ABSTRACT
A survey of English-language drama in Southeast Asia from 1990 raises a number of methodological questions. As with earlier drama, only a small proportion of performances result in published texts, and a focus on such texts is likely both to privilege drama with identifiable authors above devised performances, and to focus on more conventional plays over more experimental works that mix media, such as performance art, and which are often documented using video technology rather than through scripts. Interlinguistic and intercultural performances have problematized the notions of English language and Southeast Asian drama, while the availability of new electronicmedia and distribution systems havemeant that the function of published play scripts has been transformed. This chapter again makes a strategic choice to focus on dramatic texts that are available in print form, despite the limitations such a perspective imposes: to counter such limitations, it does contain suggestions regarding where one might look for more comprehensive performance histories of English-language theatre. In the four major sites of English language cultural production in Southeast Asia, indeed, differences in language and education policies, as well as the politics of writers’ choices regarding language medium, have resulted in radically diverging experiences in the evolution of English-language drama.
