Women's Intercultural Performance (review)

Women's Intercultural Performance, by Julie Holledge and Joanne Tompkins, comes at a key moment, as European countries await the new Euro and expanded trade discussions in Seattle and, more recently, Quebec City, make "globalism" palpable. And with increased access to markets comes the increased circulation of artists and artworks across borders and cultures. Amid this economy, the question, "Globalism" for whom? remains arch. Women's Intercultural Performance, then, insofar as it theorizes the exchange between women and culture through performance, merits close attention.

Holledge and Tompkins begin with a careful discussion of culture and feminism, discourses they find riddled with Western bias, and move to a conception of interculturalism as "the meeting in the moment of performance of two or more cultural traditions" (7). Whereas, by their account, members of the historical avantgarde—they mention Artaud—set out to rewrite Western theatre via a fascination with the Other, interculturalism aims for a more balanced, collaborative exchange. Some of the arguments here feel old. For instance, rehashing dated evidence ofWestern entitlement and cultural appropriation feels less useful, particularly when these attitudes persist in contemporary modes of exchange. Indeed, many of the "international" projects of which the authors speak garner and distribute funding unevenly, most often positioning the West at the center of the intercultural exchange in ways that are problematic and could be considered further.

International and intercultural—by whose account? It's a question that Women's Intercultural Performance takes up immediately with a study of narrative in shifting cultural contexts. The first chapter looks at how non-Western women have translated Western texts—Antigone and A Doll's House—to their own contexts, for their own aims, to create opportunities for multiple identity spaces. The authors then turn to ritual for a consideration of the gap between performance modes and contexts; their aim is to show how ritual is marketed in response to a perceived lack of spirituality within Western modernity. But the use of heady terms like "ritual" and "spirit" bear further unpacking. By providing no examples of how ritual serves as a key trope throughout contemporary performance and quite apart from indigenous cultures, the authors risk conflating ritual with indigeneity. Even when it is detached from its sacred aspects, as in the case of the Warlpiri, who present versions of their practices at public events in Australia, aboriginal performance comes to stand in for transformation. As a mode of interculturalism, transformation is an intriguing possibility, yet by foregrounding aboriginal performance in the discussion, the authors effect the very reading they set out to critique.

Holledge and Tompkins anticipate many of the risks involved in any cross-cultural encounter: the reduction of culture to a sign; the reduction of performance to a spectacle of difference, among others. Yet they do not always manage to avoid these risks in their own work. In terms of geographic representation, the writers find case studies in many nations, including China, Argentina, and Ghana. Yet accounts from their native Australia are privileged in the work, in part because of the number of cases anchored there, and in part because they elicit some of the strongest writing. Setting out to examine both the product and exchange of women's intercultural performance, the authors do a better job at the former through ongoing attention to intercultural texts, stagings, and artist's intention; audience reception is most often represented uncritically as media reportage. While the authors seek to avoid a taxonomic approach, there is guilty pleasure—a kind of postcard delight—to be had in richly drawn case studies, full of historical interest, that span world geography.

Perhaps the book's freshest contribution is to widen understanding of the term "intercultural." The book moves from preliminary definitions of the term as an exchange with the West to case studies that challenge the boundaries of gender, nation, and culture. One section draws theatrical space as a condensed site, which promises, and finds promise, in the ways that women layer different times, memories, and...