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Stagestruck: The Business of Theater in Eighteenth-Century France and Its Colonies. By Lauren R. Clay. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2013; pp. xviii + 341, 15 illustrations; $49.95 cloth, $49.95 e-book.

to reflect and perhaps even redress. By situating their analyses of specific theatrical events in carefully considered representations of the performances’ social contexts, the authors demonstrate that modernity is an ambivalent force with which to be reckoned, theatrically as well as socially. The book does have some odd quirks that should have been resolved at the editorial level, including a number of proofreading lapses: inconsistencies whereby a play’s name, for example, somehow shifts midchapter, and the authorial “we” at points becomes an “I” then floats back to “we.” There are also occasional, distracting slippages between the present and past tenses in reference to characters and stage directions as read in playtexts versus actors and actions as seen in specific productions. These are relatively minor issues, indicative of current trends by presses toward minimizing editorial interventions, and thus the costs of production, more than of problems in the work itself. Theatre and Performance in the Asia-Pacific makes a comprehensive contribution to our knowledge of the performance practices and cultures of Australia, Singapore, Indonesia, and Japan. Scholars and students alike will certainly see this book as a necessary resource for research in the region. But this book is even more important for the way it pushes against dominant discourses on both liquidity and modernity from perspectives that are informed by the West without being so westernized that significant differences are erased. In presenting the book as the outcome of a more extensive, ongoing conversation, the authors effectively invite readers to join them in considering how our own theatre and performance research—especially in related regions and social contexts— might be similarly engaged.