Imperialism and Theatre: Essays on World Theatre, Drama and Performance ed. by J. Ellen Gainor (review)

Book Reviews J. ELLEN GAINOR, ed. Imperialism and Theatre: Essays on World Theatre, Drama and Performance. London and New York: Routledge 1995. Pp. xvi, 264· $17.95 (PB). In a footnote to her excellent essay in this volume, Elaine Savory makes an important point about the nature of imperial and postimperial or postcolonial studies: If I knew I was writing for a community of scholars conversant with Caribbean issues, producing this argument in a small number of pages would be very much easier. As it is, I have been unable to approach the level of discussion which can assume considerable knowledge in the reader. This is, in itself, a side effect of most publishing originating in industrialized countries. which pay liule attention to Caribbean cuhure. I hope this essay may help spark a demand for more information on it. (n. 2, 252-53) One of the difficulties in the necessarily broad frame of postcolonial studies today is that it is impossible 10 be acquainted with all aspects of the field; given that academic interest in imperial and postimperial discourses continues to be considerable in North America and the U.K., the publication of volumes like Imperialism and Theatre will likely encourage that interest by introducing readers to different elements of the field. This volume, however, also has the potential to frustrate readers who are knowledgeable in the field, since some of the papers reinvent theoretical wheels long since circulated by other critics in the area. This is the double-bind of postcolonial studies: recognising the impossibility of knowing everything in' the field at the same time as needing to have read enough around one's topic - particularly by critics from outside the U.S. and the U.K. - in order to avoid unnecessary returns to basic theoretical arguments which have long since grown stale in other circles/countries. The essays in this volume are wide-ranging in terms of material, and geographical and historical time frames, shifting from Sudipto Chatterjee's paper on nineteenthcentury Bengali theatre and Michael Quinn's analysis of post-World War II Slovakian Modem Drama, 39 (1996) 712 Book Reviews theatre to Nora M. Alter's exploration of Vietnamese contemporary resistance theatre, Helen Gilbert's reading of costume in Australian drama, and Donald H. Frischmann's essay on contemporary Mayan theatre. Almost all the material is absorbing - in part because of its extensive variety - and some of the essays are exemplary, including Alan Filewod's assessment of the ways that British and American interests have circumscribed Canadian theatre, Michael Hays's helpful treatment of imperiailhealre in the context of imperial moments in the novel, Loren Kruger's necessarily tentative investigation of post-apartheid South Africa, and Robert Eric Livingston's consideration ofCesaire's and Scrrcau's decolonizing theatre. Curiously, one of the least useful papers for this volume is Edward Said's on Jean Genet: the elegaic memories of the first half do little to assist in his discussion of Genet, and the merit of the piece for the volume is doubtful. The postcolonial theatre field is now well enough established not to require the "critical weight" of names like Said's. This volume 's shortcoming is its frame. ~he editor notes in her introduction that "'Imperialism' is both a transnational and transhistorical phenomenon; it occurs neither in limited areas nor at one specific moment" (xiii) and while to a degree this is true (and useful as a comparative base), imperialism cannot be considered just in such global terms. It is neither a-historical nor a-cultural: the study of imperialism requires some specifying of the particular local manifestation of this lranshistorical phenomenon . Many of the essays in this collection usefully address specific historical moments, performative tropes, and theoretical arguments regarding imperialism, but the subtitle risks disconnecting the arguments from this crucial specificity and diluting the meaning of "imperialism" altogether. The absence of an in-depth introduction and/or a specific organizing principle for the essays means that this volume moves in too many disparate directions to facilitate debate except on the level of the very particular theatrical moment, national event, or play. The arrangement of the fifteen essays in alphabetical order inhibits any debate that...