Asianizing Australian Theatre

Abstract

While recent Aboriginal incursions into mainstream Australian theatre are strongly associated with the cultural politics of reconciliation and, indeed, perceived in some quarters as exemplary of the commitment to cultural rapprochement found lacking in the present conservative government, the Asian influence is closely connected to public policy and the arts establishment. As noted in Chapter 1, Asia has figured periodically in the national theatrical imaginary as a site of both desire and disavowal since the mid-1800s. This ambivalence continued to inform cross-cultural theatrical activities in the region in complex and sometimes contradictory ways as Asian themes and art forms became highly visible on the main stage in the latter part of the twentieth century, a trend facilitated by the government-led campaign for cultural and economic (re)alignment with the Asian region. The Asianizing process in theatre has occurred less through the emergence of a distinct body of works and practices by/about Australians of Asian descent, although this is an important aspect of the phenomenon (see Chapter 6), than through the incorporation and valorization of (selected) elements of Asianness in the performing arts industry, in a range of political, aesthetic and commercial sites. While there is some evidence to support a reading of this process as a form of neo-orientalist cosmopolitanism, we contend that Asianization, like indigenization, is a multifaceted and dynamic process that presents opportunities for exploitation and commoditization as well as prospects for mutually productive and sustained cross-cultural engagement.

The simple truth for Australia is that unless we succeed in Asia, we succeed nowhere.

(Paul Keating, quoted in Willox, 1995: 8)