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Postcolonial and Indigenous Drama and Performance

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Postcolonial and Indigenous Drama and Performance LOCAL PERFORMANCES, GLOBAL STAGES: POSTCOLONIAL AND INDIGENOUS DRAMA AND PERFORMANCE IN GLOCAL CIRCUITS DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Kyounghye Kwon Graduate Program in English The Ohio State University 2009 Dissertation Committee: Professor Jon Erickson, Advisor Professor Chadwick Allen, Advisor Professor Stratos Constantinidis Professor Chan E. Park Professor Joy Reilly Copyright by Kyounghye Kwon 2009 ABSTRACT The dissertation investigates drama and performance produced in four regions: Ireland, Nigeria, Native North America, and Korea. I identify a paradigm shift in postcolonial and Indigenous artists’ navigation of shifting historical contexts. Roughly speaking, in the 1960s and early 70s, quite a few postcolonial artists appropriated or evoked dominant global (Western) themes/theatre conventions, the most important of which for this study is the genre of absurdist theatre, to address local political concerns. During and after the 1970s, however, as each of these cultures gained distance from its colonial trauma, and experienced increasing cultural self-apprehension, writers and performers re-centered their own local heritages and histories within highly syncretic contemporary artistic frames. Unlike the previous scholarship that tends to focus exclusively on works produced during the later phase, I trace and engage this mode of transition within each region and during individual artists’ careers, examining a range of texts (including plays, productions, a radio play broadcast, and archival performance footage), and argue for more spatio-temporally and politically sensitive understandings of cultural syncretism. Analyzing works by such artists as Ola Rotimi (Nigerian), Taesuk Oh (Korean), Marina Carr (Irish), and Monique Mojica (American Indian), this study challenges orthodox postcolonial scholarship that is organized by limited geographical ii areas, by a vertical relationship between colonizers and the colonized, and by an exclusive focus on European languages. This interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, and bilingual project situates postcolonial and Indigenous dramatic and performance texts in their multiple historical and cultural contexts, and it develops new methodologies for dramatic interpretation through a lateral emphasis on colonized-to-colonized connections. iii In loving memory of my brother, 권중 For my mother, father, and sister, 박연숙, 권희천, 권나현 It is because of the love of my family that giving up was never an option. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my dissertation directors, Dr. Jon Erickson and Dr. Chadwick Allen. Since 2001, Dr. Erickson has been my essential intellectual guide in drama and performance studies, and I am greatly indebted to his unlimited support and encouragement. Dr. Allen has given me indispensible suggestions for my work, and I owe my understandings of postcolonial and Indigenous studies to him. I am also grateful to Dr. Stratos Constantinidis for his never-ending support, belief in me, and kind guidance in theatre studies; to Dr. Chan E. Park, who has been my role model, for encouraging me to find my voice; and to Dr. Joy Reilly for opening my eyes to the beauty of creating theatre works and to Celtic studies. I am also indebted to Dr. Janelle Reinelt and Dr. Anthony Kubiak for their generous support of my project. Sections of my chapters, and consequently my dissertation as a whole, have become much stronger because of publications. I am grateful to Dr. Craig N. Owens and Dr. Evan Winet for seeing potential in my essays and for patiently assisting me through the editing process. This cross-culturally comparative project would not have been possible without the generous financial support from The Ohio State University: the year-long Presidential Dissertation Fellowship and the Alumni Grants for Graduate Research and Scholarship from The Graduate School; The Dr. Gordon P. K. Chu Memorial Scholarship from the v College of Humanities; The CIC Summer Institute Fellowship, Departmental Dissertation Fellowship, and Mary Lundie Stewart Vorman Fellowship from the English Department. Last but not least, I thank postcolonial and Indigenous artists whose works taught me so much about their cultures and people. And I give my special thanks to my family for their trust in me, and to Austin Riede for having been a tireless sounding board for my work and for his love. vi VITA February 3, 1978……………………………...Born – Chuncheon, South Korea 1996…………………..………………………B.A. English, Kangwon National University, South Korea 2003…………………………………………..M.A. English, The Ohio State University 2004-2008…………………………………….Graduate Teaching Associate, The Ohio State University January 2009-December 20009………………Presidential Fellow, The Ohio State University PUBLICATIONS “Shifting South Korean Theatre: Jo-Yeol Park’s A Dialogue Between Two Long-necked People and Taesuk Oh’s Chunpung’s Wife.” The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism (JDTC). XXIII.2 (Spring 2009): 47-65. (Special Issue on Glocal Dramatic Theories) “Absurd Jokers: Harold Pinter, Edward Albee, and Samuel Beckett.” Pinter Et Cetera. Ed. Craig N. Owens. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009. 43-63. “Kimchi and Corn: Asian American Liminality in Sung Rno’s Cleveland Raining.” Text & Presentation, 2005. Ed. Stratos E. Contantinidis. London: McFarland, 2006. 132-144. FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: English Secondary Field: Postcolonial Drama and Performance, Twentieth-century Drama Graduate Minor Certificate: Theatre and Performance vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract……………….…………..………………………………………………………ii Dedication………………………………………………………………………………..iv Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………….v Vita………………………………………………………………………........................vii Chapters: Introduction…………………………………………………………………………….1 Part I: Glocality…………………………………………………………………………..22 1. From Off-the-Center of the West: Post-World War II “Absurdist” Theatre……………………………………….…….23 1.1. Absurd Jokers: Edward Albee, Harold Pinter, and Samuel Beckett………………………………………………………………….24 1.2 Postcolonial Symptoms in Beckett……………………………………………...48 2. Absurdist Theatre Goes Postcolonial………………………………………………...66 2.1 Absurdist Theatre in Korea: Jo-Yeol Park, National Partition, and Beckett…………………………………...67 2.2 Beckett in Nigeria: Ola Rotimi’s Holding Talks and Post-Colonial Disillusionment…………………………………………………..75 2.3 Gendering Absurdist Theatre in Ireland: Subversive Maternity and Crossing Gender Boundaries in Marina Carr’s Low in the Dark………………………………………………….86 Part II: Glocal-locality…………………………………………………………………...97 3. Taesuk Oh’s Turn to Korea’s Pre-colonial Memory………………………………..98 viii 3.1 Taesuk Oh’s Early Plays and the “Absurdist” Controversy……………………………………………………………………..99 3.2 Glocal-locality, or Re-centering on the Restored/ Being-restored Local Cultures within the Larger Local……………………....101 4. Engaging Irish Myth: Marina Carr’s Celtic Roots…………………………………117 4.1 By the Bog of Cats… and Greek Mythology?.....................................................118 4.2 Marina Carr’s Irishness……………………………………………………..….122 5. Sound and Movement: American Indian Memory and Twentieth-century Technology……………………………………………………139 5.1 The Birdwoman in Monique Mojica’s radio drama/broadcast………………….143 5.2 James Luna’s Rehearsal Performance of Emendatio……………………………159 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………169 Notes……………………………………………………………………………………188 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………199 ix INTRODUCTION This project began with my desire to find my own distinct scholarly voice during the graduate program in English at Ohio State. These were times when I explored and expanded my areas of interests, and I was, therefore, under multiple intersecting intellectual influences. Deep down I was hoping to find ways to make valuable contributions through my academic work in a fuller and more productive way. And, for quite a while, I was constantly turning to the possibility of comparative studies. After all, studying English literature in the U.S. was always a transnational experience for me. Even when I read Victorian novels, I filtered them though my Korean subjectivity: “Just like in Korea,” I would write in the margin of a novel, for instance. I grew up in a beautiful and mountainous provincial region of South Korea. In a nation where Western hegemonic values are strong and English is a language to be reckoned with, I chose English as my major in college, like many other students. For one thing, I felt that English would lead me to a wide range of world literatures. Eventually, it brought me to the English department at Ohio State. Since college, I developed my interest in drama and theatre, which I have continued to pursue passionately at Ohio State. One of the main new influences at Ohio State was learning about postcolonial theory and reading postcolonial literature. I encountered some postcolonial theory, such as Homi Bhabha’s “Of Mimicry and Man,” Ngugi wa Thiongo’s “The Language of African Literature,“ and Gayatri Spivak’s, “ Can the Subaltern Speak?,” while I was preparing for my Masters comprehensive exam in 2003. These theories about colonialism and colonial legacy immediately led me to reflect on the history, language, and culture of my own country that had endured Japanese colonialism. Before I moved on to the doctoral program in English, I deferred my enrollment one year to take some time to sort out what I really wanted to explore as a Ph.D. student. During
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