Outline

date	Tuesday, September 29, 2009, 16:30–18:30 / Wednesday, September 30, 18:30–20:30
Venue	Okuma Small Auditorium, Ono Auditorium
Organizer	Western Theatre Studies Course
outline	The Western Theatre Studies Course this autumn invited Professor Dr. Erika Fischer-Lichte of the Free University of Berlin, a leading researcher on theatre studies in Germany, and held a lecture series on her full-scale performance theory, which marks a clear break from all previously existing theories of theatre. The first day’s lecture began with opening remarks by the vice-director of the TSUBOUCHI Memorial Theatre Museum, AKIBA Hirokazu (professor, School of Science and Engineering). In view of the fact that her recent work, Ästhetik des Performativen, was published in Japan this year, Professor Erika Fischer-Lichte gave a lucid summary of its essential elements, illustrated by pertinent visual materials. HIRATA Eiichiro (associate professor, Keio University), one of the book’s translators, served as moderator and interpreter and made the following comments about the background to the book. Professor Erika Fischer-Lichte’s achievements as a theatre researcher extend far beyond the German-speaking world and are well known worldwide. In recent years her Ästhetik des Performativen, published in 2004, has attracted the attention of researchers and was quickly translated into English and published in 2008 under the title The Transformative Power of Performance. A New Aesthetics. In the German-speaking world the theatrical arts have primarily been associated with the poetic tradition, a view that has had widespread support; as a result, performance theory, which developed in the English-speaking world in the 1960s, has been slow to be introduced there even in the area of theatre studies. Professor Erika Fischer-Lichte’s Ästhetik des Performativen regards theatre as an artistic genre that must first and foremost be thought of as performance; she has won praise for assimilating existing performance theories and constructing a basic theory of performance that is both comprehensive and thorough-going. On the second day of the lecture series, entitled “Greek Tragedy: Performances in Germany and Japan – Tradition, Function, Meaning”, Professor Erika Fischer-Lichte discussed Greek tragedies performed in Germany and Japan. Project director MARUMOTO Takashi (professor, Faculty of Law) served as moderator, and HAGIWARA Ken (lecturer, Meiji University), who co-translated Professor Erika Fischer-Lichte’s book with Professor HIRATA, acted as interpreter. Professor Erika Fischer-Lichte noted that in the 1970s the reception of Greek tragedy in the two countries took very interesting forms and made reference to “The Trojan Women” (1974) directed by SUZUKI Tadashi and “King Oedipus” (1976) directed by NINAGAWA Yukio. The lectures on both days were well attended and were followed by lively discussions.

Details

To assemble in one room researchers doing studies on Shanghai theatre and film, set certain themes, discuss them thoroughly and exchange views: this was the conceptual basis for this international round table held under the joint sponsorship of the Japanese Theatre Studies Course and the Oriental Theatre Studies Course to which were invited two researchers from China, one from Taiwan and nine from within Japan. The participants included three specialists in film, eight theatre specialists (one from Huaju [spoken theatre, i.e. modern drama], two from Peking Opera, two from Yueju Opera, one from Huju Opera, one from Huaiju Opera and one from Huajixi [burlesque)]) and three from the areas of media and urban culture, for a total of fourteen persons. The gathering together of this many researchers specializing in the film and theatre of one city, Shanghai, was unprecedented: nothing like it has been done before in Japan or abroad. The theme set for the first part of the round table was the 1940s, which saw each of the various theatres that continue to exist in Shanghai down to the present day develop greatly as stage arts. Part Two was devoted to the 1950s after the formation of the People’s Republic of China, when masterpieces of stage and screen were produced one after another. The 1940s and 1950s are also an area of research that has recently attracted the keen interest of scholars of Shanghai history all over the world as a period ripe for reappraisal.

The presenter in Part One, LUO Suwen, talked on “The Intersection of Internationalism and Indigenization: The Modern Entertainment Market in 1940s Shanghai.” Up until now the 1940s have been regarded as a rupture in the study of Shanghai history, but Professor LUO located the decade as a key period linking the 1920s and 1930s to the 1950s and demonstrated with abundant data that the film industry and films in China and abroad influenced theatre as a whole, including traditional theatres, and the Shanghai media in the 1930s and 1940s. The discussion that followed took up the issues she had presented and confirmed the importance of putting appraisals based on political history aside and repositioning theatre and film in Shanghai in the 1940s.

In her talk “Urban Entertainment and Politics in 1950s Shanghai,” the presenter for Part Two, JIANG Jin, stressed that even in the 1950s, when society as a whole was undergoing huge changes, industrialization and feminization of the city continued to take place uninterruptedly, showing that market principles were functioning constantly in the entertainment world of that period. In addition, she raised the point that as the only international city in China Shanghai ought to be discussed in comparison with New York and Paris rather than with other big Chinese cities. In the discussion that followed, panelists expressed the opinion that for example the Shanghai film world faced a major turning point in the 1950s when screening of American movies came to a halt, making it difficult to discuss film in the same context as theatre.

Part Three consisted of a general discussion about points presented earlier, in which all the panelists participated. At the moderator’s suggestion there was a nearly hour-long discussion on the key word “audience.” During the round table, which lasted for a total of five hours with intermissions, the panelists raised many highly thought-provoking issues, and the participants reached a consensus on the possibilities for and significance of research on Shanghai urban history through the prism of theatre and film in Shanghai in the 1940s and 1950s. In that respect the event can be said to have achieved great results. The hope is to continue doing joint research with the present panelists in some form in the future.