P R E F A C E : I N T E R P R E T I N G P E R F O R M A N C E S A N D C U LT U R E S

We suggest that the development and appeal of European melodrama are related to cultural
changes in the wake of the French Revolution. We show how the theatre performs issues of
national identity in Germany, Russia, China and Japan in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries.
A t h i rd m a p p i n g : C u l t u r a l p e rf o rm a n c e s ,
t h e a t re , a n d d r a m a

As the reader will notice, we often use two or three terms, sometimes in combination, to
describe our focus: cultural performances, theatre, and drama.

Zarrilli, Phillip B.; McConachie, Bruce; Williams, Gary Jay, Mar 07, 2013, Theatre Histories : An Introduction
Taylor and Francis, Florence, ISBN: 9780203879177

Drama is a term with Western origins that is generally used to describe plays,
collectively or in the singular. Sometimes (not in this book) it carries the implicit sense
of plays as literary works, printed texts to be read as dramatic literature, apart from
performance.
By theatre we usually mean live performances by skilled artists for live audiences,
performances that engage the imagination, emotion, intellect, and cultural sensibilities of
spectators at varying levels. Such performances may or may not take place in purposebuilt theatres.
Performance is used today in the eld of performance studies as a broadly inclusive
term for all the ways in which humans represent themselves in embodied ways. Scholars apply
the term not only to the staging of plays but to religious rituals, state ceremonies, carnival
festivals, political demonstrations, athletic contests, or the repetition of customs around a family
dinner table. This eld developed as a way of comprehending the world of performance
and the world as performance, as Richard Schechner, a pioneer in this eld, has put it
(2002:22). The eld has roots in studies of symbolic language and behavior by cultural
anthropologists and linguists who seek to understand why cultural practices and languages
are constructed as they are in specic cultures. This kind of study crosses many boundaries
that have been drawn around modes of performance, such as those suggested by the terms
high and low art. Anthropologist Edward Schieffelen writes: performativity, whether
in ritual performance, theatrical entertainment or the social articulation of ordinary human
situations, is the imaginative creation of a human world (1998:205). Theatrical productions
are one of many kinds of cultural performance. We think it natural and enlightening to make
the connections.
Our book considers a wide range of cultural performances Eastern and Western
from Balinese shadow-puppet shows to productions of the plays of Bertolt Brecht and
Samuel Beckett, from Japanese kabuki theatre to Western realism. We also consider Vedic
chanting in India, the story-telling of pre-Christian Celtic bards (Chapter 1), the performance
of healing rites in Korea and Peru (Chapters 1 and 13), Corpus Christi processions in England
(Chapter 2), and cultural fusion in rock music (Chapter 13). We believe the juxtapositions
among these will attune the reader to appreciate better the wide spectrum of theatre/
performance in many cultures.

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 Zarrilli, Phillip B.; McConachie, Bruce; Williams, Gary Jay, Mar 07, 2013, Theatre Histories : An Introduction
Taylor and Francis, Florence, ISBN: 9780203879177

P R E F A C E : I N T E R P R E T I N G P E R F O R M A N C E S A N D C U LT U R E S

Figure 0.1
Two male Xantolo dancers dressed as women for the celebrations in Zapotila, Hildago,
of the Day of the Dead, the Mexican counterpart of the Christian feasts of All Saints
and All Souls Days.
Source: Chloe Sayer, color plate 29, in Elizabeth Carmichael and Chloe Sayer, The Day of the Dead
in Mexico. British Museum Press, 1991.

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