A Tale of a Few Cities: Interculturalism on the Road

Abstract

This is a personal record of a theatre worker's journey to places where theatre is inextricably mixed with politics — or is no less significantly divorced from social concerns. Visiting mainland China and South Africa in the summer of 1990, Richard Schechner records how theatre people confronted the aftermath of major political upheavals – the crushing of hopes in Tiananmen Square, and the perhaps deceptive raising of them following the release of Nelson Mandela. His trip also took in the widely different perspectives and problems of Taiwan, where pluralism struggles (almost unnoticed in the West) to displace an ageing autocracy. Richard Schechner teaches at New York University, and recently returned to the editorial chair at The Drama Review, the journal he conducted through its vintage years in the 'sixties – at the same time creating the Performance Group, and beginning his researches into theatre and anthropology, the field in which he has published widely and innovatively in the interim.