ABSTRACT
Internationally, the theme continues to be globalization, frequently subsuming the vital issues of world poverty, the environment, technology, and peace and security. For those who benefi t from it, globalization means the opening up of information, a sharing of ideas-and the exchange of cultural lives that has become possible through the Internet and easier travel. For those whose lives are by and large impoverished by globalization, the word suggests that the core of our shared moorings is now American jeans, McDonald’s arches, and drug networking. In the fi eld of entertainment, globalization on the one hand continues to broaden our interaction with ever more diverse kinds of theatre and theatre training, and on the other hand binds the world together with many of America’s most visible and least admirable cultural products. In the theatre, many hope globalization will synthesize disparate cultures into a kind of theatre performance that transcends language and cultural barriers; others fi ght against this force that imposes the cultural norms of the more powerful on the less powerful, and predict a terrible sameness in our creative work once it is cut off from its cultural sources.
