Tsu-Chung Su



Professor of English, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei City

Resident at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften:
May 2024

Research topic at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften:
»This is also the ›Passion for the Real‹. Passages to India of Great Masters of Contemporary Theater«

Project outline:
In the field of theatre and performance studies, there has been a prevailing interest in India, especially in the fields of yoga, the Vedas, epic literature, ritual and ceremony, philosophy, religion, and performing arts since the beginning of the 20th century. Many Western theatre practitioners—such as Konstantin Stanislavsky, Eugenio Barba, Jerzy Grotowski, Richard Schechner, Peter Brook, and Phillip Zarrilli, to name only a few—have been drawn to various forms of spiritual quest, Indian theatre, and ritual performance. Their turn to India has transformed themselves, inspired many, initiated the intercultural theatre, and exerted a great impact on the formation of contemporary performance theory and practice. This project attempts to explore the role of Indian theatre, literature, and religion in the life and work of great masters of contemporary theater mentioned above. I will look into the problematics caused by and embedded in these great masters’ turn to India and investigate their diverging positions in facing and interpreting interculturalism. (Tsu-Chung Su)

Research partner:
Tsu-chung Su follows follows the invitation of Zhiyi Yang, Professor of Sinology at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main and Goethe Fellow at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften.

Scholarly profile of Tsu-Chung Su


Tsu-Chung Su, Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at the University of Washington, is Distinguished Professor of English at National Taiwan Normal University. He served as President of the Taiwan Shakespeare Association (TSA) from 2018 to 2019, President of the ROC English and American Literature Association (EALA) from 2016 to 2017, and Vice President of the ROC Comparative Literature Association from 2010 to 2012. He was a Visiting Research Fellow at the University College London from 2021 to 2022, a Visiting Professor at Aberystwyth University from 2012 to 2013, a Fulbright Senior Scholar at Princeton University from 2007 to 2008, and a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University from 2002 to 2003. He has been awarded numerous research prizes, including the NTNU Award for Distinguished Research & Distinguished Professor, the National Science and Technology Council Award for Excellence in Research, and the NSTC Research Project Grant. – Su is the author of three monographs: Artaud Event Book (2018, in Chinese), The Anatomy of Hysteria: What It is, with Some of the Kinds, Causes, Symptoms, Representations, and Several Critiques of It (2004), and The Writing of the Dionysian: The Dionysian in Modern Critical Theory (1995).

Main areas of research:
Nietzsche and his French legacy, theories of hysteria and melancholia, Shakespeare studies, performance studies, Indology, dramatic theory and criticism, and theories of consciousness and mindfulness

Selected publications:
  1. »The Qibla—A Never-Ending Story of Migration, Runaway, and Pilgrimage«, in:Studies in Theatre and Performance, vol.41, no.3 (2021), p. 1-21.
  2. »The Theatre of Essence in the Making: The Secret Art of EX-Theatre Asia’s Actor Training Approach«, in:Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies, vol.47, no.1 (2021), p. 231-269.
  3. »Lila or Mela? Richard Schechner’s ›Play‹ of the Ramlila of Ramnagar«, in: Transnational Performance, Identity, and Mobility in Asia, ed. by Ivy I-Chu Chang and Iris H. Tuan, Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan 2018.
  4. »Hijikata Tatsumi—Artaud’s True Heir? Corporeality and Spirituality in Hijikata and Artaud«, in: Beyond Contamination: Corporeality, Spirituality, and Pilgrimage in Northern Japan, ed. by Peter Eckersall, Tokyo: Keio University Art Center 2016.
  5. »The Subjectiles at Work: The Secret Art of The 9 Fridas«, in: Tamkang Review, vol. 47, no. 1 (Taipei: Tamkang University, December 2016), p. 63-95.

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