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Brian Crow with Chris Banfield. An Introduction to Post-Colonial Theatre. Cambridge Studies in Modern Theatre, 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. xiv + 186. $49.95 (casebound); $16.95 (paperbound).
Although the emergence of the term "post-colonial" little more than a decade ago has given rise to numerous texts on the theory and literature, few have focused on theater, a focus eminently appropriate since theater is so manifestly a cultural and communal art form. Brian Crow and Chris Banfield's An Introduction to Post-Colonial Theatre thus addresses a void for those teaching the increasing courses in this area and for those desiring simply a working knowledge thereof. Even we in the latter category, however, will discern questionable theoretical and contextual assumptions which prove disturbing in an introductory volume.
The most troublesome of these is signalled immediately in the Preface reference to "Oriental" sources despite subsequent citing of Edward Said, who identified "Orientalism" as the very binarism of Western imperialism that Crow and Banfield purport to critique. Such inadvertent perpetuation of cultural hierarchism also concludes the Preface: "Though we have tried to place our playwrights in their cultural and artistic contexts, this is neither a comprehensive survey of drama and theatre in the Third or Oppressed' World, nor even of the particular cultures to which they belong" (xiii). Unquestioned use of the term 'Third World' repeatedly belies the authors' intent to counter the West's "opportunistic and culturally unequal" (xii) exploitation of nonWestern art forms. Exacerbating these theoretical ironies is the selection of playwrights who number seven and form the basis of each chapter. Even yielding the desirability of a comprehensive approach for an Introduction and conceding the inevitable arbitrariness in such selection, I nonetheless find it problematical. Beyond the bewildering exclusions are the self-defeating inclusions, for the rubric of "Post-Colonial" is stretched to encompass, for example, August Wilson and the United States according to a rationale of a "Third World within the First."
Though undeniably, as Said and others have pointed out, postcolonial identity and geography are necessarily hybrid in a global economy, Crow and Banfield thwart the value of an introduction with their amorphous application. This is not to elide the difficulty of definition, as Post-colonialism, like Post-modernism, suggests both an end to as well as extension...