Family as/in Intercultural Performance in Ong Keng Sen’s Lear

In this chapter, I explore the presentation of the Pan-Asian family in Ong Keng Sen’s Lear production (1997, performed by TheatreWorks with script written by Kishida Rio). The first part of his intercultural Shakespeare trilogy, spanning 1997–2002, Ong’s Lear dramatises the ways in which the nuclear family in Shakespeare’s play is reconceptualised as a metonym for cross-cultural Asian solidarities and collaboration in this intercultural performance. By exploring the relationship between characters on stage via the adaptation of diverse performance forms and the use of a multilingual script in the performance, this chapter makes the case that intimacy and conflict within the nuclear family serve, by extension, to highlight the possibilities and limitations of intercultural trans-Asian solidarities established through the performance of Shakespeare, as demonstrated by Ong’s self-reflection and the broader reception and legacy of his work. While the performance of the family unit stages possibilities for the universality of Shakespeare within an Asian context, it also enacts the extent to which the themes of ambition and intergenerational conflict map onto asymmetries and inequalities in transnational relationships across Asia at the turn of the century.