This dissertation aims to explore the devising and performance of Reminiscence Theatre. It will focus on defining its aesthetic characteristics and its political, social and cultural significance. Two case studies-the works of Uhan Shii Theatre Group in Taiwan and Age Exchange Centre in the U. K. will be employed as demonstrated practices. The exploration is divided into three sections: the politics, poetics, and ethics of Reminiscence Theatre. The chapters on politics investigate the political implications of Reminiscence Theatre in local and global society. I will argue that Uhan Shii Theatre Group presents anti-colonial theatre performances from the perspective of post-colonialism and postcolonial feminism. Age Exchange Centre and Uhan Shii's works both act as a means of social intervention examined from the standpoint of cultural geography with the potential for reshaping social spaces with performances. Their model of cross-cultural communication challenges current theories and practices of intercultural theatre. Their performance of oral histories subverts the dominant historical narratives. The chapters on poetics demonstrate the characteristics of the poetics and aesthetics of reminiscence theatre in the production and reception process. The three main arguments are: firstly, Reminiscence Theatre transforms signs of memory into signs of art in the devising process, resonating with Deleuze's theory in Proust and Signs; secondly, Uhan Shii'sperformance reflects ancient Japanese Wabi-Sabi aesthetics highlighting the transience of time; thirdly, Reminiscence Theatre's reception process expands the cultural horizons of audience and performers based on Gadamer's hermeneutics. The chapter on ethics focuses on the argument that Reminiscence Theatre puts ethics into practice and re-examines modem ethical relations through its devising and performing process. Both ancient Chinese philosophies' emphasis on the practical and aesthetic aspect of ethics and Levinas' philosophy of ethics and the concept of nomadic ethics will be applied to support my argument

The thesis explores what it means to be human; specifically, what characters in drama and theatre reveal about what it means to be human. It also explores what it means to talk about dramatic character; specifically, what the human's various forms .reveal about dramatic character and how such forms interact with critical approaches to character. The thesis, thus, has a dual focus but the human and dramatic character are, in the context of my project, importantly, entwined and mutually enlightening. One of the aims of this thesis is to rehabilitate dramatic character. In doing so, it works to rehabilitate humanist subjectivity, too, albeit of a sort that is modified by hybrid structures of being and identity which are informed by posthumanist discourse. Such a structure, I argue, enables humans to be conceived simultaneously as creators and creations. I name this structure post/humanist. The first three chapters consist of theoretically engaged discussions which present the post/humanist framework underpinning this thesis's arguments for identity, subjectivity, and modern dramatic character. Chapter One claims it is a mistake to view the modern human being in exclusively liberal humanist terms and employs Donna Haraway's cyborg to reveal and argue for its indeterminate post/humanist form. Chapter Two makes the case for this thesis's alternative post/humanist account of modern subjectivity by revealing that the representation of liberal humanist subjectivity as the orthodox form of the modern period may have been overstated. Chapter Three argues for a post/humanist method of analysing dramatic character that conceives it as a structure of natural and cultural parts. Chapters Four, Five, and Six present case studies of the characters of Shakespeare's Hamlet (circa 1599-1601), August Strindberg's Miss Julie (1888), and Sarah Kane's Blasted (1995). Focusing in these three different versions of modern dramatic characters, detailed analyses reveal forms and identities in process in a world - dramatic and real - that/arms character and is, in turn, also formed by character. 3

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The present dissertation is concerned with the interplays between translation and theatre, bringing together an array of creative practices rarely discussed together in previous scholarship. As this thesis shows, the process of theatre translation incorporates a multitude of creative practices that contribute to the linguistic, theatrical and cultural transfers between foreign texts and target theatrical contexts. Throughout the dissertation, overlaps and interactions between translation, adaptation and dramaturgy will be discussed reconsidering the borders of such practices. The dissertation introduces dramaturgy to the debate as a synthesising process through which translation and adaptive strategies generate meaning on- and off-stage. The thesis presents a holistic approach, one that acknowledges theatre translation as a continuum of creative practices (e.g. translation, adaptation, dramaturgy, devising) - both textual and performative - that shape and are shaped by theatre practices, theatrical systems and traditions, hence also directly contributing to the expansion of literary, theatrical and cultural canons. The dissertation wishes to facilitate and contribute to a theatrical turn in the discourse, by establishing translation within theatre. The dissertation situate itself in a cross-disciplinary space drawing on a variety of perspectives from Translation Studies, translation and identity, Theatre Studies, theatre histories, performance analysis, dramaturgy, minority theatre, sociological approaches to theatre, Adaptation Studies and Cultural Studies. Crossing thematic, disciplinary, cultural, theoretical as well as physical/geographical borders is an important feature of the dissertation and reflects both the multifaceted ness of contemporary theatre (and theatrical activities) and the interdisciplinary nature of present-day scholarly discourses. The issues presented in this dissertation will be supported by a diversity of examples featuring theatre productions from a multitude of social, cultural and national contexts using a variety of approaches to theatre making

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The thesis examines contexts of belonging as they operate relatively between <i>Self </i>and <i>Other</i>. It theorises around a body of practice in ‘auto-performance’ that has developed over the span of a decade in response to a powerful shift in my sense of identity and place following a key discovery in 2000. This autobiographical context is placed relatively against contemporary political shifts in notions of place and belonging in the wake of key events such as <i>9/11</i>, the Balkan conflict and the fall of the Soviet Union that preceded it. The manner in which ancestry and culture inform displacement is considered and applied to a consideration of belonging that argues a multiplicity transcending the boundaries of nation. The thesis is, in gesture, an attempt to map the Self through a discourse of performance and is far more concerned with connections in this act of mapping than it is in ends, as such. The works discussed are structured by the discourse rather than by chronology and the thesis unfolds through subsequent discussions of depiction and inscription, cartography and landscape, nomadism and settlement and speech and silence. These discussions shift back and forth in what I have described as a ‘telescopic’ mode between the near and the far, the subjective and the objective, the body and the mind both from the perspective of the audience participant and the performer. This is constantly relative to the consideration of <i>Self </i>and <i>Other </i>and the shift in frames and form of the works. The thesis finally returns <i>Self</i>, through practice as research and personal experience, to a final recognition of <i>Other</i> as an assignation of identity, proposing that difference is crucial to a conference of belonging.

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Identifying (with) performance: Representations and Constructions of Cultural Identity in Contemporary Theatre Practice - Three Case Studies discusses ways in which contemporary live performance affirms, challenges or constructs collective models of cultural identity by addressing the performative relationship through which identity is joined to the process of identification. The thesis argues that cultural identity is constructed within the process of identification, and that this process is articulated through performance. It examines strategies of intervening in this process by theatricalizing those cultural practices that establish and confirm our collective attachments. The thesis explores these strategies through an -in-depth case study of three exemplary artistic practices: Welsh theatre company Brith Gof; Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Coco Fusco, a Mexican and a Cuban-American performance artist based in the U. S.; and the Israeli Acco Theater Center. Using techniques of reiteration, reframing, decontextualization, emphasis, or exaggeration, these artists defamiliarize established patterns of cultural performance in order both to affirm and question the way in which these performances attach us to a collective identity. They utilize forms of interacting and counter-acting the processes of 'seeing' and 'feeling in the identification of and with others in performance. The thesis is composed of six chapters. Chapter One outlines recent theoretical debates on cultural identity and its relationship with identification, focusing in particular on anthropological and ethnographical approaches to performative cultural practices and on sociological and philosophical approaches to performative practices in the constitution of identity. Chapter Two scrutinizes three theatre historical models for a study of identity, and complement these with an account of the current debate on performance theatre, performativity and theatricality. Chapter Three analyses Brith Gof’s theatrical oeuvre in reference to its articulation of spatial concerns. Chapter Four discusses Gómez-Peña’s and Fusco’s performance work in relation to its corporeal strategies. Chapter Five focuses on a discussion of the Acco Theater Center’s seminal performance Arbeit macht frei vom Toitland Europa, in an investigation of its address to the temporal orders of biography, memory and history. Chapter Six concludes the thesis with a general look at the constitution of identification in theatre and performance.

Theatre as an art form has often been associated with notions of presence. The live immediacy of the actor, the unmediated unfolding of dramatic action and the energy generated through an actor-audience relationship are among the ideas frequently used to explain theatrical experience and all are underpinned by some understanding of presence. Precisely what is meant by presence in the theatre is part of what this thesis sets out to explain. Presence, I argue, is not so much a single concept, but is a term which encompasses differing accounts of theatres aesthetic or experiential specificity. While I have attempted to show how concepts of presence have developed over time, most of the forthcoming discussion is rooted in twentieth century thought, when theatres aesthetic autonomy became an increasingly important concern in the context of artistic modernism and the rise of rival media such as film and television. However, an equally important part of this thesis has been to question the relevance of concepts of presence within the context of contemporary theory. Since the nineteen-eighties in particular, theatre theorists have been inclined to critique the notion of presence from a poststructuralist perspective. Additionally, the increasing use of technology in performance and a recognition of the pervasive influence of the media in contemporary western society has made traditional appeals to theatrical presence seem increasingly retrograde. In the light of these concerns, questions are raised about how the distinctiveness of theatre might best be articulated without reinstating the current opposition between those who advocate theatrical presence, and those who treat the concepts of presence with suspicion. By drawing together discussions which posit presence as the essence of theatre alongside poststructuralist misgivings about the validity of such claims, I have attempted to re-position the concept of presence within a contemporary theoretical context. Without wishing to idealise the stage as a privileged site which is experienced in terms of presence, I argue that we should instead examine the potential of theatre to put presence into play. Rather than look at theatre as present, I propose instead to explore how theatre manipulates our experience of the present, challenging rather than reinforcing an audiences experience of the live or the immediate. Drawing on ideas in semiotics, phenomenology and performativity, I argue that a framework for thinking about presence, enriched by poststructuralist theory, can inform the analysis of theatrical performance. While by no means a complete survey of presence in the theatre, it is my hope that this thesis will help to suggest new ways of thinking about the tangled set of ideas which surround this concept, and how they might contribute to our understanding of theatres representational possibilities.