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Maps of City & Body
Shedding Light on the Performances of Denise Uyehara

Maps of City and Body: Shedding Light on the Performances of Denise Uyehara (Kaya Press 2003) presents the complete texts of Big Head and Maps of City and Body, two of Uyehara's most acclaimed shows. In Big Head, Uyehara questions the logic of political and personal rhetoric by exploring the relationship between Japanese American internment camps and post-September 11th racial violence. Maps of City and Body takes on subjects ranging from the trails left behind by childhood kisses to the reimagining of a grandmother's fiery suicide, to explore how memories mark our bodies. It includes images from her performances, detailed descriptions of Uyehara's other public art investigations, and a conversation with dancer/scholar Yutian Wong.

Maps of City and Body is the first in a series of books from Kaya Press on Asian diasporic performance artists.  Visit Kaya Press.

Maps of City & Body - book by Denise Uyehara, Kaya Press

New Publications

American Cultures As Transnational Performance, Routledge Press (2021) 

Features Radical Time Travel: An Interview with Denise Uyehara, by Pia Wiegmink and Andrea Zittlau. Visit Routledge.
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American Cultures book Routledge.jpg

The Methuen Drama Anthology of Testimonial Plays, Bloomsbury (2017)

Edited by Alyson Forsyth. Includes Big Head and process notes. Also includes writings by Tim Etchells of Forced Entertainment, Paula Cizmar, Ana Deveare Smith, Becky Blythe, and many others. Visit Bloomsbury.
Testimonial Plays edited Alyson Forsyth

Complete List

Anthologized performances and plays

Uyehara, Denise. Big Head, in The Methuen Drama Anthology of Testimonial Plays, ed. by Alison Forsyth, Bloomsbury, 2014.

 

Uyehara, Denise. Big Head, Hiro, Hobbies, Hello (Sex) Kitty and Headless Turtleneck Relatives are archived online through Alexander Street Press.com, Drama division.

 

Uyehara, Denise. Hello (Sex) Kitty.  O Solo Homo: The New Queer Performance, eds. Holly Hughes and David Roman, Grove Press, 1998.

 

Uyehara, Denise. Hiro, full-length play. Asian American Drama, ed. Brian Nelson, Applause Books, 1998.

 

Uyehara, Denise. Headless Turtleneck Relatives, solo performance, excerpted in Getting your Solo Act Together, by Michael Kearns, Heinemann, 1997.

 

Uyehara, Denise. Hiro, in Asian American Drama: 9 Plays from the Multiethnic Landscape. ed. Brian Nelson. New York: Applause, 1997.

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Bibliography

Weigmink, Pia and Andrea Zittlau. Radical Time Travel: An Interview with Denise Uyehara.  American Cultures as Transnational Performance: Commons, Skills, Traces. Eds. Katrin Horn, Leopold Lippert, Ilka Saal, and Pia Wiegmink. Routledge, 2021.

 

Wong, Yutian, editor. Contemporary Directions in Asian American Dance. University of Wisconsin Press. 2015. 213-232.

 

Kim Lee, Ester. A History of Asian American Theater. Cambridge, 2006. 156, 171-176.Ontiveros, Mario. Working-in-Common and Cross-Cultural Art Practices. Narrative/Performance: Cross-Cultural Encounters at APPEX. The Regents of the University of California, 2004.
 

Cheng, Meiling. Big Head. By Denise Uyehara. With additional words by Masamori Kojima, Edina Lekovic, Shady Hakim, Lulu Emery, Tamadhur Al-Aqeel, Lillian Nakano. Highways Performance Space, Santa Monica. 21 February 2003. Theatre Journal Vol. 55, No. 3 (October 2003): 518-519.

 

___. In Other Los Angeles: Multicentric Performance Art. University of California Press. 2004.

 

Uyehara, Denise and Ettumanoor, Kannan Parameswaran. The Third Level, Where Kathakali and Performance Art Meet: A conversation between APPEX 2000 artists Denise Uyehara and Ettumanoor Parameswaran Kannan, in Narrative/Performance: Cross-Cultural Encounters at APPEX, Regents of the University of California, 2004.

 

Kurahashi, Yuko. Denise Uyehara. Asian American Playwrights: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook. Ed. Miles Xian Liu. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002. 334-39.

 

Ikeuchi Yasuko. Theater/Performance and Gender: the Third Conference for Asian Women and Theatre. Article in Japanese. Gendaishiso, May, 2001.

 

Uyehara, Denise. Lost & Found: The Hidden Community of Seekers and Finders. Mobile Zones - City Space in Globalised Culture, MuuMedia Festival. Catalogue. Helsinki, Finland: AV-arkki, 1998
 

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