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vii One day over a “working lunch” at one of our usual sushi joints, my longtime adviser, Dwight Conquergood, leaned across the table with a glimmer in his eyes and mischievously remarked, “Emily, I had no idea you had become so political.” He meant it as a compliment, and I took it as such. Dwight saw me through the most formative decade of my life, from a rather self-absorbed, apolitical undergraduate majoring in Performance Studies—en route to an acting career, no doubt—to an over-serious doctoral student bent on critique and revolution. Perhaps the transformation was not quite so dramatic, but being Dwight’s advisee made one feel on the constant verge of greatness. I now realize , since his passing, that the feeling had a good deal to do with basking in his afterglow. Dwight died long before his time and certainly before this project represented anything but unrealized potential, but I dedicate the book to him nonetheless. I am one of a small army of scholars indebted to his legacy and homesick for his friendship. I would also like to thank many other scholars who have advised me over the years, from my earliest graduate schooling at Cornell University to my doctoral studies at Northwestern University and my very welcoming first job at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Thank you to Jim Carmody, Tracy Davis, Paul Edwards, Brian Edwards, Takashi Fujitani, J. Ellen Gainor, NadineGeorge Graves, Jorge Huerta, Dominick LaCapra, Lisa Lowe, Marianne McDonald , Lisa Sun-Hee Park, John Rouse, Rebecca Schneider, Janet Smarr, Dorothy Wang, and Mina Yang. I have also benefited greatly from my colleagues in the UCSD California Cultures in Comparative Perspective research initiative, especially from the selfless leadership of David Pellow. My graduate students in the Theatre and Drama Joint Ph.D. Program at UCSD and UC Irvine have constantly challenged the ideas with which I wrestle in this book, offering far more interesting interpretations than I ever could have mustered at that stage in my career. I am grateful to the professional friendships I share with many, particularly Suk-Young Kim, Lon Kurashige, Sheila Moeschen, Magdalena Romanska, Acknowledgments Karen Shimakawa, Melinda Wilson, Harvey Young, Patrick Anderson, Shannon Steen, and the now far-flung members of the Northwestern Performance Studies ABD writing group, including Amy Partridge, Rebecca Rossen, Ioana Szeman, and Jason Winslade. This book has profited from the research assistance of Tomoyuki Sasaki and Zachary Gill and from funding by the Northwestern University Graduate School and the Academic Senate of the University of California, San Diego. Parts of chapters 2 and 4 previously appeared in slightly different forms in TDR and Theatre Journal respectively, where the editorships of Richard Schechner, Jean Graham-Jones, and David Saltz catalyzed immense growth in my thinking on this material. For its present form, the input of Masako Ikeda at the University of Hawai‘i Press—as well as the two anonymous readers she selected— proved invaluable to shaping this book’s narrative arc. Finally, thank you to my partner in all endeavors, Philip Roxworthy, and the astonishing little people we have made together. And I am forever grateful to the assiduous Margaret Colborn, who instilled the joy of research and writing in me from the very youngest age. viii Acknowledgments ...

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