2025 AAP Conference Schedule

We look forward to seeing everyone virtually and in person, at Hunter College, New York in just one week!

Please find the draft schedule for our 2025 AAP Conference and the AAP-sponsored sessions at ATHE (to be updated on July 20) below.

If you plan to attend and have not registered, please do so by Friday July 18, 2025: https://www.asian-performance.org/events/2024-aap-annual-conference

Association for Asian Performance

Annual Conference 2025

Hunter College, The City University Of New York

July 22-23, 2025

All conference sessions will be at Hunter West 603. To get to this space, please enter the West Building on the Southwest corner of 68th and Lexington. You will then need to check in at the front desk which will have your names on a list. Then, take the elevator to the 6th floor, or the escalators, which also go to the 3rd floor.

FYI, breakfast will be available for both days and coffee will be available for morning and afternoon. But if you need additional places for food and coffee, there is a cafeteria on the third floor of the building. It has all sorts of food as well as coffee and breakfast. There is also a Starbucks on the first floor of Hunter West that can be accessed from inside the building as well as outside.

Sessions on Tuesday July 22, 2025

8:00 am Registration Desk Open

8:30-9:00 am Registration, Breakfast and Coffee Available

9:00am-9:15 am Welcome Remarks

Xing Fan, AAP President

9:15-10:30 am Session 1: Mediation, Materiality, and Gender

Moderator: Peter Eckersall

Presenters: Jennifer Goodlander, Xing Fan, and Susanna Sun

• Jennifer Goodlander, The Many Wanda’s of Srikandi: Understanding Indonesian Women

  through the Lens of a Superhero

  • In contemporary Indonesia, the stories and aesthetics of wayang kulit, or shadow

    puppetry, influence and reflect many aspects of contemporary society. For women, wayang inscribes the female archetypes of the faithful wife, alluring temptress, and monstrous widow-witch. These various types permeate public discourses about gender roles, discrimination, and equity within and about Indonesian society.

  • One such character, however, reflects contradictory rhetoric about gender in Indonesia. Srikandi is a transgender warrior woman from the Mahabharata, a popular source for stories in a wayang performance. Srikandi has been claimed by the LGBTQ+ community in Indonesia and offers a hope for articulating queer identity in relation to tradition (a kind of cultural legacy). The character, however, has also been adapted by the popular press and political rhetoric; these hegemonic voices manipulate the character to reinforce gender hierarchy.

  • In this paper I borrow the framework of “wanda” to understand these different versions of Srikandi. In wayang the wanda is the face of the character that embodies the function and basic characteristics of major characters within wayang. Some characters have multiple wanda and I use this concept as a jumping off point to draw from the aesthetic and philosophical principles within wayang to understand Srikandi(s). I will then expand my analysis to other representations of female superheroes that are presented in Indonesian comics and film as even other wandas of Srikandi. My ultimate goal is to explore the relationships of these various traditional and modern media forms to understand adaptation as a product and strategy for feminists and queer activists within Indonesia.

• Xing Fan, “Drama Queens”: Female Jingju Performers and Public Visibility, 1910s to

  1940s

  • The first half of the twentieth century witnesses jingju’s transition from a male-dominated arena to both a forum for competition between male and female performers and a platform hosting mixed gendered collaboration. A critical component of this transition is the female jingju performer’s rise to full stardom. This paper examines “Queen Elections,” often hosted by newspapers and magazines, as important sites of negotiations among the actress’s need for public visibility, the public’s mixed attitude towards the ascendance of actresses, and the human agency of all players in the game of media coverage for the female jingju performer. Through archival research, I ask: How were some of the best female jingju performers celebrated in their own time? How did female jingju performers see themselves as part of such public events as “Queen Elections”? And what do these “Queen Elections” reveal for us about the jingju history?

• Susanna Sun, Materiality, Contingency, and Embodied Emotions: Towards a

  Reconceptualization of Water Sleeves in Traditional Chinese Theatre

  • In traditional Chinese theatre, “water sleeves (shuixiu 水袖),” are the white silk extensions attached to the sleeve cuffs of the characters’ garments. Amplifying the hand and arm movements of the actor, the water sleeves extend outward from the human body. Water sleeves take on many simultaneous, crucial roles: they are considered to be an intrinsic part of Chinese opera costume, a theatrical tool, an extension of the actor’s body (prosthesis), a visual medium that externalizes a character’s interiority, and the mastering of which is considered an essential skill for any Chinese opera performer. However, despite the important role water sleeves play in Chinese opera, the nature and function of water sleeves remains insufficiently theorized in Chinese performance studies to this day. Arguing against the prevalent existing human-centric conceptions that reduce water sleeves to be a mere tool mastered by actors, I focus on the specific materiality of silk that offers a contingency and co-agency to the human body. In this, I call for a reconceptualization of water sleeves in traditional Chinese theatre in terms of how

    water sleeves’ negotiates a complex relationship between corporeality, contingency, and embodied subjectivity.

10:45-12:00 pm Session 2: Cultural Translation and Hybridity in Drama and Dance

Moderator: Ellen Gerdes

Presenters: Melissa Li, Eva Shan Chou, and Xueting Zhu

• Melissa Li, The Misinterpretation of “Modernization”: Adaptation of Bulwer-Lytton and

  Melodrama in Meiji Kabuki

  • In the 1870s, Tokyo’s kabuki scene saw the emergence of zangirimono (cropped-hair plays), a genre depicting contemporary events after the Meiji Restoration. These plays, written by Kawatake Mokuami and performed by stars like Danjurō IX and Kikugorō V, often incorporated Western narratives and themes, responding to the Meiji government’s efforts to modernize Japan’s cultural and social infrastructure.

  • One notable example is Ningen Banji Kane Yono Naka (Money Rules the World), Mokuami’s 1879 adaptation of Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s 1840 play Money. While its premiere was positively received by foreign dignitaries, I argue that this adaptation fundamentally misinterpreted what “modern” meant in Western theater. Lytton’s play, adhering to the “well-made play” structure, reflected mid-19th century melodramatic conventions. By the 1870s, however, Western theater had evolved toward psychological realism, as seen in the works of Henrik Ibsen. Japanese interpretations of Western drama, however, remained tied to older melodramatic frameworks.

  • The role of Fukuchi Ōchi in adapting Lytton’s play further highlights this gap in understanding. As one of the few English experts who had participated in multiple Western diplomatic missions by the late 1870s, Ōchi provided the original storyline to Mokuami, who lacked knowledge of Western drama and English. Ōchi’s “translation” likely emphasized the melodramatic elements of the original, reinforcing clear-cut antagonism between honorable heroes and villains. Thus, this adaptation ironically adhered to Japan’s traditional kanzen chōaku principle (“rewarding the good and punishing the evil”), a moralistic framework that had dominated Edo-period theater and persisted in the Meiji era despite the government’s efforts to modernize.

• Eva Shan Chou, China Premieres a Swan Lake, 1958

  • It was only in the middle decades of the twentieth century that ballet began to take seed and grow in countries outside its historical centers of France, Italy, and Russia. Companies whose names are immediately recognizable today all first formed in those decades – Royal Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, New York City Ballet, National Ballet of Canada, Stuttgart Ballet. The proliferation of Swan Lake the world over today likewise has relatively recently roots, likewise in the middle decades of the twentieth century (in 1934, 1940, 1954, and 1960).

  • This time period, and the debut of a Swan Lake in it, are not so different from the span of time involved for ballet in China: it began in a systematic way in 1954 with the founding of the Beijing Dance School, it premiered a Swan Lake in 1958, and its high quality today is epitomized by the National Ballet of China. I do not, however, introduce this parallel as bragging rights and certainly not as cultural nationalism, but rather to begin my presentation by emphasizing how the giants in our mindscape often have shorter roots in time than we assume.

  • This newness is the context in which I will talk about the 1958 premiere of a Swan Lake in Beijing. My presentation will describe a production process that fielded 100-plus dance students in more than 200 roles, employed newly graduated talents in directing, stage design, costume, and music, was set and rehearsed by five Soviet advisors and four 'Chinese directors', all logistically backed by high-level support. It is drawn from a long article I am preparing on this subject and will be illustrated with programs, photographs, and archival footage that not possible to include in published works.

• Xueting Zhu, The Style Matters: Chinese Ballroom Choreography, Transnational

  Performance, and the Cultural Hybridity

  • Ballroom dance travels transnational cultural landscapes, shaped by intersecting dynamics of power, class, race, gender, and sexuality on global and local levels. This paper traces how ballroom dance, historically tied to Western imperialism and colonialism, has been introduced and reimagined in China. Drawing on frameworks from cultural studies and transnational nationalism, I examine Chinese-style ballroom choreography and performance in transnational /Chinese contexts since the early 21st century across competitive dance floors, TV shows, concert stages, and public spaces. Through choreographic and performance analysis, archival research, and interviews, I demonstrate how Chinese elements—including movement vocabularies, costumes, music, props, stage setting, and narrative structures—have been integrated into international-style ballroom dance to embody cultural hybridity and national identity. I argue these choreographies challenge Eurocentric values embedded in International-style ballroom while remaining entangled in Orientalist narratives and patriarchal, Han-majority discourses shaped by China’s nationalist, collectivist ideologies. Building on prior ballroom dance scholarship, this text conceptualizes Chinese-style choreography as a transnational cultural phenomenon that continuously adapts to global and local influences and reveals how Chinese-style ballroom navigates tensions between resisting and perpetuating hegemonic structures. In so doing, I show how artists navigate, challenge, negotiate, and transform transnational dance practices amid asymmetries of global capital, politics, and cultural forces.

12:15-1:45 pm AAP Board Meeting (in-person at Hunter West 603)

For those who are not board members, please have lunch on your own.

Some nearby places for breakfast/lunch include:

• Hunter Deli - 966 Lexington

• Gong Cha Asian Bowls & Bubble tea- 925 Lexington

• Ray's Pizza - 811 Lexington Ave

• Gourmet Bagel - 874 Lexington Ave

• EJ's Lunchenette (Diner) - 1271 3rd Ave

• Le Botaniste (Vegan) - 833 Lexington Ave

Afternoon coffee will be available when you return.

2:00-3:15pm Session 3: Embodying Otherness and Diasporic Performances

Moderator: Jennifer Goodlander

Presenters: Jan Creutzenberg, Ryan Hung, and Daphne P. Lei

• Jan Creutzenberg, Kafka’s Ape in Korea: Staging Otherness, Remaking an Icon

  • Stage adaptations involve a process of appropriation. In the case of Kafka’s short story “A Report for an Academy”, the essential otherness of the protagonist – an ape that turned human through (self-)education – inspired theatre makers all over the world to various experiments. Only in South Korea, though, Red Peter (the name of “Kafka’s ape”) has become an iconic character, revisited by generations of actors and directors and well-known beyond the stage.

  • In the late 1970s, actor Chu Song-ung produced (and starred in) the first Korean stage adaptation, broke audience records and made a fortune. Subsequently, various actors stepped into his shoes with spectacular animal performances. Others probed the boundaries of the popular monodrama by adding meta-theatrical, traditional, and other experimental elements – even a mime version! Today, several versions of Red Peter co-exist, usually shown on small stages and in close contact with the audience.

  • This paper traces the twisted career of Red Peter, from timely off-theatre star to nostalgic evergreen. Using artistic statements and reviews, as well as scripts and video recordings, I explore the changing approaches both in reaction to each other and as a reflection of their respective time. I argue that the sudden success of Red Peter in the 70s amidst political oppression helped turning a literary character into an agent of otherness that later versions could build upon. From Kafka-idolatry to stand-up comedy, the ongoing re-invention of Red Peter spotlights key debates in the South Korean theatre scene and beyond.

• Ryan Hung, From Protest to Hegemony: “Descendants of the Dragon” and the US-PRC-Taiwan Relationship through Popular Music

  • In 1977, the United States shifted its political recognition from Taiwan to the People's Republic of China (PRC), and campus folk emerged as a protest this act’s implications – a music genre written and performed by Taiwanese university students centering folk compositions with tonally nationalistic pan-Chinese themes and shunning the predominant American rock influence in Taiwan’s popular music. Written by Hou Dejian and sung by Li Jianfu, “Descendants of the Dragon” (1978) is the most successful campus folk song but not because it speaks to a distinctly Taiwanese fervor. Utilizing a patriotic folk tone and lyrics reflecting Chinese cultural history and memory, it became the best-selling pop song in the PRC and endures as an unofficial Chinese anthem with its ethno-nationalistic tones. Consequently, “Descendants of the Dragon” serves as a fascinating tool for Chinese cultural hegemony throughout the transnational Chinese diaspora. Leehom Wang, Li’s nephew, is an American of Taiwanese descent and pop superstar in the Greater China region, and he remade the hit in 2000 by combining hip hop with campus folk. One of Wang’s most popular songs, the Afro-Asian musical hybridity exercised in his remake weaponizes Blackness for Chinese cultural hegemony while simultaneously rendering Blackness invisible. Through analysis of recorded and live musical performances, performance studies, and popular music aesthetics, this presentation chronologically traces how “Descendants of the Dragon” through performance arrived as Taiwan’s anti-hegemonic challenge against the United States and the PRC but transformed into the PRC’s most powerful cultural hegemonic tool by infusing distinctly American – namely Black – aesthetics.

• Daphne P. Lei, Performing Oriental Authenticity with Alternative Temporality: Survival, Health, and Culinary Diplomacy

  • Cantonese opera landed in San Francisco in the 1850s and “playing Chinese” (in yellowface) became fashionable since 1870s. Japan was “opened” to the West after 1868 and theatrical imagination of Japanese became popular since 1880s (Mikado and later Madama Butterfly). However, such theatricalized Orientalness is distant and unapproachable. The Pacific War/World War II sullied the image of the beautiful Asia and anti-Asian sentiment in Western countries was worsened. After the war, diplomatic relations were rebuilt through artistic activities (touring of Chinese opera or folk dance); meanwhile, an alternative “journey to the West” was happening, such as the popularization of Asian cuisine in American restaurants and home kitchens. Although this new type of Asian cuisine still emphasizes Oriental authenticity, it takes on American postwar culinary temporality: instant meal, premade food, convenience, speed.

  • This paper investigates the performative Chineseness through culinary performance in the US in the post-war era and beyond. The focus is on Grace Zia Chu, who received Western education in China and the US, and taught physical education in China as part of the “New Life Movement” in 1930s and 1940s. Her immigration to the US and engagement in culinary art was both a postwar survival strategy and an entrepreneurship to popularize Orientalness in American home kitchens. Through videos, newspapers, magazine, cook books, and cooking classes, her new “Oriental performance” is accessible and adaptable. Is reproducing “authenticity” in culinary art a new form of yellowface performance? Does such continuous consumption and embodiment of Orientalness have a long effect on nation building and cultural formation?

3:30-4:45 pm Session 4: Issues and Insights in Asian Puppet Theatre

Chair: Cobina Gillitt

Respondent: Deepsikha Chaterjee

Presenters: Claudia Orenstein (Zoom), Matthew Issac Cohen, Deniz Khateri, and Kathy Foley

• Claudia Orenstein, Eyes on Japanese Puppets

  • When we watch a bunraku production in Osaka, we marvel at the masterful 3-person manipulation of figures and the emotional drama expressed by chanter and shamisen player. The puppeteers, chanters, and musicians are all named in the program. But who crafted these puppets? How did they do it and when? Who did these craftspeople study with to learn their art, and can we discern traditions of lineage in looking closely at the figures? Are the objects being used newly made or old one recently refurbished? While the bodies of the bunraku puppets are relatively interchangeable, what are the differences between the exquisitely crafted heads? What, other than role type, makes one a better choice than another? What kinds of functionality do puppeteers value? What happens to a head when it is damaged? Is it irretrievable or can it be mended? If it can, then how? Do signs of wear and use show on the figures? Where in what way? Can one easily distinguish a puppet used at the National Theatre in Osaka from those used in similar performance traditions elsewhere in the country? And what about puppets from other Japanese traditional forms? Do they share carving techniques and mechanics with bunraku puppets?

  • This presentation shares the fruits of my upcoming summer research in Japan—motivated by the types of questions above—when I will work closely with scholar-collector Tsujimoto Kazuhide, founder and director of the Ningyō no Mura Museum in Tokushima, to learn to look at and appraise traditional Japanese puppets. While there are many experts and appraisers of Japanese art, who regularly address these sorts of questions, those who turn their attention to puppets are few and far between. Taking a material-driven approach, this paper hopes to offer a view of Japanese traditional puppet performance that can provide fresh insights into the art as a whole and the important history, networks, and practices involved in making and using puppets.

• Matthew Issac Cohen, Material Traces of Wayang in New Order Indonesia

  • This paper surveys the Dr. Walter Angst and Sir Henry Angest Collection of Indonesian Puppets, the largest wayang collection in the world, for traces of the material conditions under which wayang was produced and consumed during Indonesia’s New Order regime (1966-1998). During this period under the rule of the “smiling general” Soeharto and his cronies, traditional cultures became a means for disseminating government propaganda. The Green Revolution, neo-governmental wayang organizations Pepadi and Senawangi, mass media, wayang festivals, and education contributed to the standardization of regional styles. Old family heirloom puppets in regional styles were exchanged for flashy new puppets produced en masse in craft villages. At the same time, neo-liberal forces in the artistic economy contributed to high-profile, “super-star” puppeteers developing their own distinctive artistic “packets” to perform on stage, television, radio, and audiocassettes. Wayang in much of Indonesia transformed into a carriage trade item sponsored by wealthy patrons, businesses, and the government to affirm ethnic identities. Wayang was both an arm of the state (for example in the family planning propaganda of wayang kulit keluarga berencana) and a site of resistance (e.g., the ecological messaging of Ledjar Subroto’s wayang kancil performances). Innovations from the arts academies and independent wayang artists such as Sigit Sukasman and I Wayan Wija were readily incorporated into mainstream performances.

• Deniz Khateri, Persian Calligraphy and Puppetry

  • Persian calligraphy and puppetry have traditionally been regarded as separate art forms, with little exploration of their potential synergy. Despite both being deeply rooted in Persian artistic heritage, the idea of integrating calligraphic aesthetics into puppet design remains largely unexplored. This separation has limited the ways in which puppetry can embody the fluidity, abstraction, and expressive motion inherent in Persian script. This research seeks to bridge that gap by investigating how Persian calligraphy can inform puppet design, challenging conventional anthropomorphic forms that often adhere to Western figurative traditions. By drawing inspiration from the curves, elongations, and rhythmic flow of Persian script, this study reimagines puppet forms that move beyond literal human representation, embracing abstraction and cultural specificity. Through a combination of historical analysis, artistic experimentation, and performance studies, this research examines how the gestural qualities of Persian calligraphy can translate into dynamic puppet movement and innovative design. Experimental performances will demonstrate how puppets shaped by calligraphic principles can create new modes of storytelling, offering fresh perspectives on movement, form, and expression. This study not only redefines approaches to puppet aesthetics but also contributes to a broader dialogue on decolonizing visual and performative traditions. By merging Persian calligraphy with puppetry, this research uncovers new artistic possibilities that honor cultural heritage while expanding the boundaries of contemporary puppetry.

• Kathy Foley, Heritage Recognition and Puppetry in the Indo-Pacific

  • This paper will consider examples of Indo-Pacific puppetry in the context of UNIMA-International Heritage Awards which give national and international recognition. Auli’I Mitchell’s efforts at reviving Hula Ki’i, James Webster’s reinvention of New Zealand puppetry in the context of Maori Music revivals, and I Made Sidia’s innovations in Balinese wayang show three contemporary “takes” on developing new puppetry works that build from heritage genres. These artists are developing new works in the context of puppetry that has experienced significant change in the current generation (Bali) or which were considered defunct (as in the Hawaiian and Maori models). What choices are these figures making. Why has the UNIMA International Heritage commission recognized them in its citation process? How do such efforts as theirs fit into the general patterns of genre recognition and heritage holders developed by UNESCO and what do these processes mean for the artists and their art?

    
    

5:00-6:15pm Session 5: Emerging Scholars Panel

Moderator: Jashodhara Sen

Presenters: Yao Xu, Dahye Lee, and Ruijiao Dong

• Yao Xu, Incentivizing the New: The Ethics and Politics of Innovation within the Young Artists Platform

  • This paper examines the selection criteria and production practices of the Young Artist Platform (YAP, 青年舞蹈人才培育计划), a prominent funding and production initiative that has supported independent dance-making in mainland China since 2014. I begin this paper by reframing the figure of the independent choreographer within China’s postsocialist context. Drawing on Sarah Wilbur’s (2021) theorization of dance grant-making as an infrastructural force that shapes artistic production, aesthetics, and institutional values, I analyze YAP’s curatorial influence in defining innovation within Chinese dance. Using YAP-commissioned artist Tian Tian’s (田湉) work as a case study, I explore how YAP’s funding logic and programmatic structure create a self-reinforcing cycle that equates innovation with modern and contemporary aesthetics. I argue that YAP’s model exemplifies a form of precarious innovation, in which choreographers must navigate institutional contradictions emblematic of Chinese postsocialism. By examining how artists engage with national funding criteria and production mandates, this paper reveals how aesthetic expectations and operative norms shape the political economy of dance circulation in contemporary China.

• Dahye Lee, Shaping New Koreanness: Training Systems for Changjak Chum (‘Newly Created Dance’) of South Korea

  • Dancing bodies are continually shaped by—and simultaneously reshape—the training systems they regularly engage with. This dynamic interplay reveals how movement practices are not static or immutable but rather ongoing sites of negotiation and expression of ideas and values. Focusing on changjak chum (“newly created dance”), a new form of Korean dance that emerged in the 1970s as a means of articulating contemporary Korean identity, this paper examines the discourse surrounding newly developed training systems in Korean dance (gibon) and how they have functioned as critical sites for identity formation.

  • Gibon (literally, “basic”) refers to a system of foundational movements, adapted from traditional Korean dance and arranged into sequences to be practiced repeatedly and regularly. These systems serve not only as warm-ups but also as generative foundations for building movement vocabulary and choreographic tools. Deeply embedded in the sociopolitical contexts of a new Korea in the 1970s—post-independence, post-division South Korea—changjak chum arose in opposition to sinmuyong (“new dance”), a form that originated in the 1930s during the Japanese colonial period. Leaders of the new dance form were tasked with developing “our own” movement vocabulary that could express “new Koreanness.” In doing so, they required newly devised training systems—both rooted in pre-colonial traditions and responsive to a rapidly changing present. This paper argues that these newly developed changjak chum gibons collectively demonstrate how the form has worked to establish its own technical and aesthetic foundations, thereby creating a distinct form capable of embodying and expressing new Koreanness.

• Ruijiao Dong, Actresses, Masculinity, and Misogyny in Professionalizing Modern Chinese Theatre

  • Since the early 1920s, nannv heyan (co-ed performances and gender-appropriate casting) has been advocated by Chinese intellectuals as a sign of progressiveness and gender equality, corresponding with the “New Women” figures on stage to promote women’s liberation within theatre and beyond. In this paper, I examine the series of theatre reviews and discourse of “xisheng sexiang” (utilizing one’s sexual appeal and sacrificing one’s chastity) around a 1923 performance of Yingxiong yu meiren (The Hero and the Beauty), featuring a female student Wu Ruiyan (b. 1904 - 1981) in the lead female role Lin Yaqin, a repented prostitute. I argue that despite its motivations being partially rooted in women’s liberation, the advocacy for gender-appropriate casting was underpinned by an implicit misogynistic prejudice to jettison femininity from theatre and propelled by a desire to restore the masculine body in theatre via transforming acting from a traditional craft to modern knowledge and from a despised occupation to a legitimate profession.

7:00-8:30pm Schmoozefest

Hui Restaurant & Bar

314 E 70th St, New York, NY 10021

8:30-9:30pm Happy Hour

Venue TBD

Wednesday, July 23, 2025

8:45-9:15 am Breakfast and Coffee Available

9:15-10:30am Session 6: Asian Puppetry in Motion: Innovation, Access, and Repertoire

Moderator: David Jortner

Presenters: Rahul Koonathara, Jyana Browne, Asya Gorovits, and Chee-Hann Wu

• Panel Abstract

  • “Asian Puppetry in Motion: Innovation, Access, and Repertoire” examines how puppetry troupes across Asia are incorporating new stories, methods, community engagements, and technologies to balance the need to maintain a performance tradition with the imperative to reach contemporary audiences. Although puppetry practices are often associated with the past through standardized stories and codified forms, this panel shows the breadth and vitality of Asian puppetry today. Further, the panel highlights the role of puppetry in education and community engagement, from grassroots training initiatives to participatory performances that empower the communities involved.

  • The first two papers focus on troupes generating new repertoire by adapting classic narratives and reinventing aesthetics. Koonathara explores the reworking of canonical stories within Tholpavakoothu, shadow puppetry in Kerala, India. Browne then analyzes a new production of the manga One Piece created by a bunraku troupe in Kyūshū, Japan. Other papers center around the educational outreach and interdisciplinary collaboration of traditional puppetry. Gorovits investigates the ethics of reviving Pavakathakali, a hand puppet tradition native to Kerala, India, and how the tradition engages with contemporary educational settings. Wu delves into an experimental performance, incorporating traditional puppetry elements withtechno-immersive storytelling. Using motion capture technology, holography, and 3D animation, it challenges the notion of liveness and materiality.

  • Together, the papers demonstrate the energy and creativity of contemporary puppetry in Asia, showcasing how artists and practitioners are reimagining traditions to engage with modern audiences. By blending heritage with innovation, these case studies highlight the resilience and adaptability of Asian puppetry.

• Rahul Koonathara, Ritual to Innovation: The Malleability of Tholpavakoothu

  • Tholpavakoothu, the traditional shadow puppet play of Kerala, was historically performed as a ritual offering to the mother Goddess exclusively in temples until the late 1960s. With modernization, the art form evolved to engage non-traditional audiences by adapting the epic Ramayana into shorter versions staged in secular spaces.

• Jyana Browne, Bunraku on the High Seas: Seiwa Bunraku’s One Piece on Local and Global Stages

  • Browne’s paper examines the new production of One Piece by the Seiwa Bunraku in Kyūshū, Japan. An adaptation of the popular manga and anime, One Piece represents the folk puppetry troupe’s efforts to maintain their relevance at home and abroad.

• Asya Gorovits, Pavakathakali: a Transition of the Indian Hand Puppetry Tradition

  • This paper focuses on pavakathakali, a hand puppetry tradition native to Kerala, India, and its performative elements. Gorovits is interested in illuminating the nature of the puppeteer/puppet relationship and the ethics of the revival of this tradition, as well as its use in contemporary educational settings.

• Chee-Hann Wu, From Traditional to Techno-Theatre: Taiwanese Glove Puppetry Reimagined

  • This paper explores Success is Within Your Palm, a reimagining of Taiwanese glove puppetry’s origins through tradition and technology. Interweaving theatrical elements with techno-immersive storytelling, it maps a performer’s real-time movements onto a holographically projected virtual puppet, expanding the art form’s expressive possibilities and redefining its spatial and aesthetic dimensions.

10:45-12:00pm Session 7: Transnational Stages: Performing Identity, Resistance, and Change

Chair and Discussant: Jashodhara Sen

Presenters: Deepsikha Chatterjee, Rini Tarafder, Radhica Ganapathy, Arnab Banerji, Sandamini Ranwalage, and Jashodhara Sen

• Panel Proposal

  • This panel explores performance, translation, and cultural resistance across interconnected geographies, from South and Southeast Asia to Australia and the United States. Exploring performance traditions and adaptations in different settings, this panel demonstrates that theatre functions as a site of cultural negotiation, historical reckoning, and social critique.“Oceanic and Inter-Asia connections between Bali Indonesia and Indian performances” follows oceanic and inter-Asia relations between India and Bali, looking at the historical interchanges between Southeast Asia and South Asia through the performance prism. From Rabindranath Tagore’s investigations of Balinese dance to present-day observations at the Bali Arts Festival, this research considers how material such as masks and costume discloses centuries-old cultural currents.

  • “Traveling with Anticaste Performances: Reflecting on Vamsi’s Experimental Performances in the US” discusses adaptation within the context of performance migration. This article talks about Vamsi Matta’s Come Eat with Me and Can a Song Be a Revolution? In detailing how Dalit traditions shift within new geographies, this paper examines spatial transgressions as a reflection of the politics of caste resistance in such performances in the United States.

  • “Binodini Dasi: Performer/Innovator/Historiographer” and “Translating Binodini: Patriarchy, Performance, and the Politics of Resistance” delve into the legacy of Binodini Dasi, a pioneering figure in Indian theatre. The first paper repositions Binodini as a performer, innovator, and historiographer, emphasizing her negotiation of tradition and modernity. The other examines the translation of Nati Binodini, analyzing the patriarchal paradoxes of jatra performance and its role in shaping cultural identity.

  • “Cracking” Voices over Telephones: Performed and Performative Distance in S.S Shakthidharan’s Counting and Cracking” turns to diasporic narratives in Counting and Cracking, a Sri Lankan-Australian play that employs telephone conversations as a performative mechanism of diasporic distance and intimacy. It situates the play within alternative historiographical projects that center on corporeality and migration.

  • Ultimately, Chitra explores the evolution of gender representation in Rabindranath Tagore’s Chitra, Chitrangada, and its English translation. By tracing shifts in language and form, it examines how translation informs contemporary social politics.

  • Together, these papers foreground performance as a transnational practice that resists hegemonic structures while navigating histories of displacement, adaptation, and cultural memory.

• Presenters and Paper Titles

  • Deepsikha Chatterjee, Oceanic and Inter-Asia connections between Bali Indonesia and Indian performances

  • Rini Tarafder, Traveling with Anticaste Performances: Reflecting on Vamsi’s Experimental Performances in the US

  • Radhica Ganapathy, Binodini Dasi: Performer/Innovator/Historiographer

  • Arnab Banerji, Chitra

  • Sandamini Ranwalage, Cracking” Voices over Telephones: Performed and Performative Distance in S.S Shakthidharan’s Counting and Cracking

  • Jashodhara Sen, Translating Binodini: Patriarchy, Performance, and the Politics of Resistance

    
    

12:00-1:15pm Lunch/Grad Student Mentoring Session

Peng’s Noodle Folk (Ramen/Japanese)

1016 Lexington Ave, New York, NY 10021

Afternoon coffee will be available when you return.

1:30-2:45 pm Session 8: Cultural Identities Across Borders and Time

Moderator: Xing Fan

Presenters: Jungmin Song, Rattana Phoonkasem, and Mariko Okada

• Jungmin Song, A Spirit Daughter’s Diary : Initiation

  • In the summer of 2024, I underwent an initiation process in Korean shamanic training under the guidance of renowned Mansin (accomplished shaman) Haekyong Lee. In Korean shamanism, the master-apprentice relationship is likened to that of a mother and daughter; through this initiation, I became the ‘spirit daughter’ of Mansin Lee. My decision to undergo this process stemmed from a desire to reconnect with my performance art practice. Recognizing my unconventional motivation, Mansin Lee—who navigates dual roles as both a ritual practitioner and an artist—agreed to support my initiation. As part of my training, she took me to three sacred sites in Korea, places where shamans from across the country gather to receive blessings from powerful spirits. The process culminated in a naerim-kut (initiation ritual) conducted by Mansin Lee at her own temple. This paper narrates my journey with Mansin Lee, weaving together the personal, artistic, and cultural dimensions of my experience. My inspiration for this undertaking arose from my research on Korean folklorist and performance artist Sim U-Seong, which led me to explore the appropriation of kut (shamanic ritual) in Korean avant-garde theater and left-wing nationalist movements from the 1960s to the 1980s. By situating my experience within the contemporary reception of Korean shamanism, I examine its complex relationship with the Korean public, popular culture, and social media.

• Rattana Phoonkasem, Cultural Exchange through Performing Arts: A Case Study of the Advancement of Culture Residency Program as a Guideline for Developing Future Creative Cultural Initiatives

  • This work aims to explore the model of cultural exchange activities through art within the Advancement of Culture Residency program. It focuses on examining the expectations, motivations, and participatory behaviors of participants who stayed in Indonesia for more than 30 days, analyzing these findings to propose strategies for enhancing future creative cultural initiatives. The sample group consists of 16 participants from the 2024 cohort, representing seven countries: Poland, the Netherlands, Malaysia, Indonesia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Thailand. A qualitative case study methodology is employed, incorporating methods such as observation, interviews, participant engagement, performing art analysis, reflective journaling, and feedback from instructors.

  • The study identifies the Losari Mask Dance (Topeng Losari) as the central activity, with all participants required to learn its historical context before engaging in the dance movements. This 400-year-old tradition provides a foundation for the choreography, linking it to the local community’s heritage. The study reveals that participants demonstrate engagement behaviors, motivations, and expectations in line with self-determination theory. These include a desire for autonomy in life choices, the pursuit of achievement that fosters self-pride and competence, and the need for social connection.

  • The result suggests that integrating performance arts with place-based learning is crucial for the future development of such programs. This approach should consider the host community’s preparedness and the diverse cultural contexts of participants, including language and beliefs. The Advancement of Culture Residency program thus serves as a valuable platform for fostering social understanding, self-expression, and cultural awareness among both community members and outsiders.

• Mariko Okada, Performing Japan: The Rise of the Japanese Dance Craze in 1890s U.S.

  • In 1894, the "real" Japanese dance appeared in the second act of the operetta "The Mikado" at the Fifth Avenue Theater on Broadway, New York. Although the production took place during the summer, it was a success, running for over 100 performances in three months and receiving praise in newspapers. The promotional material emphasized the "real" Japanese dance, which gained further popularity when Thomas Edison filmed the dancers for a kinetoscope, distributing the footage across the country. This occurred against the backdrop of the Japonism from Europe, which heightened the demand for "authentic" Japanese dance.A decade prior to this performance, "The Mikado" had its first productions in London and New York in 1885, marking the beginning of Japonism in performance. Japanese dance captivated many non-professional performers, who often impersonated Japanese characters in various charity events. The New York Times' Theatrical Week reported on May 19, 1895, "Miss Katie Seymour's Japanese dance is being imitated—as far as it can be imitated—all over the country." This paper examines the Japanese dance boom in the United States during the 1890s and analyzes the Western perspective on Asian performance.

    
    

3:00-4:15pm Session 9: Theatre and the (Re)making of Society

Moderator: Man He

Presenters: Alissa Elegant, David Jortner, Siyuan Liu, and Peter Eckersall

• Alissa Elegant, A Platform of Workers’ Artistic Practices: Huiyan and Guanmo Yanchu in the 1950s PRC

  • The nascent People’s Republic of China (PRC) nurtured a vibrant scene of amateur performing arts for workers. A number of authors have articulated the role of amateur artistic practices in the nascent PRC focusing on rural areas. The rural urban divide means that while amateur performance in cities is inspired by many of the same ideas about the role of art in a mobilization society, amateur artistic performance has key differences from its rural counterpart. In particular, this geographic shift across the rural/urban divide entails a shift in organizing entities and revolutionary groups served. While the Federation of Literary Arts and Circles (Wenlian), and Communist Youth League were key supporters of amateur arts in rural areas, labor unions stand out as an equally important, if not more important revolutionary organization for amateur artistic practices in urban areas.

  • In this essay, I focus specifically on performance events (huiyan and guanmo yanchu) labor unions convened for workers to perform a variety of artistic practices including dance, music, theater and other indigenous performing forms, thereby provisioning workers with a platform to perform. Utilizing a personal archive I built from performance programs (from kongfuziwang.com), and coverage in workers/industry newspapers, and references in industry and regional gazetteers, I trace the development of these events from their start at the semi-local level (city level/bureau level), to the national level, which the 1955 Masses Amateur Music and Dance Guanmo Yanchu. I show that they created a network of opportunities for workers to performing evolving artistic trends.

• David Jortner, “Groans of Agony and Dozens of Deaths” Kamishibai and Atomic discourse under the US Occupation

  • The Occupation of Japan by the American military (from 1945-1952) was a period of sweeping institutional reforms and societal changes. The Americans wanted to eliminate the “feudal” conditions and mindsets that contributed to the Japanese proclivity to war; therefore Japan’s education system was overhauled and opportunities to promote “democratic” and “egalitarian” ideas were eagerly sought. Theatre for children, especially the performance form known as kyōiku (educational) kamishibai, received a great deal of attention from US officers and censors. The idea of using the theatre and kamishibai to promote democracy and democratic ideals was also embraced by many Japanese performers and writers, who felt freed from the rubrics of wartime censorship and wanted (often eagerly) to help promote a new and “peace oriented” Japan.

  • Inspired by this ethos, several Japanese authors turned towards the issue of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In doing so, they ran afoul of SCAP’s censorship mandate; while the Americans did not ban discussion of the atomic bomb outright, their policies made discussion of the event and its repercussions difficult across multiple media. Using recently discovered archival materials, this paper will examine the texts and contexts of the American response to Japanese works in light of SCAP’s anti-bomb censorial mandate and its use of theatre and kamishibai for the promotion of “democratic” freedoms and education.

• Siyuan Liu, “Using Imperialist Slaughter to Shock Awake the Sleeping Chinese Masses”: All Quiet on the Western Front as Proletarian Avant-Garde Theatre from Japan to China (1929-1930)

  • In March 1930, after a bitter split of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the nationalist Kuomintang (KMT), the first CCP-led theatre group, the Shanghai Art Theatre Society, staged All Quiet on the Western Front, adapted from Remarque’s anti-war novel by the Japanese playwright, director and designer Murayama Tomoyoshi. This essay analyzes the production as part of worldwide dramaturgical and production transfer of proletarian avant-garde theatre, in the vein of Meyerhold and Piscator, from Europe, through Japan, to China. Murayama introduced Piscator to Japan after his one-year stay in Berlin in 1922, including translating Piscator’s Political Theatre. Meyerhold was brought to Japan by Hijikata Yoshi, a director and co-founder of the Tsukiji Little Theatre, flagship company of modern Japanese theatre shingeki (new theatre), after seeing Meyerhold’s production of The Earth in Turmoil in Moscow in 1923. In the late 1920s, as shingeki turned to Marxism and overt proletarian theatre, both of them asked several Chinese art students in Tokyo to help them stage Chinese-themed plays, such as Hijikata’s direction of Roar, China!, a favorite of worldwide leftist theatre since Meyerhold’s premiere in Moscow. Murayama also involved these students with his plays set in China and All Quiet on the Western Front. He then assisted them with the translation, directing, and design of its production in Shanghai. Based on archival sources and contemporaneous publications in Chinese and Japanese, the essay examines, but also complicates, the ideological and artistic vocabularies shared by the worldwide proletarian theatre movement inspired by the Soviet Revolution.

• Peter Eckersall, Evacuation and emptiness: Takayama and the Dramaturgy of Things Forgotten and Not Yet Known

  • This paper is part of an ongoing project that explores the work of theatre director and social critic, Takayama Akira. Takayama’s practices include tour performances, urban action, and published criticism. After the Fukushima disasters, he created a series of works titled “Evacuation Manuals,” which take that particular moment as a springboard to think more broadly about the process of leaving a given structure of life (literally and conceptually). This is the central question for our larger project: what would it mean to evacuate an institution of everyday life? What would that look like in practice?

  • What does it mean to experience evacuation, and can art and performance tell us anything meaningful about this form of crisis mobility? In this paper I will think about how evacuation leaves a space of emptiness, not as a place that has no life, but more in terms of how absence from one place or time recalls a memory of something that was present; some place or way of being that comes after evacuation but is informed by it. We can see this idea explored in Takayama’s tour performances that moved around the exterior of a pertinent site of inquiry. We also see it in the way that a work like his “Evacuation Manual” uses the idea of retreat from one place to draw attention to another. His work often suggested that it is going to tell us something about somewhere, yet in the process of framing this, the participant is often occluded for direct insight, they are given partial access, and the framing is askance. Dramaturgically, many of his works seem to put the center of a topic off to the side. His performances move around the space where something was, shifting perspective, and reminding us that emptiness has political and aesthetic implications. Takayama doesn’t so much zoom in on something, as he (in a Brechtian way), sets up a way of thinking about its context.

4:15-6:00 pm Membership Meeting

In person at Hunter West 603

Presenters’ Bios

Arnab Banerji is an Associate Professor of Theatre History and Dramatic Literature at Loyola Marymount University located in the unceded lands of the Gabrilieno Tongva people also known as Los Angeles. He is the author of Contemporary Group Theatre from Kolkata, India (Routledge 2020). Arnab’s essays and reviews have been published in Theatre Journal, Theatre Topics, Asian Theatre Journal, TDR, BOOM California, Ecumenica, Theatre Symposium, Sanglap, Cerebration, SERAS, and Virginia Review of Asian Studies. His current research is in performances by the Indian diaspora, translations of Indian vernacular plays, and contemporary Bengali theatre.

Jyana Browne is Assistant Professor of Premodern Japanese Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Maryland. Her areas of research include Japanese puppetry; the integration of new technology into traditional theatre; and the intersections of performance, sexuality, and embodiment on stage and in everyday life. Her writing has appeared in Journal of Japanese Language and Literature, Puppetry International, Theatre Research International, Theatre Topics, and the edited volumes Troubling Traditions: Canonicity, Theatre, and Performance in the US and Realisms in East Asian Performance.

Deepsikha Chatterjee is a tenured faculty of Theatre at Hunter College CUNY. She received her undergraduate degrees from University of Madras and National Institute of Fashion Technology and MFA in from Florida State University. She has designed for Barnard College, at Women’s Project, at New York Musical Festival, Pan Asia Repertory, Capital Fringe, and United Solo. She researches costumes and masks for Indian performance and presents at USITT, Costume Society of America, Rubin Museum of Art in New York City, etc. She has served as the dance director for Indo-American Arts Council’s Erasing Borders Dance Festival bringing international dancers to the New York stage.

Deepsikha Chatterjee is a costume designer and costume historian teaching at Hunter College CUNY. In September 2023, she finished her Ph.D. from CUNY Graduate Center with her dissertation entitled “Spectacle On The Fringe: Masks, Materiality, And Movement In South Asia.” She researches costumes and masks for Indian performance and has received notable grants for this work. Her presentations have been seen at conferences including USITT, Costume Society of America and Rubin Museum of Art in New York City. She has published articles on Indian and Asian theatre. In 2017 she served as the dance director for Indo-American Arts Council’s Erasing Borders Dance Festival bringing international dancers to the New York stage.

Eva Shan Chou is a cultural historian of China, currently at work on a book manuscript, "The Quest for Chinese Ballet." She has published articles on the establishment of the Beijing School of Dance, on China's first Swan Lake, the founding figure Dai Ailian, and China's cultural policies. For Ballet Review (New York) she covered performances by Stuttgart Ballet,

Pennsylvania Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Opera Ballet of Rome, as well as companies from China performing in the US. For the on-line dance journal Fjord Review, she has written on performances by Paris Opera Ballet, Martha Graham Dance Company, New York City Ballet and other companies.

Matthew Isaac Cohen, Ph.D. is a professor in the Department of Dramatic Arts of the University of Connecticut (USA) who researches the performing arts of Indonesia and traditions of world puppetry. He has studied, taught, and worked in England, Scotland, the Netherlands, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the United States. He studied shadow puppet theatre (wayang kulit) at the conservatoire Institut Seni Indonesia Surakarta and privately with the late Ki Oemartopo, the late Ki Saal, Ki Joko Susilo, and others in Solo and Cirebon. His books include The Komedie Stamboel: Popular Theater in Colonial Indonesia, 1891-1903 (2006), Performing Otherness: Java and Bali on International Stages, 1905-1952 (2010), and Inventing the Performing Arts: Modernity and Tradition in Colonial Indonesia (2016). His contributions to wayang and Javanese arts and culture have been recognized by the award of titles and royal names from three of Java’s royal courts: Kraton Kacirebonan (“Ki Ngabehi Kanda Buwana,” 2009), Kraton Kasepuhan (“Ki Dalang Bawana,” 2018), and Kraton Surakarta Hadiningrat (“Kanjeng Raden Tumenggung Prof. Cahya Handaru,” 2020). He is currently working on a book-length visual history of wayang based on ongoing research on puppets in the Dr. Walter Angst and Sir Henry Angest Collection of Indonesian Puppets at Yale University Art Gallery.

Jan Creutzenberg is a theatre scholar at Ewha Womans University, Seoul. His research interests include performing arts in Korea, from traditional genres to contemporary experiments, as well as inter/cross/transcultural collaborations and exchanges, in particular between Korea and Germany. He has published on pansori in Europe and Brecht in Korea, amongst others, and contributed to the Routledge Handbook of Asian Theatre (2016) and the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Stage Directors (forthcoming). Jan blogs at seoulstages.wordpress.com about his research and teaching.

Ruijiao Dong is a Ph.D. Candidate in Theatre and Performance at City University of New York, Graduate Center. He works in the fields of modern and contemporary Chinese theatre history, Performance Studies, and global Chinese studies. His dissertation project examines how Chinese theatre-makers legitimized, justified, and dignified their collective existence as a profession under various political and social conditions through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. His writing has appeared in Theatre Survey, Theatre Research International, TDR: The Drama Review, and several Chinese magazines and newspapers. He has taught across Brooklyn College, Baruch College, Hunter College, and CUNY School of Law. He obtained an MA degree in Performance Studies from New York University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the City University of Hong Kong. Before committing to academic research, he worked as a Learning Specialist for China’s National Center of Performing Arts.

Peter Eckersall is the Sidney E. Cohn Professor in Theatre at the Graduate Center CUNY. His research expertise includes, Japanese Theatre, Dramaturgy, Contemporary Performance, Politics and the Arts, and Performance and Media. Recent publications include Dramaturgy to Make Visible: The Legacies of New Dramaturgy for Politics and Performance in Our

Times (Routledge 2024), (Asian) Dramaturgs Network: Sensing Complexity, Tracing and Doing, (coedited with Charlene Rajendran, Center 42 Singapore 2023), Okada Toshiki and Japanese Theatre, (coedited with Barbara Geilhorn, Andreas Regelsberger, Cody Poulton, Performance Research Books 2021), The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Politics (ed. with Helena Grehan, Routledge 2019), New Media Dramaturgy (co-authored with Helena Grehan and Ed Scheer, Palgrave 2017), and Performativity and Event in 1960s Japan (Palgrave 2013). He is resident dramaturg of the Not Yet It’s Difficult performance group (Melbourne). Recent dramaturgy includes Everything Starts from a Dot (Sachiyo Takahashi, LaMaMa), Phantom Sun/Northern Drift (Alexis Destoop, Beursschouwburg, Riga Biennial).

Alissa Elegant is a PhD candidate in dance studies at Ohio State University who researches dances of China and the Chinese diaspora focusing on circulation, reception and qiye (enterprise) dance. She earned an MFA in Choreography from Temple University, a BA from UC Berkeley and spent a year studying dance at Minzu University of China on a Fulbright fellowship. She has completed field research for her dissertation, which examines the practice and performance of amateur and professional dance in workplaces of the railway industry in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). It is inspired by her essay "Dancing Revolutionary Change: China Railway Cultural Work Troupe's Dance Drama Wang Gui yu Li Xiangxiang,” which won a Dance Study Association 2021 Selma Jeanne Cohen Award.

Xing Fan is Associate Professor at the Centre for Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies at the University of Toronto. Xing is the author of Staging Revolution: Artistry and Aesthetics in Model Beijing Opera during the Cultural Revolution (Hong Kong University Press, 2018). Her second book, Jingju – Beijing/Peking Opera: History, Practice, and Aesthetics will be published by the Bloomsbury Publishing later this year.

Kathy Foley is a Distinguished Research Professor of Performance, Play, and Design at the University of California, Santa Cruz). She has served as President of UNIMA-USA and on the UNIMA-International Research Commission and Publications and Writing Commission. She edited Asian Theatre Journal from 2005-2018 and was one of the first non-Indonesian to perform in the Indonesia National Wayang Festival as a dalang. She has presented wayang at the Smithsonian Institution, San Francisco Asian Art Museum, Harvard University, University of Melbourne, and other venues. She has curated touring exhibitions of puppets and masks at multiple venues. Her work has been supported by Fulbright, Asian Cultural Council, Institute of Sacred Music/Yale University, East-West Center (Honolulu, HI) and UCSC Dickson Emeriti Award. Her publications have focused on the performing arts of Southeast Asia and puppetry.

Radhica Ganapathy is Associate Professor of Theatre History and Criticism and in the School of Theatre & Dance at West Virginia University. Her research engages in critical representations of race, class, gender, and sexuality in 19th-20th century theatre and performance, with a particular interest in examining notions of performance and performativity in the everyday life. Her research has been presented at various academic conferences such as Association for Asian Performance, Association for Theatre in Higher Education, Theatre Symposium, National Women’s Studies Association, and American Society for Theatre Research. Ganapathy’s writing has appeared on platforms such as: Ecumenica, Asian Theatre Journal, Frontiers, Bloomsbury. She also serves as a reviewer for topics pertaining to South Asia for Asian Theatre Journal.

Cobina Gillitt, PhD is a translator of Indonesian plays into English, dramaturg, scholar, and performer. Much of her research has been on Indonesian theater focusing on the synergy between traditional regional theatre genres and contemporary urban performances during the 1960s-1970s and performance art since 1998. Some recent scholarship has been published in Kalam Sastra Triwulanan vol. 3, August 2024, Performing Indonesia (Smithsonian Institution, 2016) and in several academic journals, including Asian Theatre Journal and The Drama Review. Recent translations include “OH” by Putu Wijaya in The Mercurian A Theatrical Translation Review, Volume 10, Issue 2 (Fall 2024) and Era of the Bat: Six Abstract and Political Plays by Ikranagara (Lontar, 2024). She taught theatre and performance studies for close to thirty years in the Drama Department at NYU and at SUNY Purchase. Since 1988, she has been a member of Putu Wijaya’s Jakarta-based Teater Mandiri.

Jennifer Goodlander is an Associate Professor at Indiana University in the Department of Theatre, Drama, and Contemporary Dance where she teaches classes on Asian performance, directing, and intercultural performance. She is also the Director of the Southeast Asian and ASEAN Studies Program. Jennifer has published numerous articles and two books: Women in the Shadows: Gender, Puppets, and the Power of Tradition in Bali (Ohio University Press, 2016) and Puppets and Cities: Articulating Identities in Southeast Asia (Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2018). She recently finished a summer residency at the National Humanities Center to work on her current book project, Trespassing: The Subversive Travel of Indonesian Women in Literature and Performance. Jennifer remains active as a director and has performed Balinese wayang kulit, or shadow puppetry, at international festivals and around the United States.

Asya Gorovits is a PhD candidate in Theatre and Performance at the CUNY Graduate Center (City University of New York). She holds an MA in Performance Studies from NYU and BA and MA in Arts and Humanities from Smolny College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Russia). Her

research focuses on immersive and participatory theatres, practices of care, puppetry, and object performance. Asya also teaches courses on theatre history at CCNY.

Ryan Hung is an artist, scholar, and educator from Los Angeles, California. He received his BA in theatre and dance with honors from Grinnell College where he was a Posse Scholar and completed his MA in Theatre and Performance Studies as a Chancellor's Graduate Fellow at Washington University in St. Louis (WashU). Ryan’s research explores the transnational impact of Black performance and popular culture on East Asian performance and popular culture and the subsequent nationalistic and cultural hegemonic complexities this intersection generates, global film and media studies, and race, ethnicity, and performance. As an artist, his creative practice primarily revolves around directing for the stage and filmmaking, and upcoming directing projects include Odd One Out – a short film written, directed, and produced by Ryan. Currently leading the Innovation Hub at New York University and formerly a lecturer and program manager at WashU, Ryan hopes to pursue further graduate study in the performing and media arts in the near future.

David Jortner is a Professor of Theatre Arts and the Graduate Program Director in the Department of Theatre Arts. He joined the Baylor faculty in 2008 and teaches theatre history, theory, dramatic literature, and directing. He received his PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies from the University of Pittsburgh in 2003. Dr. Jortner's research interests are predominantly in the areas of twentieth century Japanese theatre and the intersection of Japanese and American culture. He is the co-editor of Modern Japanese Theatre and Performance and is a contributing editor for the History of Japanese Theatre from Cambridge University Press. He is currently the book review editor for Asian Theatre Journal. He has essays in numerous volumes including "Staging Soul/Food in Rakugo and Shōgekijō: Food and Theatre in Japan" (with Lorie Brau) in Food and Theatre on the World Stage, "SCAP’s 'Problem Child:' American Aesthetics, the Shingeki Stage, and the Occupation of Japan" in Rising from the Flames: The Rebirth of Theatre in Occupied Japan, 1945-1952, and "Censoring Vengeance: Revenge Dramas and Tragedies during the Allied Occupation of Japan" in Revenge Drama in European Renaissance and Japanese Theater: From Hamlet to Madame Butterfly. Dr. Jortner has also authored numerous articles, including the most recent, "'Imposing the Standards of Boston On Japan:' Kasutori Performance, Censorship and the Occupation" in Theatre History Studies (2014). He also has articles in Asian Theatre Journal, Tirai Panggung and Text and Presentation.An active director, Dr. Jortner has staged works including Mary Stuart, The Learned Ladies, Mad Forest, The Odyssey, Lysistrata, Picasso at the Lapin Agile, Caucasian Chalk Circle, Angel City, and Fefu and her Friends.

Deniz Khateri, born and raised in Tehran, is a multidisciplinary artist based in New York. Her work, which spans theater, experimental music-theater, and contemporary opera, engages with themes of memory, grief, immigration, and the concept of home, often exploring unconventional forms. Her plays have been showcased at national and international festivals, and her projects have received critical acclaim, with The Boston Globe calling her work "excellent," Ewing Reviewing deeming it "remarkable on every level," and Broadway World LA describing it as "fascinating." Deniz is one of LaMaMa's 64th season resident artists. She is also the artist-inresidence at University Settlement's performance project and a playwriting lab member at New York’s New Perspectives Theatre, and a former artist-in-residence at the Center at West Park. In 2024, she received one of the Al-Bustan Awards for her solo performance at the Philly Fringe Festival. Her work has earned numerous honors, including recognition from UNIMA-USA for “excellence in writing for the art of puppetry” and a NYSCA award for her project Husks from Iran. She was also awarded NYFA funding for her Oscar-qualified animated documentary web series Diasporan, for which she serves as writer, director, animator, and singer. Diasporan explores the daily lives and struggles of immigrants. Deniz has performed extensively in Tehran and collaborated with prestigious theater companies in Boston and New York. She has designed and directed international productions, video art, and shadow puppetry for institutions such as Oper Frankfurt, Guerilla Opera, Dinosaur Annex, and Long Beach Opera. She holds an MA in Theater from the City University of New York and has trained with notable international artists, including Peter Brook, Richard Schechner, Paul Zaloom, and Poland’s Gardzienice Theatre Company. Deniz is also an adjunct lecturer at Hunter College of CUNY.

http://www.denizkhateri.com

Rahul Koonathara is currently pursuing graduate studies at the University of Connecticut in the Department of Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies under the guidance of Professor Matthew Isaac Cohen. Koonathara actively practices the traditional style of shadow puppetry from Kerala, India, while exploring contemporary puppet productions and conducting academic research on puppet arts.

Dahye Lee (이다혜) is a PhD candidate in Theatre and Performance at the Graduate Center, CUNY. A native of South Korea, she is a lifelong practitioner of Korean dance. Her research focuses on contemporary East Asian dance and corporeality, with a particular emphasis on twentieth-century South Korean dance. She is currently working on her dissertation on the emergence and development of changjak chum (“newly created dance”), a new form of Korean dance that emerged in the 1970s as a means of expressing contemporary Koreanness.

Daphne P. Lei is Professor of Drama, University of California, Irvine. She is the former president of American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR, 2015-2018) and received ASTR’s Distinguished Scholar Award for “outstanding achievement in scholarship in the field of Theatre Studies” in 2022. Lei is the author of three monographs: Operatic China: Staging Chinese Identity across the Pacific (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); Alternative Chinese Opera in the Age of Globalization: Performing Zero (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), and Uncrossing the Borders: Performing Chinese in Gendered (Trans)Nationalism (University of Michigan Press, 2019). She is also a coauthor of Theatre Histories: An Introduction, Fourth Edition (Routledge, 2024) and coeditor of The Methuen Drama Handbook of Interculturalism and Performance (Bloomsbury, 2020).

Melissa Li is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures (EALAC) at Columbia University. Her research centers on Japanese theater, literature, and popular culture, with a particular focus on the transformation of Kabuki theater from the late Edo to the Meiji period. Her dissertation-in-progress examines the state-led modernization of Kabuki and the playwright Kawatake Mokuami’s role in navigating these reforms, emphasizing the intersection of governmental influence, dramaturgical innovation, and the evolving cultural identity of Meiji Japan. Beyond her work on classical and modern Japanese theater, Melissa has a strong interest in modern detective fiction, contemporary Japanese pop culture, and media studies. Her broader research explores the intersection of manga, anime, music, and various subcultures, analyzing how these mediums have shaped and reflected Japanese, East Asian, and even global cultural landscapes from the postwar era through the Reiwa period.

Siyuan Liu is professor of theatre at the University of British Columbia and editor of Asian Theatre Journal. His research focuses on Chinese theatre in the modern era. He has published over 40 journal articles and book chapters, as well as 7 books, including Xin Fengxia and the Transformation of China’s Ping Opera (Cambridge Element 2022), Transforming Tradition: The Reform of Chinese Theatre in the 1950s and Early 1960s (Michigan 2021), and Performing Hybridity in Colonial-Modern China (Palgrave Macmillan 2013).

Sandamini Ranwalage is an Assistant Professor in the English Department at Skidmore College, New York. Her primary research interests include postcolonial studies and performance studies with a special focus on twentieth and twenty-first-century South Asia and South Asian diaspora. Her recent work examines corporeal forms of nostalgic recollection in literature and performance that negotiate nationalist, colonialist, and imperialist constructions of the past. Her work has appeared in the South Asian Review and Performance Research.

Dr. Jungmin Song is an Assistant Professor in Residence in the Department of Dramatic Arts and a Research Associate at the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry. Born in Korea, she completed a Ph.D. in Performance at the University of Roehampton, London. Her artistic

practice, research interests, and teaching focus on contemporary theatre, performance art, and puppetry. She curated the exhibitions Shakespeare and Puppetry (2020), Puppetry’s Racial Reckoning (2021), and Taking Care: Puppets and Their Collectors (2024) at the Ballard. Her most recent publication (2024) is a chapter on South Korean folklorist and puppet artist Sim Useong (1934–2018) in Puppet and Spirit: Ritual, Religion, and Performing Objects (Routledge).

Jashodhara Sen is a performance historian and practitioner specializing in South Asian theatre and performance. Her performance practice, scholarship, and teaching are informed by the theories of postcolonialism, decoloniality, and subaltern studies. Jashodhara’s research interests lie in the intersection of politics and the histories of liberatory performances across South Asia and the South Asian diaspora. Her current research, which she is developing in her book project (under contract), Intersectionality in 'Folk' Performance through Identity and Expression, focuses on the culturally specific performance form jatra and its many modalities and is centered on class and gender dynamics.

Susanna Sun is a PhD student of East Asian Languages and Civilizations & Theater and Performance Studies at the University of Chicago. She works on Chinese opera across disciplinary, media and temporal divisions, with special interests in cross-dressing, aesthetics and transmediation. She draws on her long years of Chinese opera training to analyze details in performance and strives to bring voices to the opera actresses. Her work has been published in the Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature.

Rini Tarafder is a Visiting Teaching Assistant Professor of Theatre at the University of Denver. She completed her PhD in Interdisciplinary Theatre Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in August 2024. Her research examines intermediality within contemporary theatre in India. Her other research interests include migration, South Asian interdisciplinary art, and postcolonial literature. She is a playwright and an ensemble member of Rotate Theatre in Madison.

Mariko Okada is a Professor in the Faculty of Humanities at J. F. Oberlin University in Tokyo, Japan, and the 2024–25 CJS Visiting Scholar at the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on traditional Japanese performance, particularly geisha practices, and the experiences of Japanese women performers in the United States around 1900. She is the author of The Birth of Kyōmai: Inoue-ryu Dance in Nineteenth-Century Kyoto, Japan (written in Japanese), which won the 2013 Suntory Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities. She has also contributed to several English-language publications, including “Before Making Heritage: Internationalisation of Geisha in the Meiji Period” in Making Japanese Heritage (2009), “Interlude Nihonbuyo: Classical Dance” in History of Japanese Theatre (2016), and “Masking Japanese Militarism as a Dream of Sino-Japanese Friendship: Miyako Odori Performances in the 1930s” in Corporeal Politics: Dancing East Asia (2020).

Claudia Orenstein, Theatre Professor at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY, has spent nearly two decades writing on contemporary and traditional puppetry in the US and Asia. Recent publications include Reading the Puppet Stage: Reflections on Dramaturgy of

Performing Objects and the co-edited Making Meaning in Puppetry: Material, Practice,

Perception, Puppet and Spirit: Ritual Religion and Performing Objects, Women and Puppetry:

Critical and Historical Investigations, and The Routledge Companion to Puppetry and Material

Performance. She worked as dramaturg on Tom Lee and kuruma ningyō master Nishikawa Koryū V’s Shank’s Mare and on Stephen Earnhart’s production of Haruki Murukami’s Wind Up Bird Chronicle. She is a Board Member of UNIMA-USA, Associate Editor of Asian Theatre Journal, and Editor of the online, peer review journal, Puppetry International Research, published on the CUNY Academic Commons in collaboration with UNIMA-USA. She was the recipient of a 2021-22 Fulbright Research Fellowship for research on ritual puppetry in Japan.

Rattana Phoonkasem is a 33-year-old Thai performing arts educator from Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand. With a lifelong passion for arts and culture, she spent six years studying Thai dance at Nakhon Ratchasima College of Dramatic Arts, followed by a Bachelor’s degree in Thai Dance from Chulalongkorn University, graduating with first-class honors. She later earned a Master of Education from Thammasat University and completed a Doctorate in Art Education at Srinakharinwirot University on a full scholarship. Rattana has international teaching experience, including a year as a Thai dance volunteer teacher in Chicago, USA. Her interests lie in Thai performing arts and arts education, with a focus on exploring innovative ways to teach and inspire students as both a teacher and facilitator.

Chee-Hann Wu is an assistant professor faculty fellow in Theatre Studies at New York University. She is drawn to the performance of, by, and with nonhumans, including but not limited to objects, puppets, ecology, and technology. Her current book project considers puppetry a mediated means to narrate Taiwan’s cultural and sociopolitical development, colonial and postcolonial experiences, as well as Indigenous histories.

Yao Xu is a dance scholar, practitioner, and educator. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Dance Studies at Temple University and an adjunct lecturer at Point Park University. Her dissertation explores the intersection of aesthetics and politics in Chinese independent choreography. In 2024, she was honored with the Selma Jeanne Cohen Award from the Dance Studies Association. She also served as the bilingual caption translator for Planting Seeds: ADF and Modern Dance in China, an oral history project created by the American Dance Festival. Her scholarly and creative work have been presented in both Chinese and English-language journals and platforms in China and the United States.

Xueting Zhu is a dancer, choreographer, and third-year PhD student in Dance Studies at The Ohio State University. Her research focuses on competitive ballroom dance/DanceSport in Chinese and transnational contexts, informed by broader interests in performance, gender and sexuality, and cultural studies. She holds a BFA and MFA from Shanghai University of Sport and was a visiting scholar at UC Irvine. She has performed on stages including CCTV and the Shanghai International Dance Center, presented at international conferences, and published in both Chinese- and English-language journals (forthcoming). Collaborating with colleagues in Shanghai, her work has been supported by the Shanghai Education Development Foundation, the Shanghai Municipal Education Com, and other institutions.

Information on AAP Panels at ATHE

The Association for Asian Performance (AAP) typically takes place immediately before the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) conference, as it serves as a pre-conference. This year, however, marks an exception: ATHE will be held virtually from July 28 to August 1, 2025, while AAP will take place in person on July 22–23, 2025, at Hunter College, City University of New York.

ATHE is offering greater flexibility this year, allowing presenters to be added up until the day of the conference. More information will be made available soon.

Asian Theatre Journal Lecture

Unlikely Archives in the Study of Indonesian Theatre and Performance

Tuesday, July 29, 2025, 12:15 PM - 1:45 PM

Dates and Times in America/New_York

• This lecture investigates a range of “unlikely archives” encountered, studied, and utilized in research conducted since 1988 on Indonesian theatre and performance. “Unlikely” here signifies sites of memory happened upon by chance that yield unanticipated insights into fields of performance. Oftentimes, these archives preserve what José Esteban Muñoz calls ephemera: they follow “traces, glimmers, residues, and specks of things” rather than memorialize canonical events and foundational institutions. The lecture first examines unlikely archives for Javanese wayang kulit (shadow puppet theatre): pakem padhalangan, pulp chapbooks produced since the 1950s for studying and performing wayang kulit; commonplace books compiled by puppeteers as aide-mémoires; and commercially-released audiocassettes. We then consider newspapers as sources for the history of popular entertainment, with a focus on komedi stambul, a form of itinerant musical theatre that emerged in urban Java in the late nineteenth century; and 78 rpm records as indexes of the changing tastes of Indonesian audiences in the late colonial period. The lecture then turns to scrapbooks assembled by twentieth-century itinerant intercultural performers traveling on international circuits before returning to the subject of unlikely archives of Indonesian puppetry, scrutinizing puppets in museum collections (including the Dr. Walter Angst and Sir Henry Angest Collection of Indonesian Puppets at Yale University Art Gallery) and collections of streaming wayang videos, with particular focus on YouTube and the Contemporary Wayang Archive. The lecture concludes with a discussion of how unlikely archives might serve not only to reconstruct histories but also have potential to be mined by artists and curators as resources for future creativity.

• Speaker Bio

  • A scholar-practitioner specializing in Indonesian performing arts, global traditions of puppet theatre, intercultural and transnational performance, and cultural heritage, Matthew Isaac Cohen is a professor in the Department of Dramatic Arts at the University of Connecticut. After completing a Ph.D. in anthropology at Yale University, he was a postdoc at the International Institute for Asian Studies in The Netherlands and taught at the University of Glasgow and Royal Holloway, University of London in the United Kingdom, before returning to Connecticut to contribute to UConn’s renowned Puppet Arts program. He has also held visiting appointments and fellowships at Universitas Nasional (Indonesia), Sanata Dharma University (Indonesia), University of Malaya (Malaysia), the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Yale University Art Gallery, and Yale Institute of Sacred Music. His books include three monographs: the award-winning The Komedie Stamboel: Popular Theater in Colonial Indonesia, 1891-1903; Performing Otherness: Java and Bali on International Stages, 1905-1952; and Inventing the Performing Arts: Modernity and Tradition in Colonial Indonesia. Trained in traditional shadow puppet theatre (wayang kulit) in Java, his contributions to Indonesian puppetry are recognized by royal titles from the courts of Kacirebonan, Kasepuhan, and Surakarta Hadiningrat. He is a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow in Theatre and Performance Studies.