ABSTRACT
When scholars around the world talk about modernity, they talk about culture, tradition, subjectivity, structures, aesthetics, and politics. As is evident in the work of Gao Xingjian and Hirata Oriza, Western modernity is a direct influence on many parts of world modernity. Even if one only looks at playwrights and theorists whose work is well known in Western circles, the variety of approaches to questions of modernity is immediately apparent. The most distinctive characteristic of contemporary art and theater is that it has lost this something to communicate, or the themes, compared to modern art which has things to convey to the audiences. There are mainly two aspects to this. One is that the theme has indeed been gone. The other aspect is the shift of social role expected for art. Modernity can be explained as the spread of capitalism around the globe. Capitalism demands technological innovation so that humans can produce more value with their limited amount of time.
