Written by Lee Yun-taek, arguably the most prolific and influential of contemporary Korean dramatists, The Dummy Bride (1993) is of considerable significance to the Korean political theatre's search for a new dramatic idiom in the increasingly apathetic post-ideological era. Although the issue of modernization of tradition has been a constant preoccupation with a number of other Korean playwrights in the 1990s, Lee's exploration of the relationship between tradition and contemporary social reality strikes a much more political note under the influence of Brecht and Artaud. His incorporation of the utopian realm of imagination into everyday life does not offer a stable sense of resolution to the audience. Swerving away from the ‘decontextualization and museumization’ of tradition and cautiously guiding against the excessive optimism of madang theatre, a dominant form of political theatre in the 1980s, his unique theatrical aesthetic stands as a vigilant rehearsal for how to dream without disregarding or succumbing to a frustrating reality.

When scholars of any nation become so proud of their mastery of alien concepts that they forget or suppress their own cultural identity, they willingly succumb to ‘theoretical imperialism’. The flip side is the arrogant and wholesale imposition by Western scholars of theories created in the crucible of one culture on other cultures, subcultures or historical eras with divergent philosophical foundations. This article introduces several key Japanese critical theories that modify or fuse Japanese and Western psychoanalytic and aesthetic concepts, arguing that they can be fruitfully applied by theatre and performance scholars to works originating either in Japan or elsewhere. The article proposes a ‘both/and’ perspective that respects cultural differences without exoticizing the Other.

Edward Gordon Craig's 1935 visit to Russia coincided with Mei Lanfang's 1935 performance in Russia. While Mei Lanfang's performance and its impact on Brecht and Russian theatre artists have been well documented and studied in recent years, Craig's contacts with the Chinese actor and his interest in the Chinese theatre, however, have yet to be investigated. Drawing on previously unpublished archive materials and other rarely used sources, this article for the first time documents Craig's contacts with Mei Lanfang during his visit to Russia. It also investigates his interest in the Chinese theatre in the context of his theoretical construction of the art of the theatre and his overall interest in the traditions of Asian theatres.

This essay considers the virtuoso in music, theatre and dance as a liminal figure of performativity. It draws on cultural studies as well as the history of science to offer a critical reading which follows the virtuoso's oscillation between science and art. The escalating dynamic in the virtuoso's technical control of material (of the body, the ‘instrument’, language) leads to a polarization between artistic ‘creation’ and virtuoso performance: the virtuoso thus occupies a seismographic function within the aesthetic debates of the nineteenth century. The article also outlines the relationship between the media and virtuoso performance and the relevance of the anecdote for the virtuoso's charismatic impact. This essay will contribute to our understanding of how the contemporary media influenced the virtuoso concept, and address the issue of whether the (partial) disappearance of the virtuoso from the theatre stage translocates the figure of the virtuoso onto other ‘cultural stages’.