Pacific performances : theatricality and cross-cultural encounter in the South Seas / Christopher B. Balme.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Pacific overtures : trumpets, beaches and women -- 2. Staged authenticity : the south seas and European theatre, 1785-1830 -- 3. Comedians and crusaders : anti-theatrical prejudice in the south seas -- 4. Dressing the hula and taming the haka : performing identity in Hawai'i and New Zealand -- 5. Kindred spirits : spectacles of Samoa in Wilhelminian Germany -- 6. Birds of paradise : American-Pacific dramas of displacement -- 7. 'As you always imagined it' : the Pacific as tourist spectacle -- 8. Translocations and transgressions : the postcolonial Pacific.

"Pacific Performances explores the history of cross-cultural performative encounters in the Pacific from the eighteenth century to the present day. Following two interlocking perspectives, the book 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 theme parks and avant-garde performance. The book identifies a network of interlocking discourses and practices that link Captain Cook with tourism, and unite locations as distant as Apia and Auckland, Honolulu and London. In this study, Christopher Balme makes use of a number of new research perspectives; historical anthropology, performance studies and iconography studies are combined to provide new readings of Western-Pacific histories."--BOOK JACKET.

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