This course is not currently offered, please contact the school or faculty of your program.

Course description

This course covers 2,000 years of theatre history from various Asian and Pacific perspectives. We will look at ancient Sanskrit drama from India; classical theatre forms from China, Japan, and Indonesia; and pre-contact performances from the Pacific Islands; as well as more recent plays and performances that engage relationships between Australia and its Asia-Pacific neighbours from postcolonial and transnational points of view. The course aims to bolster your knowledge of non-Western theatre history, and to encourage you to consider what performance can tell us about processes of cross-cultural transaction in our broader region. You'll read critical and theoretical texts in addition to the plays, and explore these ideas further through practical experimentation and the study of material artifacts.