Crucible Bodies

Postwar Japanese Performance from Brecht to the New Millennium

Uchino Tadashi

"Crucible Bodies: Postwar Japanese Performance from Brecht to the New Millennium" is a collection of essays covering a wide range of historical and theoretical topics, from Brecht in Japan to "children's" bodies in postmodern Japanese performances, from the notion of beauty in contemporary cultural theory to practical and theoretical readings of more recent intercultural performances, involving not only Japanese but also other Asian theatre practitioners. It is one of the first full-length studies of Japanese performance culture written in English by a Japanese native. This work is an important contribution to the developing academic arena of Performance Studies.

About the Author

Tadashi Uchino is Professor of Performance Studies at the Department of Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies, University of Tokyo. His publications include "The Melodramatic Revenge: Theatre of the Private in the 1980s" (1996) and "From Melodrama to Performance: The Twentieth Century American Theatre" (2001). He is also a contributing editor for TDR (MIT Press).

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