Theatre at the Crossroads of Culture

<p>Western culture has a long and fraught history of cultural appropriation a history that has particular resonance within performance practice. Patrice Pavis asks what is at stake politically and aesthetically when cultures meet at the crossroads of theatre.?<br> A series of major recent productions are analysed including Peter Brook's <em>Mahabharata</em> Cixous/Mnouchkine's <em>Indiande</em> and Barba's <em>Faust</em>. These focus discussions on translation appropriation adaptation cultural misunderstanding and theatrical exploration. Never losing sight of the theatrical experience Pavis confronts problems of colonialism anthropology and ethnography. This signals a radical movement away from the director and the word towards the complex relationship between performance performer and spectator.<br> Despite the problematic politics of cultural exchange in the theatre interculturalism is not a one-sided process. Using the metaphor of the hourglass to discuss the transfer between source and target culture Pavis asks what happens when the hourglass is turned upside down when the `foreign' culture speaks for itself.</p>