They included playwrights, directors, and actors.
And, their aim was to create a modern theatrical culture
combining both the European practices they had been trained in, and
the indigenous performance traditions they grew up in.
Erika Fischer-Lichte, we're here at the center of inter,
interweaving performance cultures in Berlin.
So can, perhaps to begin, can you sort of explain what you mean by
this concept, interweaving performance cultures?
>> This describes a kind of connectivity
in which cultures meet through performance.
That's, in my view, one of the most important things, because this challenges
deeply all these kind of concepts of the fixed and stable identity.
We, believe, to, to use this word, we believe,
in fluid and constantly changing, identities.
It is inextricably linked to questions of economic power,
migration, what we call corpo-realities, and,
of course, identity politics.
And, many strategies of adaptation,
appropriation, translation have to be considered.
In the western world, it started already very early I would say.
It was with Voltaire's L'Orphelin de la Chine, appropriating texts from other cultures.
And since the Chinese culture is a culture with a rich literature and
a long traditional literature, it was easy to go there.
He said, he proclaimed that he had found
the essence of the Chinese-ness in his play.
But it's, of course, typically a French tragedy.
>> I know that you've been working a lot on Ibsen or
have worked on Ibsen in a more global context.
What would be some interesting examples there of interweaving?
>> It was 1909, or 1911, some about that.
>> Yeah.
That John Gabriel Bookman was put on stage,
half Kabuki, half western style.
And then very soon, the Doll's House, it followed very soon.
And, and this was already a product of the new training school for actors.
And she was the first also, the actress who did the first
woman who was allowed to act in Japan.
The Emperor had allowed it.
>> So the staging a play like the Doll's House in Japan actually then had
an effect on, should we say, gender relations on the Japanese stage.
>> This had an enormous effect in society.
And one can say, I mean, it's so
clear that it was a product of the modernizing process that started in Japan.
That many artists thought that they can not deal with the problems
coming up appropriately when just using Nô and Kabuki
They need a new form.
[MUSIC]
>> Interweaving is a form of connectivity,
in which different cultures meet through performance.
Continuously producing specific differences, and
thereby questioning fixed concepts of cultural identity.
Processes of interweaving are inextricably linked to questions of
economic power, migration, corpo-realities and identity politics,
as well as the strategies of appropriation and translation.
Christopher BalmeProfessor
