What is intercultural theatre?

It is theatre that combines or moves between distinct cultural performance traditions—such as Western directors incorporating Asian forms—raising both creative possibilities and questions about cultural power and appropriation.

Why is intercultural performance controversial?

Critics argue that borrowing across cultures often occurs within unequal relations of power, so that non-Western forms may be decontextualized or appropriated rather than engaged on equal terms.

Intercultural Performance

Intercultural performance studies the exchange, borrowing, and collision of theatrical forms across cultures, and the ethical and political questions raised when traditions and bodies meet on stage.

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Definition

The study of performance that crosses, combines, or negotiates between distinct cultural traditions, and the politics of such exchange.

Scope

This topic examines performances that combine or move between cultural traditions: the intercultural experiments of directors such as Peter Brook and Ariane Mnouchkine, theoretical models of cultural exchange and the hourglass of intercultural transfer, and sustained critiques of appropriation and uneven power between cultures. It treats interculturalism as a major and contested current in modern and contemporary theatre and performance studies.

Core questions

How do theatrical forms and traditions travel and combine across cultures?
What models describe the process of intercultural exchange?
When does intercultural work become appropriation?
How do power and politics shape cross-cultural performance?

Key concepts

interculturalism
cultural exchange
appropriation
the intercultural hourglass
hybridity
decontextualization

Key theories

The hourglass of intercultural exchange: Patrice Pavis's model of intercultural transfer as a filtering of source culture through successive layers before reaching a target culture, foregrounding the mediations of cross-cultural performance.
Critique of intercultural appropriation: Rustom Bharucha's argument that Western intercultural theatre often decontextualizes and appropriates non-Western forms within unequal political and economic relations.

History

Twentieth-century theatre saw extensive borrowing from non-Western forms, from the modernist fascination with Asian theatre to the large-scale intercultural productions of Brook and Mnouchkine; from the 1990s, scholars such as Pavis theorized intercultural transfer while critics such as Bharucha challenged its politics, making interculturalism a central and contested topic in performance studies.

Debates

Exchange versus appropriation: Scholars debate whether intercultural performance represents genuine dialogue and creative exchange or, as Bharucha argues, the appropriation of non-Western forms within unequal global power relations.

Key figures

Patrice Pavis
Rustom Bharucha
Peter Brook
Richard Schechner

Seminal works

pavis1996
bharucha1993
schechner2013

Frequently asked questions

What is intercultural theatre?: It is theatre that combines or moves between distinct cultural performance traditions—such as Western directors incorporating Asian forms—raising both creative possibilities and questions about cultural power and appropriation.
Why is intercultural performance controversial?: Critics argue that borrowing across cultures often occurs within unequal relations of power, so that non-Western forms may be decontextualized or appropriated rather than engaged on equal terms.