ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates Meyerhold’s influence on the constitution of the theories and practices of twentieth-century Japanese and Chinese theatres. It looks at the ways Meyerhold’s ideas and practices impacted the formation of modern and contemporary Japanese and Chinese theatres and the ways his ideas and practices were quoted and refracted in the service of the reinvention and reification of traditional Japanese and Chinese theatres. Meyerhold’s idea of “Conventional Theatre” recalled and helped reconstitute the traditions of Japanese and Chinese theatres; the Japanese and Chinese reinvention and reification of their traditional theatres and their reconstitution of their modern theatres invoked Meyerhold’s authority and spoke in the borrowed and translated language of his theory. Meyerhold’s intercultural invocation of the traditions of Japanese and Chinese theatres and its effect on the Japanese and Chinese reimagination of their own theatrical traditions are illustrative of the dynamic movement of the twentieth-century intercultural theatre and performance.
