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As the New Order government became increasingly authoritarian, censoring and crushing public opposition openly and often brutally, there was a clear shift in playwriting style from allegorical fairytales of wordplay, humor and oblique reference to a more direct engagement, interrogation, and call to arms. All in all, Indonesian drama during the New Order provides a fascinating window into a society caught between the legacy of tradition, the challenge of repression, and a strong desire for democ...

Noh plays live on as a magnificent artistic heritage handed down from the high culture of medieval Japan. Among the major types of Japanese drama, the No, which is often called the classical theatre of Japan, has had perhaps the greatest attraction for the West. Introduced to Europe and America through the translations of Arthur Waley and Ezra Pound, it found an ardent admirer in William Butler Yeats, who described it as a form of drama 'distinguished, indirect, and symbolic' and created plays i...

Die traditionellen Tanzstile Sri Lankas entwickelten sich in Relation zu ihrer rituellen Funktion als Kommunikation mit Gottern und Damonen. Die vorliegende Studie unterscheidet zwischen einem alteren Typus der kollektiven Riten und einem jungeren der individuellen Riten, deren stilistische Differenzierung aus ihrer sozialen Orientierung heraus analysiert wird. Wahrend sich die traditionellen Tanzritualisten aus mannlichen Vertretern einer niederen Kaste rekrutierten, eroffnete der Anfang der 40...

Although he has been touted as Japan's finest prewar playwright, few of Kishida Kunio's works have been translated into English. This volume brings together for the first time representative plays that span the entire course of Kishida's career, including in this expanded edition, a new translation of his maiden work, Autumn in the Tyrols. The plays collected in this anthology are the ones critics have regarded as Kishida's best and that the dramatist himself preferred. An introductory essay by...

This is the first major anthology of plays written by women in translation. It represents a very significant intervention of gender in the discourse of Indian theatre, it draws attention to the possibilities of renewal and re-invigoration of the theatre environment through the work of women playwrights. It includes 12 hitherto unpublished plays from major Indian languages including Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Hindi, Urdu and Bengali translated into English, mak...

Jana Sanskriti Centre for the Theatre of the Oppressed, based in West Bengal, is probably the largest and longest lasting Forum Theatre operation in the world. It was considered by Augusto Boal to be the chief exponent of his methodology outside of its native Brazil. This book is a unique first-hand account - by the group's artistic director Sanjoy Ganguly - of Jana Sanskriti's growth and development since its founding in 1985, which has resulted in a national Forum Theatre network throughout In...

Mistress & Maid, one of the greatest tragedies of Chinese drama, is here available for the first time in English. Acclaimed translator Cyril Birch presents the bittersweet tale of Bella, daughter of the Wang family, her maid Petal, and the young scholar Shen Chun. After her father reneges on her marital pact, Bella refuses to renounce her love for Shen, with whom she has vowed to share "in life one room, in death one tomb." The subversion of both conventional morality and the arranged marriage t...

Men in this town were born with mouths that can right wrongs with a few words. Why are you too timid to speak? As she is about to be executed for a murder she didn't commit, young widow Dou Yi vows that, if she is innocent, snow will fall in midsummer and a catastrophic drought will strike. Three years later, a businesswoman visits the parched, locust-plagued town to take over an ailing factory. When her young daughter is tormented by an angry ghost, the new factory owner must expose the inju...