Questioning the Relationship between Consumption and Exchange: TheatreWorks' Flying Circus Project, December 2000

What Is the Flying Circus Project?

Following our earlier research on the TheatreWorks productions Lear and Desdemona, a colleague and I were invited by Ong Keng Sen, Artistic Director of TheatreWorks, to attend the Flying Circus Project (FCP) workshop in Singapore in December 2000,¹ as observers of the process.² The FCP is described by TheatreWorks as follows: "This multi-disciplinary, long-term research and development program in theatre, dance, music, visual arts, film and ritual has continued for six years, with laboratories consisting of classes, improvisation workshops and seminars. The focal points are on cultural negotiation and process in the arts practice. It looks at the different creative strategies of individual artists, both traditional and contemporary, through the recognition of differences between the many Asian cultures."³ Ong established the FCP in 1994.⁴ He has a passionate interest in developing ideas of cross-cultural exchange and "is known for his rejection of authenticity and his embracing of multiple realities and hybridity within Asia."⁵ Ong trained in contemporary performance at New York University, and he combines this training with his understanding of Asian cultural traditions to create works that reflect what he sees as the dynamism of Asian culture. His works, although they attract criticism—particularly from within Asia⁶—challenge the idea of Asian art as static or museumlike and focus instead on the potential for exchange between ideas of traditional and contemporary arts practice.⁷ These works serve to intervene into the (global) landscape of intercultural performance, broadening its parameters and raising questions about the politics of consumption and exchange in the process. I believe that Ong aims to create spaces for intercultural exchange that move beyond existing paradigms and focus instead on the "multiple realities," beliefs, and practices that exist across Asia. However, the very idea of intercultural exchange is a fraught concept and is becoming increasingly so as a result of rapid globalization. As Joanne Tompkins and Julie Holledge point out in their book Women's Intercultural Performance, "As the economic forces of globalization shrink and stratify the world, the creation of intercultural performance is an increasingly complex affair. Even the concept of cultural identity is fraught with the complications of migration, cultural authenticity, and ‘ethnic cleansing.' The questions concerning cultural appropriation and assimilation that used to preoccupy rehearsal rooms are being replaced with a search for a methodology that can shift representations of cultural difference from superficial descriptions to ‘thick descriptions.'"⁸

Ong Keng Sen was, I believe, aiming to use the FCP 2000 to create a space within which this search for "a methodology that can shift representations" could be undertaken. According to the flier for the FCP 2000, "Contemporary Asia is the focus, with the proposition that religious rituals and traditional arts are contemporaneous within their contexts. This contextualization balances the continued exoticisiation of Asia." Over seventy artists from East Asia attended the December 2000 workshop, as well as a small number from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Areas of specialization ranged enormously and included, for example, computerized music, contemporary performance, traditional Thai dance, Chinese Opera, video art, Indonesian dance, Cambodia Court dance, and puppeteers from Myanmar.⁹ These artists were selected by Ong and invited to participate in the FCP. There were also twenty Lamas and a living Buddha from Tibetan Buddhism, and ritualists (Dongba shamans) from Yunnan in China, who practiced Naxi exorcism ceremonies. Ong selected this diverse range of artists so that they could work together to highlight what he sees as the key concerns of the FCP: "reinvention, juxtaposition and cultural negotiation."¹⁰ It is important to point out that for Ong the idea of intercultural exchange extends outward from the process and experiences of the participants to include the responses of the spectator/observer. He believes that "a new language" needs to...