Catherine Diamond offers a dynamic portrait of contemporary South East Asian theatre that is at once expansive in scope and remarkably detailed in depth. A professor of theatre at Soochow University in Taipei and director of the Kinnari Ecological Theatre Project, Diamond has an extensive background as both researcher and director. It is perhaps this dual experience that allows the work to be at once deeply insightful and accessible to readers. Although the text is framed by themes such as gender, censorship, globalization and national identity, these broad issues are made understandable to the reader through details of real people with names and faces, specific works performed in particular locations and contexts, and the perceptive lens of culturally specific concepts and metaphors.
Each chapter focuses on a country, with essays grouped together in three sections based on the themes of gender, censorship and national identity. The first three chapters on Thailand, Vietnam and Bali focus on the growing impact of women in performing arts, and the challenge that this phenomenon presents to traditional hierarchies in which women's performance was often entangled with displays of sexual attraction. The fourth to sixth chapters focus on censorship and the global economy in Cambodia, Singapore and Myanmar. Diamond argues that although censorship ostensibly curbs artistic freedom, attempts to avoid censorship have inspired performers to create innovative ways of communicating with audiences through ‘coded expressions’ (p. 21). This section also explores the ambivalent aspects of performing in a globalized economy and new contexts of performance created by global travel and international festivals. The seventh to ninth chapters focus on the role of theatre in the formation of national identity in the Philippines, Laos and Malaysia. Although theatre as a public medium may contribute to government-supported, official versions of historical and political events, it can also take a critical stance against those in power. Theatre troupes are not always clearly in one camp or the other; many must ‘negotiate and explore the possibility of a national identity’ (p. 22) separate from one advocated by state institutions.
The book's introduction and conclusion present regional trends in live theatre in South East Asia. The introduction outlines the region's four prevailing types of contemporary theatre: postmodern, post-colonial, intercultural and social action. In the conclusion, three further trends are addressed: pan-Asian theatre, musicals and experimental theatre. The conclusion also offers insights into why performance is a worthwhile topic of study in South East Asia. Discussing the concept of ‘flow’ (p. 324), Diamond recognizes theatre as providing ‘people a clearing amid the hyperreal topographies of their cities . . . to revalidate their own experiences of reality and collaborate in creating shared imaginary realms’ (p. 329). The initiation point throughout Communities of Imagination is always this intimate ‘transformation of consciousness, the moment when the spectator's and performer's mutually impacting sensibilities create a window opening onto another state of being’ (pp. 328–9). To Diamond, theatre in South East Asia functions as a transformative force within the present social reality, but, perhaps more importantly, has the ability to sharpen one's individual capacity to imagine while simultaneously stimulating one's fullest sense of communal belonging.
