Journal Articles by Cynthia Lam
Theatre Journal, 2020
This article explores three examples of contemporary Asian theatre in New Zealand: Renee Liang’s ... more This article explores three examples of contemporary Asian theatre in New Zealand: Renee Liang’s opera The Bone Feeder (2017), Mei-Lin Te Puea Hansen’s The Mooncake and the Kumara (2015), and Alice Canton’s OTHER [chinese] (2017). Enlisting a decolonial approach in our analysis, we explore how these recent theatre examples challenge constructions of White settler colonialism by imagining and representing different relationships between Chinese mi-grants and Māori. White settler colonialism often situates Chinese migrants as wanting to ‘fit-in’ to political structures that continue to disenfranchise Māori. This article argues that contem-porary examples of Asian Theatre in New Zealand employ decolonial strategies that disrupt co-lonial discourses and historical narratives in New Zealand that privilege White European knowledges and history. Contemporary Chinese Kiwi theatre challenges the often-ambiguous position that Chinese migrants occupy in relation to White settler colonialism by changing the terms through which Māori and Chinese relationships have been framed.
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Journal Articles by Cynthia Lam