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Christopher Balme: Pacific Performances

Theatricality and Cross-Cultural Encounter
in the South Seas

Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. 2006 (= Studies in International Performance, 1).

Incorporating the very latest approaches to performance studies, this new study by Christopher Balme explores the history of crosscultural performative encounters in the Pacific from the Eighteenthcentury to the present. Using the concept of theatricality, it examines both the performance cultures of Pacific peoples as they negotiated the colonial situation and Western theatrical representations. The material investigated ranges from Eighteenthcentury pantomimes to Broadway plays and musicals; ethnographic spectacles and colonial ceremonies rub shoulders with contemporary tourist theme parks and Samoan stand-up comedy.

Contents: Introduction - Pacific overtures: Trumpets, Beaches, and Women – Staged Authenticity: Theatricalizing the South Seas in Europe 1785-1830 – Comedians and Crusaders: Anti Theatrical Prejudice in the South Seas - Dressing the Hulas and Taming the Haka: Performing Identity in Hawaii and New Zealand - Kindred Spirits: Spectacles of Samoa in Wilhelminian Germany - Birds of Paradise: American Pacific Dramas of Displacement - ‘As You Always Imagined It’: The Pacific as Tourist Spectacle - Translocations and Transgressions: Performance in the Pacific Diaspora - Bibliography