Since the survival of Noh theatre at the time of Zeami (1363–1443) and Kanami depended entirely upon the support of its audience, which consisted mainly of laymen, warriors and nobles, it was essential that each presentation had its own unique beauty and power enabling each performance to become an unrepeatable idiosyncratic event. In particular, Zeami demands that each performance will attain the goals of hana (the flower, i.e. a strangeness and novelty in beauty that will attract the audience) and yūgen (a mystic quality of beauty and elegance) on stage. In order to achieve these goals, he provides us with a great deal of suggestive and analytical ideas from various points of view, ranging from precise technical comments to pure metaphysical concepts.

After successfully eliminating the British motorcycle, Japan now threatens the European car industry; it is also rapidly developing advanced industrial techniques that will make much Western plant look like a blacksmith's forge. Is the theatre next? When is East Asian art going to undermine a culturally obsolescent Western aesthetic which is the counterpart, perhaps, of a one-dimensional voluntarist technology?

In China, Western theatre-goers often have the feeling that they are sitting in a boulevard theatre. At most the higher moral level and a certain didactic quality, together, with political seriousness, seem to distinguish the melodramas, comedies and thrillers from the popular plays of the commercial theatre at home. Reflecting on the different character of Chinese theatre, the European viewer quickly falls back on adjectives like ‘backward’, ‘underdeveloped’, even if he or she would justifiably reject such eurocentric judgments in an economic or political context. I should like to try not just to describe modern Chinese drama but to suggest some historical and social reasons for its specific characteristics.

Hindu mythology claims that human activities are governed by four philosophical treatises (Veda) which were divinely conceived. A fifth Veda concerned with a religiously correct form of drama was later added and it became known as ‘Bharata's Natyashastra’. This text, originally written in Sanskrit, is particularly striking for its thoroughly detailed directives on how theatre ought to be performed. This Vedic or Temple theatre was only for the members of the Higher Castes: actors and audiences alike were necessarily Brahmins. This patrician theatre flourished between the third and ninth centuries and then fell into oblivion because of its inability to become a popular art form.

Malaysian drama in English (MDE) is an inelegant name, but it describes exactly a curious breed of theatre in Malaysia: Englishlanguage drama, which seeks to be locally appropriate, in a country whose polycultural history has resulted in the presence of a diverse mixture of languages including Malay (the National Language), the major dialects of Chinese, Hindi, Tamil and other Indian languages, as well as English. Malaysian drama in English has existed for some twentyfive years – not a long history, even measured by the standards of the New Literatures of post-colonial nations. Its quarter century of life has been short and turbulent. MDE has followed a course marked by race riots, language demonstrations, defections from its fold, institutional indifference, censorship, and the gradual withering of the English language itself as a medium viable within the national context. Much of the history of MDE has been affected by the major socio-political changes of the nation. It is not possible, then, to see MDE as an autonomous, selfenclosed entity. Its life cannot be extricated from the national history out of which it grows, and its story is inseparable from the political fortunes of the English language in Malaysia.

Hong Kong is a bi-lingual community, and drama in Hong Kong has, over the last few decades, developed along two lines: drama in the predominant dialect of Chinese for the vast majority of the local population, and drama in English for expatriot westerners and a small English speaking minority of Chinese theatre goers.