Performance and Cosmopolitics

This ground-breaking study of cross-cultural theatre in the Australasian region focuses on theatrical events and practices in avant-garde and mainstream contexts. It explores the cultural and political dimensions of Australia's engagement with Asia and sheds light on international arts marketing and trends in cross-cultural performance training.

Winner of the Australasian Association for Theatre, Drama and Performance Studies Rob Jordan prize

Shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Literary Awards Gleebooks Prize and Biennial Prize for Literary Scholarship

'This brisk and succinct narrative inflects and counters the valorization of cosmopolitanism in global cultural discourse. Its major achievement is to locate diverse cosmopolitan practices within the embattled national imaginary of Australasian theatre. In countering official nationalism and legitimized xenophobia at intensely local and regional levels, it offers substantial evidence of how cosmopolitics can be put into practice at ground levels. This book is immediate and relevant.' - Rustom Bharucha, author of The Politics of Cultural Practice and Theatre and the World

'This is an important book for the breadth of discussion of theatre work that it offers...The book provides a priceless record of a great deal of neglected, ephemeral and courageous theatre practice. It is particularly valuable in its ground-breaking study of Asian-Australian theatre-a topic which has here for the first time been given the attention that it so clearly deserves.' - Adrian Kiernander, Tom Burvill and Maryrose Casey, Rob Jordan Prize committee, Australasian Drama Studies Association, Australia

'Their [Gilbert and Lo] comprehensive and detailed research will surely make this volume an indispensable resource in Australian theatre scholarship, and a valuable case study for scholars of other national theatres, but the methodological contribution the book makes to performance studies is doubly significant.' - Margaret Werry, The Drama Review

'Gilbert and Lo have made a sophisticated, nuanced, and carefully situated contribution to the cosmopolitics of cross-cultural performance that is required reading for anyone interested in Australian theatre, or in cross-cultural performance anywhere.' - Ric Knowles, Theatre Journal

'...this really is a book of considerable distinction and it makes an excellent contribution to the re-reading of over thirty years of Australian and Australasian performance.' - Geoffrey Milne, Australasian Drama Studies

'...this book offers an important corrective to the increasingly abstract theories on global citizenship. This is an illuminating and welcome addition to the literature - both on cross-cultural theatre and on Australasian cosmopolitanism.' - Jisha Menon, Alt.theatre

'In addition to making a significant contribution to Australian theatre scholarship, Gilbert and Lo's efforts to articulate the intricacies and specificities of cosmopolitan performance in Australia enriches our understanding of Australia's socio-cultual makeup, deepens existing work on performance analysis and contributes significantly to current scholarship on cosmopolitanism.' - Natalie Harrower, Canadian Theatre Review

'In addition to making a significant contribution to Australian theatre scholarship, Gilbert and Lo's efforts to articulate the intricacies and specificities of cosmopolitan performance in Australia enriches our understanding of Australia's socio-cultual makeup, deepens existing work on performance analysis and contributes significantly to current scholarship on cosmopolitanism.' - Natalie Harrower, Canadian Theatre Review

HELEN GILBERT is Professor of Theatre at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK, and co-convenor of the College's interdisciplinary Postcolonial Research Group. Her books include Sightlines: Race, Gender and Nation in Contemporary Australian Theatre (1998), Post-colonial Drama: Theory, Practice, Politics (with Joanne Tompkins, 1996) and Postcolonial Plays: An Anthology (2001).

JACQUELINE LO is Reader in English and Head of the School of Humanities at the Australian National University, Australia. She is the author of Staging Nation: English Language Theatre in Malaysia and Singapore (2004) and Chair of the Asian Australian Studies Research Network.