Entertaining international visitors — the hybrid nature of tourism shows

Abstract

Given that a post-modern perspective of tourism has introduced a new gaze of the destination as a construction of both visitor perception and supplier commodification, the language of cultural compression and place displacement has become commonplace. It has almost become a cliche to argue that tourism deconstructs history, fact and fantasy to re-assemble a hybrid that nonetheless can generate an experiential authenticity. Yet the tourism academic literature has been comparatively silent about the construction of theatre entertainment for visitors outside of a critique of indigenous peoples' cultural performance. This paper examines the ways in which a Japanese venture based upon Dutch architecture seeks to entertain an audience that is a mix of domestic and international visitors through an evening theatre entertainment titled An Eastern Odyssey. The nature of plot and presentation is examined in an effort to develop a set of reference points to illustrate how a cast comprising primarily non-Japanese performers develops a story with a mix of reference points as diverse as Gilbert and Sullivan to Star Wars via the Japanese tradition of Kabuki in order to overcome language differences and incomprehensibilities. It is argued that constructed reference points produce a show that communicates over cultural distances by reference to a hybrid of popular cultures. Yet, this hybrid is itself a package distanced from the cultures of its audiences by bridgeable nuances to develop a touristic dramatology of fantasy and spectacle. Within a trilogy of fantasies, production, the nature of Huis Ten Bosch and arguably a financial fantasy, An Eastern Odyssey becomes itself a metaphor for much post-modern tourism.