A Transnational Encounter of Cosmopolitan Fantasies: Directing The World of Extreme Happiness at Stanford University
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.
Description
Type of resource | text |
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Date created | May 2018 |
Creators/Contributors
Author | Gupta, Vineet | |
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Degree granting institution | Stanford University, Department of Theater and Performance Studies | |
Primary advisor | Menon, Jisha | |
Advisor | Lee, Haiyan |
Subjects
Subject | theater and performance studies |
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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 |
Bibliographic information
Access conditions
- Use and reproduction
- User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Preferred citation
- 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
Collection
Stanford University, Department of Theater and Performance Studies, Undergraduate Honors Theses
Contact information
- Contact
- vineetg@stanford.edu
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