East, West, and World Theatre

The study of world theatre was greatly advanced by the publication in 1967 of Leonard C. Pronko's Theater East and West (rev. ed. 1974). In this article, Steve Tillis notes Pronko's seminal contribution but contends that the East-West Approach has outlived its usefulness. He argues that the East/West dichotomy is based on three assumptions that are at once factually untrue and profoundly Eurocentric: first, that East and West are coherent cultural entities; second, that East and West are roughly of the same magnitude and, between them, comprehend the world; and third, that Eastern and Western theatre forms make up two fundamentally distinct kinds of theatre. Tillis suggests that world theatre studies would best be served if the East-West Approach were replaced by a multiregional perspective offering a sound framework for scholarship.