Amanda Rogers - Böcker

This book makes a significant contribution to interdisciplinary engagements between Theatre Studies and Cultural Geography in its analysis of how theatre articulates transnational geographies of Asian culture and identity. Deploying a geographical approach to transnational culture, Rogers analyses the cross-border relationships that exist within and between Asian American, British East Asian, and South East Asian theatres, investigating the effect of transnationalism on the construction of identity, the development of creative praxis, and the reception of works in different social fields. This book therefore examines how practitioners engage with one another across borders, and details the cross-cultural performances, creative opportunities, and political alliances that result. By viewing ethnic minority theatres as part of global — rather than simply national — cultural fields, Rogers argues that transnational relationships take multiple forms and have varying impetuses that cannot always be equated to diasporic longing for a homeland or as strategically motivated for economic gain. This argument is developed through a series of chapters that examine how different transnational spatialities are produced and re-worked through the practice of theatre making, drawing upon an analysis of rehearsals, performances, festivals, and semi-structured interviews with practitioners. The book extends existing discussions of performance and globalization, particularly through its focus on the multiplicity of transnational spatiality and the networks between English-language Asian theatres. Its analysis of spatially extensive relations also contributes to an emerging body of research on creative geographies by situating theatrical praxis in relation to cross-border flows. Performing Asian Transnationalisms demonstrates how performances reflect and rework conventional transnational geographies in imaginative and innovative ways.

This book makes a significant contribution to interdisciplinary engagements between Theatre Studies and Cultural Geography in its analysis of how theatre articulates transnational geographies of Asian culture and identity. Deploying a geographical approach to transnational culture, Rogers analyses the cross-border relationships that exist within and between Asian American, British East Asian, and South East Asian theatres, investigating the effect of transnationalism on the construction of identity, the development of creative praxis, and the reception of works in different social fields. This book therefore examines how practitioners engage with one another across borders, and details the cross-cultural performances, creative opportunities, and political alliances that result. By viewing ethnic minority theatres as part of global — rather than simply national — cultural fields, Rogers argues that transnational relationships take multiple forms and have varying impetuses that cannot always be equated to diasporic longing for a homeland or as strategically motivated for economic gain. This argument is developed through a series of chapters that examine how different transnational spatialities are produced and re-worked through the practice of theatre making, drawing upon an analysis of rehearsals, performances, festivals, and semi-structured interviews with practitioners. The book extends existing discussions of performance and globalization, particularly through its focus on the multiplicity of transnational spatiality and the networks between English-language Asian theatres. Its analysis of spatially extensive relations also contributes to an emerging body of research on creative geographies by situating theatrical praxis in relation to cross-border flows. Performing Asian Transnationalisms demonstrates how performances reflect and rework conventional transnational geographies in imaginative and innovative ways.

Choreographing Cambodia is an open-access interdisciplinary exploration of the connections between geopolitics, embodiment, and post-conflict cultural aesthetics, engaged with via a detailed and empirically grounded analysis of contemporary dance in Cambodia. Popular imaginations of Cambodia still primarily associate the country with the genocidal regime of the Khmer Rouge (1975-1979), as war-torn and violent. However, young people under 30 who did not live through the Khmer Rouge now make up over 65% of Cambodia’s population and see their country as a modern, developed nation. This book examines the role of contemporary dance in forging these new imaginaries of Cambodia, and the entwined legacies of both war and peace on the creative desires of this young generation. It attends to the contestations and contradictions that result, and examines how contemporary dance navigates these tensions to produce an expanded socio-political field. The imaginaries and worlds that are expressed and enacted through dance, are thus shown to simultaneously intervene in, and be shaped by, geopolitical forces. As such, the book is concerned with how contemporary dance offers new insights into the entanglement of geopolitics, choreography and identity, whilst also offering the first sustained analysis of contemporary dance in Cambodia.The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by UKRI.