “international” in its title not intercultural［12］.

Now. NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.)

12 Fisher Lichte says that “interweaving performance

cultures” is an English translation of “Verflechtungen
von Theaterkulturen,” but that German and English

are not entirely the same (Erika Fischer-Lichte (et al.).
The Politics of Interweaving Performance Cultures.
NY: Routledge, 2014, p. 11).
13 Ibid., pp. 1-21.

In the preface “Interweaving Performance Cultures: Rethinking ʻIntercultural Theaterʼ – Towards an Experience and Theory Beyond Postcolonialism” in The Politics of Interweaving Performance Cultures［13］, the firstacademic output of the Institute, Fisher-Lichte shows some doubts about the theoretical validity of the termintercultural theatre, overlapping, to some extent, Knowles ways of thinking as mentioned above. While
delicately distancing herself from Knowlesʼ North American stance, she then goes on to conceptualize someemerging trends in contemporary art and cultural practices as “interweaving performance cultures.”
The notion of intercultural theatre presupposes that there is the thing called culture that you are supposed togo out of so that you can meet the other(s) in the middle ground (inter-). Accordingly, it implies that one issupposed to “represent” that culture in its entirety. “Interweaving performance cultures,” however, literallymeans that culture does not point to any tangible substance, thus the word culture is in plural. The notion only
mentions the process of “interweaving” from which texture(s) rather than solid objects are born.
Many strands are plied into a thread; many such threads are then woven into a piece of cloth, which thus
consists of diverse strands and threads. . . without necessarily remaining recognizable individually. They aredyed, plied and interwoven, forming particular patterns without allowing the viewer to trace each strand back

2

ESSAY

to its origin. On the other hand, a process of interweaving does not necessarily result in the production of awhole. In it, mistakes, errors, failures, and even small disasters might occur when unintended knots appear in
the cloth, when threads unravel or flow apart, when the proportion of the dyes is off, or the cloth woven
becomes stained. The process of weaving is not necessarily smooth or straightforward［14］.
However, Fisher-Lichte does not suggest that it is sufficient for many case studies to be generated that focus onsuch individuality and detail because there is a “utopian dimension” to it. She notes that performance has a“paradigmatic role in society.” In other words, she believes performance may bring about the possibility ofparadigm change in which peopleʼs values are challenged and changed.

14 Ibid., p. 11.
15 Ibid., pp. 11-12. Italics mine.

In performance, new forms of social coexistence may be tried out, or they simply emerge. In this sense, processesof interweaving performance cultures can and quite often do provide an experimental framework for experiencing the utopian potential of culturally diverse and globalized societies by realizing an aesthetic which gives
shape to unprecedented collaborative policies in society. By permanently probing the emergence, stabilization,and destabilization of cultural identities, these performances can transfer their participants into states ofin-betweenness, which allow them to anticipate a future wherein the journey itself, the permanence oftransition, and the state of liminality, is indeed constitutive of their experience. What is perceived as anaesthetic experience in these performances will be experienced as everyday life in the future［15］.
It is easy to criticize here that an exceptional tradition of German public theatre system is taken for granted.
Fisher-Lichte, however, uses the term performance rather than theater. If we refer to what is called “aesthetic”
here as “fiction” we do not need to be too negative about the assertion that “utopian potential” in the practiceof “interweaving performance cultures” as a place/process for envisioning the future. And, she says, it may
lead to finding a path or hope to summon some sense of universality and collaborative future beyond postcolonialism, which has proved only to strengthen the dichotomy. Therefore, the research center for the interdisciplinary or the intercultural has to be “international” rather than interdisciplinary or intercultural because,
after the experience of postcolonialism, basing the theoretical ground on the reality of current geopoliticalformations, it is obvious, in one way or the other, the framework of the nation-state is still functioning. Only
assuming that it does, we can envision a new sense of universality with the notion of collaborative future
through diverse practices of “interweaving performance cultures.”Intercultural Theatre in Japan (1)What about in Japan? There have been cases since the Meiji period in which works and artists were invitedfrom the West to perform, and they continue to do so, depending on the situation of each of respective
periods. However, when we look at the time when the above-mentioned intercultural theatre became acontroversial issue, we can at least sense a certain kind of contemporaneousness, probably because of theworld historical situation of the end of the cold war. This is not just because Brookʼs intercultural theatre
Mahabharata was seen in Japan. It is not because Suzuki Tadashi was discussed as intercultural theatre artist
in Western discursive space, owing to his adaptation of some Western texts such as Greek tragedies andShakespeare. This is because, since the 1980s, the issue of intercultural theatre has emerged in a broader
context, in relation to Japan's foreign policy as a nation-state. However, in the case of Japan, the geographicaland imaginative framework of Japan was still intact, and the national framework was not so shaken. Therefore, the Western concept of intercultural was not used, and the prefix international such as in international
co-production and international collaboration continued to be used without being questioned.
The Japan Foundation (JF hereafter), which was established in 1972 and has close ties with the Ministry ofForeign Affairs, was at the center of this trend. Founded as a public organization, JF responded to the needs ofthe times around the time of the bubble economy, when Japan was strengthening its political and economic
ties with the Asian region. It established the ASEAN Cultural Center in 1990 and the Asia Center in 1995 andstarted to introduce arts and culture in Asian regions including the performing arts. The project had specialists
assigned to each genre to conduct research and introduce them, and one of the centerʼs specialist, Hata Yuki,
played a major role in the genre of performing arts. As for her work, there is an interview I conducted (“Connecting the theater people of Japan: The Japan Foundation international collaboration program.”［16］) where
you can see how something that began as a research project gradually evolved into an invitation project andthen into an international collaboration.

16 https://performingarts.jp/E/pre_interview/0711/1.
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Of the series of international co-production led by JF, it was Lear of 1997 that touched on the issues ofintercultural theatre in Anglo-European contexts. The title Lear comes from Shakespeareʼs King Lear, but as
can be understood from the fact that the word “King” is missing from the title, this play is an adaptation of the“Interculturalism” and “International Co-production:” For a Historically Accurate Appreciation of Pratthana3

17 For an overview of the performance at the premiere(1997), please visit https://www.jpf.go.jp/j/project/culture/archive/information/old/9708/08-08.html. It
was subsequently rerun in 1999 as part of Hong
Kong, Singapore, Jakarta, Perth (Australia) (https://www.jpf.go.jp/j/project/culture/archive/information/
old/9901/01-11.html)
18 Rustom Bharucha, “Consumed in Singapore: The

original. Kishida Rio, a playwright from Japan, wrote the text and the production was directed by Singaporean
director Ong Ken Sen, whose work had been performed in Japan several times since 1992 with his artistic
talent being recognized very early by JF. It is a large-scale work in which artists from various Asian regions,mainly leading traditional performing arts practitioners participated［17］. For this work, Rustom Bharucha,
known for his criticism of Brookʼs Mahabharata, published a severely critical monograph and journal article
entitled “Consumed in Singapore: The Intercultural Spectacle of Lear.”［18］Intercultural Spectacle of Lear,” Theater, Volume 31,
Number 1, Winter 2001, pp. 107 -127. This paper was
also originally published as a monograph (2000) in
Singapore.

19 Ibid., p. 122. Italics mine.
20 On Keng Sen has made a lot of statements about Learand Bharucha uses them to develop the criticisms
here. Bharucha, for example, cites the following
statement to criticize: “ The resolution is not achieved
by killing the father. The resolution has to go deeper.
I donʼt have a solution for it. Itʼs more a statement ofour current situation. You have the Tiananmen
Square happening, the student uprising in Indonesia,

This detailed Lear critique by Bharucha has an extremely complex logical structure and is difficult to summarize. In the process of scrutinizing various socio-political historical contexts and the actual performance, Bharucha gives a certain degree of favorable appreciation regarding the performanceʼs aesthetic value and Kishidaʼsfeminist reading and transformation of the original. However, he comes to the conclusion that Ong is simply
duplicating the problems of Western interculturalists, i.e., the issue of the ownership and decontextualization
and asks if Ong is after all exploiting and consuming “Asia.” This is due in the first place to the economic
asymmetry that exists in and among Asia, with Singapore as the center and Japan (JF) as the same first world
status, providing funds. Bharucha criticizes Ong for accepting that the only option available was “consuming
the Other.”and the Anwar situation in Malaysia. We always begin
a new era with hope, but it invariably degenerates
into something else. And so I think we need to find a
new type of uprising” (quoted on p. 122).
21 Bharucha is particularly critical of how Ong utilizes
the Flying Circus Project that was being organized by
Ong. The project was held at Theatre Works Ong as
an artistic director from 1996 to 2013, and by
Bharuchaʼs definition, it was an “inter-Asian

workshops” inviting artists and researchers fromvarious genres not only from Asia but also fromvarious other regions, where various exchanges took
place. If the result is only used in a spectacle like Learand “consumed,” what is the meaning of all theexchange, Bharucha asks. (p. 124)

22 Also, while Ong calls Desdemona “ugly sister to Learʼs
Cinderella” (quoted in p, 15), Bharucha neverthelesscriticized it as harshly as Lear. (Rustom Bharucha,“Foreign Asia/Foreign Shakespeare: Disposing Notes

on New Asian Interculturality Postcoloniality, andReconciliation,” Theatre Journal, Volume 56, Number
1, March 2004, pp. 1-28.
23 Noda Hideki and Hidenaga Otori, Akaoni no Chosen(The Challenge of Red Demon), Tokyo: Seido-sha,
2006.
24 Ibid., pp.14-16.

At one level, the intercultural “consumption of the Other” [in Lear] can be regarded as a self-critique, but it isalso implicitly self-congratulatory, legitimizing the absence of any real respect for the Other, who can never be
regarded on equal terms but who is̶ultimately̶fit only to be consumed. This is a cynical position to mymind that can do nothing to transform the existing inequities of cultural exchange, both within the borders of
the state and beyond［19］.
Here, Bharucha raises strong doubts about Ongʼs claim that unlike previous Western-led intercultural theatre
works, this is a new intercultural performance in the Asian region, as it presents a fresh vision of contemporary issues of patriarchy in Asia［20］. And Bharucha argues the need to look not at “intercultural,” but at“intra-cultural,” an interactive interactions and dynamism within their own cultural sphere, more specifically,
for instance, how one can relate to globalizationʼs contradictions manifested in “multiculturalization” of thestreets of Singapore. What will change even if we can promote the diversity and strength of the performing
arts in Asia by assigning leading actors of Asian traditional theatrical forms? That is exactly what
Bharucha asks［21］.
My overarching simplification of the most important question in this essay could be rephrased as the questionof why we have to go for the Asian version of the Eurocentric intercultural theatre, if we have a sense of
belonging to the Asian region. And this question -- or I personally think itʼs a paradigm now -- has become oneof the criteria for thinking about international collaboration since Lear. For this reason, the international
collaborations that make Ong keep engaged in creating a different kind of intercultural work, such as Desdemona (Adelaide Theatre Festival/Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, 2000), the second collaboration with Kishida Rio
and The Spirit Play (Singapore, 2000), the text by Singaporean playwright Kuo Pao Kun, and an different
version of The Spirit Play, renamed Dreamtime in Morishita Studios (Tokyo, 2001). In those intercultural
collaborative work, Ong seems to have responded to Bharuchaʼs critique by paying more attention to thespecific contexts and “the Other” and by avoiding an empty sense of the spectacle［22］.
Intercultural Theatre in Japan (2)Returning to the topic of JFʼs international co-production, aside from the project led by Hata, another one
featuring Hideki Nodaʼs Akaoni (Red Demon) had been underway since 1997. This is described in the book
Akaoni no Chosen (The Red Demonʼs Challenge), co-authored by Noda and Otori Hidenaga, so please refer tothe details in the book［23］. However, it is questionable whether this project can be called an international
co-production in the sense that it translates existing plays into the target culture and presents them with actors
from the location (the UK, Thailand and Korea). Moreover, while the Thai version of Akaoni was premiered in
1997 at the Setagaya Public Theater in Japan and premiered in Thailand the following year, JF is not involvedin the London version (2003).
This form, which could be called “Bringing-in/Going-in” type, was not so common at least in those days, andin the book mentioned above, many of Nodaʼs own descriptions were devoted to the struggle to realize theLondon version because “the scene of the contemporary Thai theater needed my directorship. But the United
Kingdom did not.”［24］A postcolonial critic like Bharucha would have criticized Nodaʼs neo-colonialist attitudein that single statement. In other words, she might have wondered who has the right to declare “the scene of
the contemporary Thai theatre needed my directorship.” Moreover, it was a project in which the Japanese side

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ESSAY

provided funds to perform a Japanese play in their local language. In any case, this type of “Bringing-in/
Going-in” international co-production that Noda has conducted in Thailand and South Korea will continue tothis day under the leadership of JF.
The subsequent international collaboration by JF Asia Center led by Hata since Lear took on a more experimental tinge. The method, however, was consistent. Taking into account the public nature of JF, rather thanreintroducing the contemporary theatre of East and South-East Asia that are already known, Hata expanded
her geographic perspective to South Asia. The basic approach was to be present at various local performances,
talk with artists, and assemble projects. The first project was called the Five Asian Countries Collaboration,
and after a two-year process, a performance work called Memories of a Legend: Samarkand, Kabul, Hindustan
was created (2004/5).
In this production, one director was chosen from India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, and three
actors were recommended by each director to perform all together in the final work. Also, in 2003, there wasan opportunity for the works of each director to be introduced to Japanese audiences at once. In addition, by
repeatedly holding meetings with the artists concerned, they were able to confirm with each other what
theatrical philosophy, aesthetics and methodologies they had. After such an elaborate process, the next step
was for all the performers to gather in India and hold a workshop before the work was created while they werestaying in Japan［25］. During the long process of this creation, there were sometimes heated arguments, and in
the end, The Baburnama, a memoir of Babur (1483-1530.), the first emperor of the Mughal Empire, became thesource text. The final form of this collaborative staging was that each of the five directors created a scene
inspired by the memoir, which was still quite an adventurous international co-production.

25 https://performingarts.jp/E/pre_interview/0711/1.
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In the following Performing Women: Three Reinterpretations from Greek Tragedy, the participating countries
expanded westward, with one director each from Uzbekistan and Iran, and Abilash Pillai, an Indian director
who had participated in the past JF international collaborations, was selected, and the scenes were created ineach base country. The final work was first performed in New Delhi, India, and then performed in Japan at
Theater Cocoon in Shibuya, Tokyo (2007). Hata, who worked on international collaboration projects in thisway, explained the idea behind it as follows:This form of production perhaps contains some risk in terms of production quality compared to the usual stylewhere all the decision-making rights are entrusted to the talents of a single director. On the other hand, having
a single director direct a production with a multinational cast is quite commonplace in the world of opera.
However, I believe that the real significance of international collaboration is having people of different
cultures and different methodologies working together on a production on an equal standing and with equal
decision-making rights. And that may not always mean having joint directorships, but this basic concept ofmulticultural artists working on equal standing is one that I want to continue to pursue. Of course, mostimportant of all, however, is the substance and quality of the resulting work. Because that resulting work is the
only form in which the meaning of the project can be communicated［26］.

26 https://performingarts.jp/E/pre_interview/0711/2.
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I personally participated in the above two international collaborations as a project advisor, and I had a lot ofhands-on experience with the evolutionary form of creation and what Hata called “risk.” She does not mention
Lear here, but the difference between these two projects and Lear is that Japanese artists do not participate as
key members of the performance, such as directors, dramatists, or actors. In Memories of a Legend Hamai Koji
participated in costume, and in Performing Women, Nakayama Daisuke in stage design, Oishi Shinichiro inlighting design, and musicians Kunihiro Kazuki and Shibata Reki participated only in performances in Tokyoand Seoul in the scene connecting each part. The biggest political risk of this series of projects was thatJapanese artists were not visibly participating in the international collaboration that Japan funded.
Perhaps because of that, I have not heard much about these two projects, especially from the postcolonial
critics. For one thing, the postcolonial critique itself may be on the decline as we enter the 1990s. Not only
that, but in principle, the two projects presented a direction that was intra-cultural a la Bharuchaʼs critique.
This was apparent when a director was invited from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, which
are geographically close to each other but which have had diverse and complex histories interrelated. On theother hand, in the latter case, we came to a conclusion that the participants would take up one female characterfrom Greek tragedies and each creates a 45-minute performance. The participating directors this time had
enough experience in the areas where they were based, and the showcase image of three separate works cameto the fore. Therefore, unlike the former, Performing Women became, in principle, a relativism in which
differences based on common themes were presented rather than an intra-cultural negotiation and contradiction. For the three countries of India, Iran, and Uzbekistan, historical backgrounds and cultures were so“Interculturalism” and “International Co-production:” For a Historically Accurate Appreciation of Pratthana5different that they had to do so. We deliberately made relativism our principle, avoiding forced mixing andemphasis on commonality. As a result, the audiences in New Delhi, Tokyo, and Seoul where this production
was performed are asked to “interweave performance cultures” of the three performances presented there, as
well as the audiences in Japan who may have watched the work live, or on the NHK TV program “Arts
Theatre” (November 8, 2008)［27］.

27 The text of Performing Women: Three
Reinterpretations from Greek Tragedy with an
introduction, directorsʼ comments and someInterweaving Performance Cultures in Pratthana

additional material are collected in Butai Geijutu(Performing Arts), vol. 14., pp. 204-282, 2008.
28 The term “international co-production” appears in
the guidelines of the Agency for Cultural Affairs andin the document called “The Third Basic Act on the

Promotion of Culture and Art,” which was decided
by the cabinet meeting in 2012. In accordance withthis act, the Agency for Cultural Affairs started
financial support by creating a category called“international co-production” in “International Art

Exchange Support Program”. Considering that

“international co-production” was mentioned only inmedia arts and films in the “Second Basic Act for the

Promotion of Culture and Art” in 2008, it can be said
that around this time the Agency for Cultural Affairs
started supporting “international co-production” in

Ten years later, Pratthana was created. In the meantime, the initiative for international collaboration wastransferred from JF to the Agency for Cultural Affairs (ACA, hereafter), and with the acceleration of globalization, ACA became involved in international collaboration, which had increased in number, by providing
financial assistance in the form of “support for international collaboration”［28］. This systematization ofinternational collaboration by ACA gave national legitimacy to the term international collaboration, which
could have sounded anachronistic in the era of globalization at least up to the first ten years of the 21st century.
Therefore, from a fundamentalist and formalistic perspective, we can assume that artists who apply for ACF
grant are expected to “shoulder the burden of the nation” i.e., implicitly and/or explicitly representing
something about Japan as a nation-state. On the other hand, JF, which had to scale down its activities for aperiod of time, will seek a new generation of international collaboration, especially with projects of new Asia
Center, which was reestablished in 2014. And an advanced example of this is Pratthana.

performing arts, which led to an increase in theOn the outside, at least, Pratthana resembles Hideki Nodaʼs Akaoni project, which we have already called“Bringing-in/Going-in” type collaboration. This is because Okada Toshiki, a Japanese native, “went in”

number of works with such a name.

Thailand for international collaboration, for a project financially supported by JF, a public organization ofJapan, “brought in.” Okada, however, did not choose the path of Akaoni in which his existing plays were translated into Thai and performed by Thai actors. This was because Okada, who is also a playwright, adapted anovel written by a Thai novelist, Uthis Haemamool, into a play script, and Okada directed Thai actors, which
was quite unique. As far as the creative process is concerned, it is obvious that there is a complex multilayered,literal and metaphorical translation process. By itself, it can be said that the definition of Pratthana has
become unfit for the conventional definition of intercultural theatre, whether led by the Westerners or Asians.
Okada was already involved in a multiyear project in Germany, that is a typical “Bringing-in/Going-in”
project, funded not by Japan but by Münchner Kammerspiele, a municipal theatre in the city of Munich. Thisis a three-year long-term project to translate Okadaʼs newly written plays into German, and for Okada to direct
the ensemble actors of the theater, and they are to perform it as a repertoire. The Munich project, therefore,
took the form of a new kind of “Brought-in/Going-in” rather than “Bringing-in/Going-in,” in which Okada
had already reached a new horizon of international collaboration or intercultural theatre.
As symbolized by the start of the “support for international coproduction” by ACA, it should also be notedthat there were environmental changes in the 2010s, such as the implementation of a wide variety of interna-

Memories of a Legend: Samarkand, Kabul, Hindustan (Tokyo performance, 2004).

Performing Women: Three Reinterpretations from Greek Tragedy (Tokyo performance, 2007).

Photo by Hitoshi Furuya, provided by The Japan Foundation.

Photo by Hitoshi Furuya, provided by The Japan Foundation

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tional collaboration on a wide range of scales, large and small, and an increase in the number of options andreferences for “What and how.”［29］Therefore, it may be said for the time being that Pratthana is a project inwhich the framework and methodology of the international collaboration that has already been patterned andcan be assumed had become fixed to some extent. In that sense, if it means spending more time researching anddiscussing its creative process among participants than any other case, itʼs just “conscientious” postcolonial,
not neocolonial project. The question, therefore, becomes, how the actual performance was like.

29 Following the change of government in 2004, JF was
subject to a screening of projects, which resulted in alarge-scale reduction of its budget. Before that, in
2009, the Asia Center was integrated into theheadquarters, and was effectively closed. In 2014,
however, the Asia Center was again temporarily
established within JF, with a limited time of fivefiscal years until 2020. The Asia Center, which has
just begun its activities, has become involved in active

The actual performances that already took place in Bangkok and Paris, as other commentators have alreadywritten, looked very different from previous Okadaʼs work. The actors were eleven Thai. Tsukahara Yuya of
contact Gonzo as scenographer and choreographer, Matsumi Takuya as scenography assistant and video, Araki
Masamitsu as sound, Fujitani Kyoko as costume, Pornpan Arayaveerasid as lighting and Witchaya Atamart asassistant director. As Shimanuki Taisuke, who saw the work in Bangkok, pointed out, all of them were “involved in the performance, as if they were also acting in it.” “The technical booth is in plain view from theaudience seating, and the cast and staff members busily go back and forth across the playground as chora to
move the scattered set articles and equipment, and to change clothes.［30］”international exchange with Southeast Asia. Althoughthese projects include a variety of projects, a symbolic
event in the field of performing arts is the fact that,since 2015, the TPAM (Tokyo Performing Arts
Meeting), to which JF has long supported, has
focused its efforts on exchanges with Asia as theme of“Asia Focus.” In this way, ideological and financial

incentives towards “Asia Focus” and “international

co-production” were once again implemented under

the initiative of JF.
30 Shimanuki Taisuke, “The Story of Your Life:First of all, we should note that staff members were a mixed team of Japan and Thailand. The style of theperformance itself, in which everything including the technical booth is bare, and the staff is visibly involvedin the performance, may be “exceptional in the context of [Okadaʼs] career” (ibid.) but is not particularly new
in terms of theatre history. Rather, the issue is why Okada and others chose such a performance style. This kindof obvious fictionality of staging was one of the major features of this performance.
As for the actors, they are not assigned to a single character during the four hours of performance, and theyplay the various characters of the play depending on the scene. Even the actors who are not performing
sometimes remain on the stage and watch the scenes, so that it is clear to whom the performance and speech
are directed. There are many scenes in which the actor does not face the audience but face to other actors.

“Pratthana – A Portrait of Possession,” http://

pratthana.net/news/features/bangkok_review_en/
31 Ibid
32 Sasaki Atsushi, “Theater of Geo-bodies: Watching
Toshiki Okadaʼs “Pratthana – A Portrait ofPossession,” http://pratthana.net/news/features/a-review-of-pratthana-a-portrait-of-possessionwritten-by-atsushi-sasaki/
33 Ibid.a
34 Fischer-Lichte, ibid., p.11.

Shimanuki described the texture and semiotic layout of the time and space of the performance that resulted
from “a total of just under 20 people moving in all directions” as transforming “the black-box space into astreet in overcrowded Bangkok.”［31］In other words, the production of a space-time in this performance has acertain degree of resonance from the spacio-time deployment in the original work, in which Uthis Haemamoolsemi-autobiography unfolds, overlapping itself with the tumultuous history of contemporary Thailand.
For this issue, Sasaki Atsushi, who was present at the premiere in Bangkok, has developed a more in-depth
discussion. Sasaki refers to the fact that this play has a certain influence from Thongchai Winichakulʼs conceptof “geo-body” as “an imagined community,” which was related to the history of Thai modernization, andargues that Okada translates “geo-body” into “theatre-body.”［32］The term “geo-body” refers to a national bodythat the nation or people in Thailand have acquired as a result of its modernization, i.e., Westernization andtheir geographic and “objective” spatial perception of themselves. Of course, this body is already always
structured in negotiations with the traditional sense of space (the formation of semi-secular identities as
subjects of a kingdom by their spatial and geographical relations). And it continues to be constructed by much
too obvious Thai state powers. Sasaki calls it the “geo-body that had been ravaged by history, torn to pieces,and dismembered,” and says that the gesture, style of existence and performance of the actors in “geo-body”
were “reconstituted by all of the real bodies who were on the stage,”［33］while letting the audience be consciousof the specific Thai history and references to the personal history depicted in Pratthana by Haemamool.
Sasakiʼs analysis is relevant, but in the context of this essay, the hallmark of Pratthana is the lack of singularperspective and the sense of authorship. It may have been Tsukahara Yuya, who not only stays on the stage
almost all the time but also intervened in the performance quite visibly that brought such a diffusing texture to
the performance as objects and gestures reminiscent of Tsukaharaʼs past activities as an artist and a performer
are introduced discretely and sporadically. That being the case, what happens in the performance space is the“interweaving” of the elements of a very complex and different instances, which is reminiscent of the description already-cited Fisher-Lichteʼs “interweaving performance cultures.”
The elements such as sounds and visual images, the presence of concrete or abstract objects, the physical andfacial expressions and voice and the texture and color of the body and clothing, the light and shadow producedby lighting, etc., are not only for audience to appreciate the singular telos of the performance. These elements
as “strands are plied into a thread; many such threads are then woven into a piece of cloth, which thus consistsof diverse strands and threads,” while in the process, “unintended knots” may “appear in the cloth,” and“threads unravel or flow apart.”［34］Needless to say, the various attributes, which can be recognized within the“Interculturalism” and “International Co-production:” For a Historically Accurate Appreciation of Pratthana7

category of Thai and Japanese nationality and culture emerge not only at the meta level but also at the level ofliteral symbolism and semiosis. Or, it cannot be said that the individuality of each artist is not registered in thespace and time of the moment. It is more deceptive to argue otherwise.
In this performance, however, taking on this uniqueness and specificity made it possible to test “the new formsof social coexistence” between the bilateral of Thailand and Japan, rather than the multinational/multicultural, and as a result, the form “simply emerge[d].” In this way, by diluting the singular authorship and increasing
the number of authors, Pratthana not only banished the power from the contemporary theater, which wassynonymous with the space structured by hegemonic power relations, but also became a testing ground for a
utopian project in which “ new forms of social coexistence” was raised. Yes, if we refer back to Fisher-Lichte
again, it is true that Pratthana “provide an experimental framework for experiencing the utopian potential ofculturally diverse and globalized societies.”［35］In this way, Pratthana became a good example of a new
category of “interweaving performance cultures” far away from historical genres of “international co-production” and “intercultural theatre.”

35 Ibid., p. 11-12.

Tadashi Uchino
Born in Tokyo in 1957, and with an MA (American
Literature, 1984) and PhD (Performance Studies, 2001)
from the University of Tokyo, Uchino is now Professorof Performance Studies at the Department of JapaneseStudies, Gakushuin Womenʼs College, focusing on
Japanese and American contemporary theater. He wasa professor of Performance Studies at the Graduate
School of Arts and Sciences at Tokyo University until
2017. Publications include The Location of “J” Theatre:
Towards Transnational Mobilities (2016, University ofTokyo Press).

Photo by Takuya Matsumi

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