‘Interculturalism’ describes cultural interaction which confronts and/or combines the practices of one culture with those of one or more others. The terms intercultural theatre and performance refer to hybrid activities rather than to specific genres of performance, visible in the assimilation of non-Western aesthetics by such Western directors as Antonin Artaud, Bertold Brecht, Ariane Mnouchkine, Peter Brook, Robert Wilson, Robert Lepage and Julie Taymor, and in the pre-performance work of, for example, Richard Schechner, Jerzy Grotowski and Eugenio Barba, who have used Asian forms of psychophysical preparation such as yoga to inform their methods of both training and devising. The term ‘intercultural’ is used more commonly to describe the influence of practices from the South, East or third world on those of the North, West or first world. But it can also be used to describe movement in the other direction, where Western plays and practices are adopted in Asian performance practices and traditions. It can also describe the hybrid ‘border art’ of Guillermo Gómez-Peña.
Interculturalism partly arose in response to an increased desire – fuelled by postmodernism – to articulate cultural differences. However, because intercultural exchange often occurs between cultures with different levels of privilege and power, it can be exploitative, lacking respect or reciprocity or treating culture as commodity. Intercultural performance can be susceptible to misrepresentation, often trivializing and denigrating source cultures as cliché or stereotype, as when Western performance represents Asian and African forms as primitive. Such arguments have been made most boldly by Rustom Bharucha in his criticism of Brook’s Mahabharata (1985). Patrice Pavis has latterly argued that interculturalism’s arguments have become reductive, circular and outmoded. However, its practice and analysis usefully demand attention to the ethics of exchange and difference, to relationships of power, and to ideas of cultural autonomy. From the RCTP
Image: Public intervention at CASA, Oaxaca Mexico. Saúl López Velarde, Logan Phillips and Nayla Altamirano. Photo: Berenice Guraieb. Courtesy of La perrera