Howard Y. F. Choy, Associate Professor of Chinese Language and Literature, received his Ph.D. in comparative literature and humanities from the University of Colorado. He is a theatre critic from the 1980s onward and has been serving as a judge of the annual Theatre Critics Awards for the International Association of Theatre Critics (Hong Kong) since 2016. Author of “Toward a Poetic Minimalism of Violence: On Tang Shu-wing’s Titus Andronicus 2.0,” Asian Theatre Journal 28.1 (Spring 2011), he has also published drama reviews online.
//Extracts of "Toward a Poetic Minimalism of Violence: On Tang Shu-wing’s Titus Andronicus 2.0,” Asian Theatre Journal 28.1 (Spring 2011)":
- A review of six theatre and film versions of Titus Andronicus notes varied approaches to the text: Peter Brook’s stylized symbolism, Ninagawa Yukio’s victim art, Jane Howell’s mimetic realism, Julie Taymor’s postmodern absurdism, Wang Chia-ming’s playful parody, and Christopher Dunne’s Gothic horror. Tang Shu-wing’s approach in Titus Andronicus 2.0 (Hong Kong: Tang Shu-wing Theatre Studio, 2009) shows his rejection of sensationalist and consumerist presentations of the violence in the script. Tang’s minimalism de-dramatizes violence via the narrative form of tale telling, and then poeticizes it through the performance of the poetic body, creating a profound and thought-provoking production.
//Links to published reviews: