Exile and the Elusive Qualities of Time

Abstract

Time is frozen when the elements contained in an intercultural performance are subjected to classification; if a taxonomic analysis of the cultural signifiers is to be successful, the creative process must be momentarily suspended. Yet it is the living creative process that fuels the fascination of all intercultural inquiry, whether it is the negotiations between artists from different cultures, or the cross-cultural interactions between performers and audiences. These encounters are like interactive cells in an organism, forever merging and splitting, changing the unfamiliar into the familiar, and the familiar into the strange.

… Be merciful, say ‘death’: for exile hath more terror in his look, Much more than death: do not say ‘banishment’.

(Romeo and Juliet III.iii.12)