East Asian Performance
East Asian Performance at the University of Reading
The Department of Film, Theatre & Television at the University of Reading is equipped with a range of resources to facilitate a unique teaching and research culture in East Asian performance.
Not only is an understanding of East Asia becoming increasingly important in the modern world, but East Asian performance has played an integral role in the development of modern Western theatre practice. Gordon-Craig, W.B. Yeats, Piscator, Meyerhold, Brecht, Beckett, Grotowski, Brook, Mnouchkine and Sellars are some of the key Western theatre practitioners who have responded to East Asian forms as a part of their work.
The Department is extremely well placed to engage with a wide range of debates surrounding East Asian theatrical forms, their transmission and the politics of national identity.
Japanese Noh Stage
Studying Theatre in China
The Asian Performing Arts Forum
Japanese Noh Stage
In 2009, a rare Japanese Noh stage was donated to the Department by The Robert H. N. Ho Foundation, a Hong Kong-based organisation dedicated to promoting an understanding of Chinese and Buddhist-related arts in the West.
One of the most unique styles of classical Asian theatre in the world, Noh theatre dates from at least the fourteenth century and is intimately connected to both Japanese Buddhism (particularly Zen) and Shinto religious practices. It is a highly restrained and formalised art form, yet Noh's apparent simplicity in staging belies the extreme physical dexterity and skill of the actor and the accompanying musicians and chorus members. Noh performers train from an extremely young age and for many years to be able to perform professionally.
In addition to the stage, the Department owns a collection of Noh masks and costumes. An annual lecture on Noh is given in the Department by a visiting academic or practitioner. The first, in 2010, was given by Janette Cheong, author of the English-language Noh play Pagoda.
Studying Theatre in China
The Department has established strong links with the Shanghai Theatre Academy to facilitate study trips to China. In April 2010, thirteen third-year undergraduate students travelled to the Shanghai Theatre Academy to study Beijing Opera (Jingju) for two weeks. The trip was the culmination of a course on traditional and modern Chinese theatre, and enabled students to get first-hand experience of Beijing Opera theatre training, see Beijing Opera performances and experience the culture of China. Shortly before the end of the trip, the students mounted a short performance in costume.
The Asian Performing Arts Forum
The Asian Performing Arts Forum was founded in June 2010 as a strategic partnership between the East Asian Performance Research Group at the Department of Film, Theatre & Television, University of Reading, the Centre for International Theatre and Performance Research at Royal Holloway, University of London, and Roehampton University's Centre for Dance Research, with the support of the Centre for Creative Collaboration. It brings together UK-based scholars, visiting academics, artists and community members to discuss current research and issues related to the performing arts of Asia as practiced and theorised internationally. The aim is to foster new research, disseminate the work of UK and international researchers to relevant communities of interest and transfer knowledge between the arts industry and academia.
The forum sponsors a monthly seminar series which examines the invention of performance traditions, relations between traditional performance practice and identity politics, rural-urban negotiations, training and education, heritage management, detraditionalization and mediatisation of performance, transnational flows of performing arts, interculturalism, tensions between modernity and residual performance practices and emergent post-traditional performance formations in the context of modern Asia.
Blog: http://asianperformingartsforum.wordpress.com/
For more information on the forum, or research on East Asian performance at Reading, contact: ashley.thorpe@reading.ac.uk 