The Theatre of Krishen Jit: The Politics of Staging Difference in Multicultural Malaysia

Abstract

In a career spanning more than 40 years, playwright and director Krishen Jit, who passed away in April 2005, was the doyen of Malaysian theatre. Jit constantly reinvented himself. His shifting cultural position was part of an ongoing analysis of changing national sociopolitical moods and mores. A public intellectual, Jit was passionately engaged in a critique of cultural difference in relation to the staging of Malaysian identity.

Identity in Crossroad Civilisations : Ethnicity, Nationalism and Globalism in Asia

“…10 Mandal (2001: 160) Gomez (2004b) for discussion on these issues and the impact of poor implementation of state policies on the state of Malaysia. 14 For more extensive discussion on Jit's stagings of difference in Malaysia, see Rajendran and Wee (2007). 15 Mitchell Cohen's (1995: 233) 'rooted cosmopolitan' frame proposes a 'dialectical concept' that 'accepts multiplicity of roots and branches and which rests in the legitimacy of plural loyalties, of standing in many circles, but with common ground'.…”