A Transnational Encounter of Cosmopolitan Fantasies: Directing The World of Extreme Happiness at Stanford University

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract: This dramaturgical thesis interrogates the transnational dimension of staging Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig's play 'The World of Extreme Happiness,' a play about a factory girl in Shenzhen China, at Stanford University, an elite neoliberal university down the road from Silicon Valley. Specifically, we argue that, as Western cosmopolitan subjects, the audience encounter with the play is that of cultural consumption, projecting a fantasized timeline of modernity onto the protagonist's journey, with her rural home seen as 'backwards' and 'local' and the Western city as 'progressive' and 'cosmopolitan.' Consequently, this thesis examines how a production of this play can disrupt such an imagination by invoking the ways the protagonist is 'modern' and cosmopolitan, while still confronting the transnational power dynamics present in the relationship between audience and protagonist. We propose theatrical devices, particularly in and around 'gazing,' to performatively subvert these imagined global hierarchies among a Western cosmopolitan audience.

Type of resource	text
Date created	May 2018

Author	Gupta, Vineet
Degree granting institution	Stanford University, Department of Theater and Performance Studies
Primary advisor	Menon, Jisha
Advisor	Lee, Haiyan

Subject	theater and performance studies
Subject	cosmopolitanism
Subject	neoliberal theater
Subject	western gaze
Subject	cultural consumption
Subject	asian american theater project
Subject	the world of extreme happiness
Subject	frances ya-chu cowhig
Genre	Thesis

Location	https://purl.stanford.edu/fb245ps2961

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Preferred Citation: Gupta, Vineet. (2018). A Transnational Encounter of Cosmopolitan Fantasies: Directing The World of Extreme Happiness at Stanford University. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/fb245ps2961

Stanford University, Department of Theater and Performance Studies, Undergraduate Honors Theses

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