Distributed for Intellect Ltd
Theatre, Globalization and the Heteroglobal Method
Theatre, Globalization and the Heteroglobal Method offers a groundbreaking framework for rethinking global theatre studies. Drawing on philosophy and scholarship from major theatre traditions—South Africa, the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Japan, and Nigeria—the volume reimagines how performance circulates and transforms in a global context.
Challenging the dominance of Eurocentric models in postcolonial studies, comparative literature, and world theatre, the book introduces the “heteroglobal” method: an adaptable, equitable approach that begins with local theoretical and philosophical frameworks before bringing them into dialogue. These imagined centers, each with its own rich discursive heritage, become sites of knowledge exchange where fresh understandings of art and globalization emerge.
Through a theoretically pluralistic matrix of comparison and interculturalism, Theatre, Globalization and the Heteroglobal Method documents contemporary scholarly and artistic practices across diverse cultural landscapes, offering a new model for teaching, research, and performance in an interconnected world.
Table of Contents
1 Undefining Heteroglobalization and Theoretical Pluralism
Field Overviews
2 National, Global, Local, Planetary, Circulating, Transnational: Overview of Comparative Studies as Practiced in the United States and the United Kingdom
3 Interculturalism, Universality and Resistance: Debates over Intercultural Theatre in the West
4 Indexing: Finding the Japaneseness in Dialectics of Difference Without Distinction
5 Fidelity and Revolution: Modern Japanese Theatre
6 Harmonious Juxtaposition: South African Theories of Foldedness
7 South African Theatre Sans Adjective
8 Nativism, “Tigritude” and Syncretism: Nigerian Theories of and Against Hybridity
9 The Numinous, the Quotidian and Political Resistance: Nigerian Theatre and the World Stage
10 Sinocentric, Positional-Relationality: Chinese Theories of the World
11 The Popular, the People and the Political: Modern and Contemporary Chinese Theatre
Interlude
12 Waiting for the Heteroglobal, a Partial Definition in Juxtaposition in Magnet Theatre’s I Turned Away and She Was Gone
Philosophical and Theoretical Milieu(s)
Semiotics
13 Indexicality, Reality, Nation: Philosophies of Language in Japan
14 Process and Community: South African Semiotics
Modernity
15 Japanese Modernity as Fractured and Whole
16 National, Modern, Politically Real: The Divisive Core of Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Chinese Theatre
Subjectivity, the Self and the Actor
17 Conceptions of the Self: Hybrid Acting in Nigeria
18 Marxism, Intension and the Politics of the Group: Acting the Subject in China
A Festival
19 Heteroglobal Methods: A ManiFestival of Theatre and Performance