Three Contemporary Asian Theatre Makers Crossing Borders – Critical Stages/Scènes critiques

For decades many Asian theatre artists have engaged in intercultural performances that mostly showcase traditional performing arts in contemporary ways. These performances have often been mediated through English as a lingua franca and, following neocolonial models, supported by Western funding bodies or the mechanisms of Asian soft powers. However, in recent years several contemporary Asian theatre makers, working outside mainstream institutions and major theatre companies, have sought to go beyond identity politics subverting the Western notions of ‘interculturalism’ and “transculturalism” through immersive performances, aural dramaturgies and linguistic ambiguity. In I Say Mingalaba, You Say Goodbye (2022), Thai director/playwright/performer Jarunun Phantachat collaborated with Myanmar performers to reconstruct the history of Thailand-Myanmar relations. In performance, languages and cultures are completely muddled through the playful use of surtitling. Another project involved Japanese director Yudai Kamisato (born in Peru) and Malaysian director Mark Teh spending two weeks travelling around the Ryūkyū (Okinawan) Islands each researching for their own respective artistic projects. This article explores Yudai Kamisato’s Khao Khao Club (2020-2021), an immersive performance project about the history of the alcohol trade in Southeast Asia. The project simultaneously addresses both Japanese and non-Japanese speaking audiences through dramaturgical strategies of seeing through listening and doing. Finally, in Filipino diaspora queer artist Joshua Serafin’s PEARLS (2024), part of Cosmic Gangbang trilogy, vocal cords and translucent liquids take centre stage evoking difficulties of crossing borders in every sense; geographical, historical, personal and performative. Together with performers Lukresia Quismundo and Bunny Cadak, Serafin confronts the audience with the (im)possibility of kindness. Through a comparative-critical analysis of these three performances, this article illuminates the recent history of dramaturgies of crossing borders in Asia. By employing the notion of in-betweenness (Watsuji Tetsurō) and kapwa (Virgilio G. Enriquez), the article explores how Asian theatre makers forge new methods of staging, performing and producing theatre to re-think the notions of exchange, listening/hearing and language from an inter-Asian perspective.