Repost: New Publication: Japanese Theatre Transcultural

Thanks much to Dr. Diego Pellecchia for publicizing the publication of this new book on the intersections of Japanese Theatre and Germany & Italy.

Info about the book reposted from the publisher’s website:

Scholz-Cionca, Stanca / Regelsberger, Andreas (Eds.)

Japanese Theatre Transcultural
German and Italian Intertwinings

2011 · ISBN 978-3-86205-026-0 · 230 S., kt., · EUR 27,—

Japan and Italian Opera, Kawakami and Sada Yacco in Europe, Mussolini on the Kabuki stage, Brecht adapting a Japanese melodrama, a genuine Japanese Threepenny Opera by Inoue Hisashi, Heiner Müller´s Hamletmachine haunting Japanese playwrights, commedia dell´arte encountering Kyogen in hybrid masks: these and other instances of mutual perception and exchange in the theatre cultures of Italy, Japan, and Germany are highlighted in the essays of this book. It sprang from a symposium held in Trier in 2009, which brought together scholars and practitioners from the three countries to explore asymmetrical and shifting intercultural relations and their impact on theatre practices, institutions, ideologies and collective imaginaries.

Contents

Introduction

Chapter I: Reconsidering Cultural Difference
Erika Fischer-Lichte (Berlin): Interweaving European and Japanese Cultures at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century: Japanese Guest-Tours in Europe
Diego Pellecchia (London): The International Noh Institute of Milan: Transmission of Ethics and Ethics of Transmission in a Transnational Context
Marumoto Takashi (Waseda University, Tokyo): Comedy and Laughter on the Japanese and German Stage: A Comparative Attempt

Chapter II: Intertwined Threads of Reception
James R. Brandon (Hawaii): Mussolini in Kabuki: Notes and Translation
Pia Schmitt (Trier / Tokyo): Early German Encounters with Japanese Performing Arts – On Hermann Bohner’s Examination of Nō
Andreas Regelsberger (Trier): The Rediscovery of Brecht’s The Judith of Shimoda
Stanca Scholz-Cionca (Trier): Brecht Revisited: Yabuhara, the Blind Master Minstrel, by Inoue Hisashi
Bonaventura Ruperti (Venice): Greek Tragedies in/and the Productions of Ninagawa Yukio
Luciana Galliano (Venice): Japan and Contemporary Opera (in Italy)
Donato Sartori (Padua): Masks: East and West Confronted
Chapter III: Present Trends
Niino Morihiro (Tokyo): Social Criticism in Japanese Theatre: The Dramatist Sakate Yōji and the Little Theatre Movement since the 1980s
Peter Eckersall (Melbourne): Dreaming of the War in Shinjuku – Kawamura Takeshi and Heiner Müller’s Hamletmachine in Japan
Thomas Oliver Niehaus (Bochum): Directing in Japan
Katja Centonze (Venice/Tokyo): Topoi of Performativity: Italian Bodies in Japanese Spaces/Japanese Bodies in Italian Spaces

My congratulations to Diego on getting published, and especially in a volume alongside such prestigious figures as Prof. James Brandon. I especially look forward to reading his essay, as well as that on the rediscovery of Brecht’s “The Judith of Shimoda,” a German play first performed in English here at the University of Hawaii just last year.