Pacific Performances : Theatricality and Cross-Cultural Encounter in the South Seas

This new study explores the history of cross-cultural performative encounters in the Pacific from the Eighteenth century to the present. It examines Western theatrical representations of Pacific cultures and investigates how Pacific Islanders used their own cultural performances to negotiate the colonial situation. The material investigated ranges from early travel accounts to contemporary plays, from Eighteenth century pantomimes and opera to Broadway plays and musicals; Nineteenth-century ethnographic spectacles and colonial ceremonies rub shoulders with contemporary tourist theme parks and avant-garde performance Front Matter....Pages i-xiv Introduction....Pages 1-18 Pacific Overtures: Trumpets, Beaches and Women....Pages 19-46 Staged Authenticity: The South Seas and European Theatre, 1785–1830....Pages 47-73 Comedians and Crusaders: Anti-Theatrical Prejudice in the South Seas....Pages 74-94 Dressing the Hula and Taming the Haka: Performing Identity in Hawai‘i and New Zealand....Pages 95-121 Kindred Spirits: Spectacles of Samoa in Wilhelminian Germany....Pages 122-145 Birds of Paradise: American-Pacific Dramas of Displacement....Pages 146-173 ‘As You Always Imagined It’: The Pacific as Tourist Spectacle....Pages 174-190 Translocations and Transgressions: The Postcolonial Pacific....Pages 191-217 Back Matter....Pages 218-256