Inhalt: | 1. Politics, performance, the contemporary and Southeast Asia / Marcus Cheng Chye Tan and Charlene Rajendran -- 2. 'Yesterday's dreams, tomorrow's promise': performing a pan-ASEAN archipelagic identity at age 50 / William Peterson and Reagan Romero Maiquez -- 3. 'Pornography disguised as art': bare/d bodies, biopolitics and multicultural tolerance in Singapore / Marcus Cheng Chye Tan -- 4. Baling in a time of BERSIH: embodying historical transcripts as enactments of resistance / Charlene Rajendran -- 5. Staging the banality of social evil : Faust and/in Philippine contemporary social politics / Sir Anril Pineda Tiatco -- 6. A transformative theatre of dialogue: the Makhampom theatre group's negotiation of Thailand's Likay (Theatre) state / Richard Barber and Pongjit Saphakhun -- 7. Intervention, openness and ownership: interview with Ong Keng Sen on festival dramaturgy / Charlene Rajendran -- 8. Wayang kontemporer: the politics of sponsorship and innovation / Miguel Escobar Varela -- 9. Authenticity and contemporary musical theatre in Thailand / Wankwan Polachan -- 10. Bangsokol: A requiem for Cambodia-the politics of memory and an aesthetics of remembrance / Marcus Cheng Chye Tan -- 11. The wheres and whys of Southeast Asia: art and performance in the locating of Southeast Asia today / Farish A. Noor. "Performing Southeast Asia examines contemporary performance practices and their relationship with politics and governance in Southeast Asia in the twenty-first century. In a region haunted historically by strongman politics, authoritarianism and militarism, religious tension and ethnic strife, the chapters reveal how contemporary theatre and performances in the present reflect yet challenge dominant socio-political discourses. The authors analyse works of political commitment and conviction, created and performed by Southeast Asian artists, as modes and platforms of reaction and resistance to the shifting political climates that inform contemporary life in urban Southeast Asia. The discussions center on issues of state hegemonies and biopolitics, finance and sponsorship, social liberalism and conservatism, the relevance of history and tradition, and globalisation and cultural practice. These diverse yet related concerns converge on an examination of the efficacies of theatre and performance as means of political intervention and transformation that point to alternative embodiments of political consciousness through which artists propose critical options for rethinking the state, citizenship, identity and belonging in a time of seismic socio-political change. The editors also reframe an understanding of 'the contemporary' not simply as a temporal adjective but, in the context of present Southeast Asia, as a geopolitical condition that shapes artistic and performance practices." -- Publisher's website |
