This paper examines the work of Kashmiri theatre-maker Arshad Mushtaq in the context of the political turmoil in Kashmir. It argues that Mushtaq's theatre practice challenges the India's attempt to assimilate Kashmir into its national cultural framework. Focusing on three of Mushtaq's plays rooted in collective memory, the paper examines how his…

Neoliberalism as it emerged from the West, has been localised when it entered China along with the global market. In the 2010s, a series of neoliberal policies under the mass entrepreneurship and mass innovation (MEMI) initiative were launched to support an entrepreneurial environment for Chinese theatres. To understand how the state applied…

This article looks at the meaning of solidarity as related to the Egyptian uprising of January 2011. Through participant interviews, field notes, and observations, the author examines the role of grassroots theatre in enabling the aspirations of the revolution to live on amongst its players, and despite more stringent state control over the arts…

In Singapore, resilience lies at the heart of the nation's efforts at building a strong civic culture. For those experiencing urban poverty, resilience holds little weight against the national rhetoric of self-reliance and meritocracy as keys to success. This paper presents a three-way conversation between the researcher, applied theatre…

Certain repeated moral narratives support justifications for humanitarian interventions, and simultaneously inform perspectives of 'the figure of the refugee'. How does 'the humanitarian' appear in these narratives? How are the characters of 'the refugee' and 'the humanitarian' constructed in relation to one another? How does their interlinkage…

This paper analyses "Bharatanatyam on Wheels" by Ability Unlimited Foundation, Delhi. It interrogates the possibilities and challenges that disability performance presents to codifications in the form and grammar of "Bharatanatyam," a "classical" dance form of India. The Indian classical scriptures of performance…

In this paper, I use an ecologies approach to present reflections on the history of disability and deaf theatre in Australia, in light of the distinctive local policy, industry, and production frameworks that have supported or failed to support its development in particular directions. After tracing and categorising developments in the field to…

Museums have been employing theatre activities in their educational programmes to outreach youngsters for more than three decades all over the world since the late 1980s; however, it is still quite a new experience for eastern and south-eastern Asian countries. In the past 3 years, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan started to use different forms of…

Focusing on the drag king performances of Christie Whisman, who lived and worked in Columbus, Ohio, USA, from 1999 to 2001, this essay argues that rhetorical bodily performances have the capacity not only to subvert normalised notions of identity categories, but that such performances can also create alternate pedagogical sites that persuasively…

The essay deals with a Ugandan production of Brecht's Mother Courage and her Children and the issues raised when it travelled from Uganda to the United States, South Africa and back to Uganda. It explores the shift in perception and conception that happened/happens to both image and national identity when a production moved from one cultural…