JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Published by the Martin E. Segal Theater Center at the Graduate Center CUNY, supported by American Theater Drama Society. Back to Top Untitled Copy of Untitled Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume 33 Visit Journal Homepage Issue 1 "Ya Got Trouble, My Friend, Right Here": Romanticizing Grifters in American Musical Theatre Dan Venning ARTICLE Troubled Collaboration: Belasco, the Fiskes, and the Society Playwright, Mrs. Burton Harrison Eileen Curley ARTICLE Unhappy is the Land that Needs a Hero: The Mark of the Marketplace in Suzan-Lori Parks's Father Comes Home from the Wars, Parts 1-3 Michael P. Jaros ARTICLE Silence, Gesture, and Deaf Identity in Deaf West Theatre's Spring Awakening Stephanie Lim ARTICLE Contemporary Women Stage Directors: Conversations on Craft. Paulette Marty. London; New York: Methuen Drama, Bloomsbury Collections, 2019; Pp. 292 + viii. Dohyun Gracia Shin BOOK REVIEW Ensemble-Made Chicago: A Guide To Devised Theater. Chloe Johnson and Coya Paz Brownrigg. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2019. Pp. 202. Jaclyn I. Pryor BOOK REVIEW Twenty-First Century American Playwrights. Christopher Bigsby. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018; Pp. 228. Shane Strawbridge BOOK REVIEW Encounters on Contested Lands: Indigenous Performances of Sovereignty and Nationhood in Québec; Provocative Eloquence: Theater, Violence, and Antislavery Speech in the Antebellum United States Vivian Appler BOOK REVIEW Issue 2 Introduction to "Milestones in Black Theatre" Nicole Hodges Persley and Heather S. Nathans INTRODUCTION Prologue to the Issue and a Thank-you to Errol Hill Heather S. Nathans PROLOGUE Earle Hyman and Frederick O’Neal: Ideals for the Embodiment of Artistic Truth Baron Kelly ARTICLE Newly Discovered Biographical Sources on Ira Aldridge Bernth Lindfors ARTICLE Subversive Inclusion: Ernie McClintock’s 127th Street Repertory Ensemble Elizabeth M. Cizmar ARTICLE 1991: Original Broadway Production of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston's Antimusical Mule Bone Is Presented Eric M. Glover ARTICLE A Documentary Milestone: Revisiting Black Theatre: The Making of a Movement Isaiah Matthew Wooden ARTICLE A Return to 1987: Glenda Dickerson’s Black Feminist Intervention Khalid Y. Long ARTICLE Dancing on the Slash: Choreographing a Life as a Black Feminist Artist/Scholar Lisa B. Thompson ARTICLE Playing the Dozens: Towards a Black Feminist Dramaturgy in the Work of Zora Neale Hurston Michelle Cowin Gibbs ARTICLE Guadalís Del Carmen: Strategies for Hemispheric Liberation Olga Sanchez Saltveit ARTICLE “Ògún Yè Mo Yè!” Pathways for institutionalizing Black Theater pedagogy and production at historically white universities Omiyẹmi (Artisia) Green ARTICLE Interviews and Afterviews on “Milestones in Black Theatre” Heather S. Nathans INTERVIEW Talking About a Revolutionary Praxis: A Conversation with Black Women Artist-Scholars in the Wake of COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter Nicole Hodges Persley INTERVIEW Tarell Alvin McCraney: Theater, Performance, and Collaboration. Sharrell D. Luckett, David Román, and Isaiah Matthew Wooden, eds. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2020; Pp. 252. DeRon S. Williams BOOK REVIEW Casting A Movement: The Welcome Table Initiative. Claire Syler and Daniel Banks, eds. New York: Routledge, 2019; Pp. 266. Erith Jaffe-Berg BOOK REVIEW The Theatre of August Wilson. Alan Nadel. Metuen Drama Critical Companions Series. London; New York: Methuen Drama, Bloomsbury Collections, 2018; Pp. 224. Jasmeene Francois BOOK REVIEW Shakespeare in a Divided America: What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future. James Shapiro. New York: Penguin Press, 2020. Pp. 221. Kaitlin Nabors BOOK REVIEW The Theatre of Eugene O’Neill: American Modernism on the World Stage. Kurt Eisen. Methuen Drama Critical Companions Series. London: Methuen Drama, 2017; Pp 242 + xiv. Richard Hayes BOOK REVIEW Errol Hill Award Winners 1997-2020 Winners ERROL HILL AWARD WINNERS Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative articles and reviews on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Please refer to our Style Guide for submission information and general formatting guidelines. Send all general queries to the editors at jadtjournal@gmail.com . Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage

Watch Funambulism, Hanging by a Thread by Jean-Baptiste Mathieu at the Segal Film Festival on Theatre and Performance 2025. Constantly pushing the limits of the body and the laws of physics, tightrope walking is about navigating between acrobatic elegance and the earth's gravitational pull. The artist must master the skillful technique that enables them to move forward as if dancing, without losing their balance. It's a fascinating circus art, both for the performer and the audience.. The Martin E. Segal Theater Center presents Funambulism, Hanging by a Thread At the Segal Theatre Film and Performance Festival 2025 A film by Jean-Baptiste Mathieu Screening Information This film will be screened in-person at The Segal Centre on Friday May 16th at 7:10pm and also be available to watch online on the festival website till June 8th 2025. RSVP Please note there is limited seating available for in-person screenings at The Segal Centre, which are offered on a first-come first-serve basis. You may RSVP above to get a reminder about the Segal Film Festival in your inbox. Country Germany Language French Running Time 52 minutes Year of Release 2025 About The Film Constantly pushing the limits of the body and the laws of physics, tightrope walking is about navigating between acrobatic elegance and the earth's gravitational pull. The artist must master the skillful technique that enables them to move forward as if dancing, without losing their balance. It's a fascinating circus art, both for the performer and the audience. About The Artist(s) Tatiana-Mosio Bongonga was seven years old when she witnessed a tightrope walker crossing between two buildings — a moment of pure fascination that sparked a true calling. Now a star in her field, she is one of the rare women to perform more than 30 meters above the ground on a 300-meter-long wire. Tatiana lives with her three-year-old daughter and the artists from her company in a village nestled at the foot of the Cévennes mountains. The film follows their preparations for a spectacular challenge: crossing the Saint-Denis Canal toward the Stade de France. The feat Tatiana is about to accomplish is a technical, artistic, and human endeavor. Around her, an entire team is mobilized. In Saint-Denis, her partner and technical director Jan Naets is assisted by five riggers. For three days, he oversees the setup of a complex installation and trains those who will ensure the wire’s stability from the ground. Balancing grace and calculated risk, Tatiana captures everyone's attention. Each performance is an aerial and choreographic adventure, accompanied live by musicians playing melodies and rhythms that strike the perfect chord. It’s an undertaking that couldn’t happen without the help of many volunteers who take part in stabilizing the wire — a delicate operation requiring constant adaptability. Get in touch with the artist(s) cie@ciebasinga.com and follow them on social media https://www.jeanbaptistemathieu.fr/films-documentaires/decouverte-passions/tatiana-funambule-des-cevennes-au-stade-de-france https://www.facebook.com/CieBasinga/ Find out all that’s happening at Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP) 2025 by following us on Facebook , Twitter , Instagram and YouTube See the full festival schedule here His Head was a Sledgehammer Richard Foreman in Retrospect Moi-même Mojo Lorwin/Lee Breuer Benjamim de Oliveira's Open Paths Catappum! Collective Peak Hour in the House Blue Ka Wing Transindigenous Assembly Joulia Strauss Bila Burba Duiren Wagua JJ Pauline L. Boulba, Aminata Labor, Lucie Brux Acting Sophie Fiennes; Cheek by Jowl; Lone Star; Amoeba Film PACI JULIETTE ROUDET Radical Move ANIELA GABRYEL Funambulism, Hanging by a Thread Jean-Baptiste Mathieu This is Ballroom Juru and Vitã Reas Lola Arias The Jacket Mathijs Poppe Pidikwe Caroline Monnet Resilience Juan David Padilla Vega The Brink of Dreams Nada Riyadh, Ayman El Amir Jesus and The Sea Ricarda Alvarenga Grand Theft Hamlet Sam Crane & Pinny Grylls Theater of War Oleh Halaidych Skywalk Above Prague Václav Flegl, Jakub Voves Somber Tides Chantal Caron / Fleuve Espace Danse

Allan Johnson Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 37 1 Visit Journal Homepage Historiographic Metatheatre and Narrative Closure in Pippin’s Alternate “Theo Ending” Allan Johnson By Published on December 16, 2024 Download Article as PDF The musical Pippin (1972), with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and book by Roger O. Hirson, famously employs an anarchic, metatheatrical narrative structure. As the actors are drawn deeper into the world of an inset play that they are performing, called Pippin: His Life and Times , the boundaries between their individual identities and their roles within the play begin to blur, highlighting the complicated interplay between self and performance and the complexity of filling or rejecting the social roles that one has inherited. This play-within-a-play recounts the story of Pippin, a fictionalized son of Charlemagne who goes on an episodic journey in search of the meaning of life. At the climax of the musical, the Leading Player and the other performers prepare Pippin for the ultimate “grand finale” in which he is expected to leap into a blazing fire as the climax to the play-with-a-play, and, in doing so, fulfill his presumed destiny. Faced with a dawning awareness of being manipulated by the performers around him, Pippin realizes that true fulfillment is not to be found in external validation and, instead, chooses a more authentic life away from the artifice of performance. In Bob Fosse’s original 1972 production, the musical ends with Pippin (both the actor embodying the role of “Pippin” and the now fully self-actualized character of Pippin) leaving the production to live a simple family life with his wife, Catherine, and stepson Theo. The Leading Player and troupe, exasperated by his defiance, remove the scenery, leaving Pippin, Catherine, and Theo alone on a bare stage in the musical’s final moment. In contrast, the 2013 Broadway revival directed by Diane Paulus introduced a revised ending in which Theo returns to the stage after Pippin and Catherine have exited. In this scenario, Theo is rejoined by the Leading Player and troupe, who now resume the musical with Theo in the lead role singing the opening of the iconic “Corner of the Sky.” The so-called “Theo Ending,” the most common choice of ending in professional productions today, including the 2021 Off West End revival directed by Stephen Dexter, reflects the cyclical nature of the hero’s journey. Despite the seemingly minor change that it creates in the overall structure of the work, its addition results in a necessary critical recalibration of the metatheatrical elements at play within the musical. To date, there has been surprisingly little academic discussion of Pippin nor consideration of the metatheatrical conceit employed in the musical’s conclusion, including both the original Fosse ending and the revised Theo ending. In The Musical Theater of Stephen Schwartz, Paul Laird merely refers to “the show’s ambiguous ending, when the Leading Player strips away the production elements.”(1) Robert Emmet Long describes the work somewhat unassumingly as “a concept musical in which the sense of estrangement in Pippin’s world makes a comment on our own contemporary one.”(2) Despite its innovative structure and thematic depth, Pippin has not received the scholarly attention it deserves, particularly when acknowledging its significant contributions to the development of metatheatrical techniques in contemporary musical theatre. Dissecting the implications of the “Theo Ending” underscores the critical importance of the recent revision, particularly how the “Theo Ending” revisits and reinvigorates the central theme of male psychosocial development, not only reshaping the resolution of the musical, but also shifting from the work’s comparatively static resolution to a new perspective on the evolving nature of masculine identity. One possible explanation for the emergence of the “Theo Ending” is that it makes the musical, for want of a better word, more “commercial.” Seen this way, it is more in tune with the trends in contemporary commercial musical theatre, which emphasize crowd-pleasing, satisfying conclusions, often accompanied by the reprise of the musical’s most widely popular number—in this case reprises of both “Corner of the Sky” and “Magic to Do.” This is at least partially true and, as I demonstrate below, Pippin has seen numerous updates and revisions since its inception. Additionally, the “Theo Ending” crucially brings into sharper focus the nature of the Leading Player as not simply an embodiment of Pippin’s ego or subconscious, or as a cypher for the forces of capitalist surveillance culture, but rather as the voice of the collective unconscious—what psychologist Carl Jung saw as the deepest and most perplexing layer of the psyche that unites all humans through a shared language of archetype and understanding. I argue that Pippin and Jungian theory can engage in a productive dialogue about the nature of male psychosexual development that enhances understanding of both without subordinating one to the other. As the son of King Charlemagne, Pippin struggles with the formidable shadow of his father, as well as the scheming of his stepmother, Fastrada and his half-brother, Lewis, who leave him trapped between the expectations of his class and his desire to find something more authentic and, perhaps ironically, something more “exceptional” than becoming Holy Roman Emperor. The metatheatrical techniques of the musical, further intensified and complicated by the “Theo Ending,” reflect the psychoanalytic process itself, particularly in the way they reveal the multi-layered, often contradictory aspects of the self. Viewed through this lens, the “Theo Ending” ultimately reflects a bolder and more daring approach to the metatheatrical contours of the work, while also serving as a poignant mirror to the masculine shadow and archetypes that underlie Pippin’s transformational journey, as well as Theo’s similar journey, which is set to follow his stepfather’s. The significance of the new ending lies in its reinforcement of the musical’s central thematic figuration: that the pursuit of extraordinary accomplishments, while enticing in youth, ultimately results in a debilitating lack of authenticity and connection to the world around oneself. By shifting the narrative focus to Theo in the final moments, this ending emphasizes that this struggle is not confined to the protagonist but is a recurring challenge across generations. Metatheatre in Pippin Hirson’s original book for Pippin (already an almost complete revision of a musical of the same name that Schwartz wrote while attending Carnegie Mellon University)(3) underwent a substantial metamorphosis under Fosse’s direction, which altered both the tone and narrative trajectory of the musical. Known for his penetrating and assertive directing style, Fosse left an indelible mark on the musical’s development, and his collaboration with Schwartz during the original production was marked by passionate disagreements and creative conflicts that continued to drive the development of the musical.(4) Fosse recreated the character of the Leading Player, originally known in a different form as the Old Man, after casting director Michael Shurtleff introduced him to actor Ben Vereen. Reshaping the role specifically for Vereen, Fosse transformed the Leading Player into the essential narrative fulcrum for the musical’s metadramatic layers.(5) Stuart Ostrow contends that Fosse’s addition of this character turned Schwartz’s work “from a sincere, naïve, morality play to an anachronistic cynical burlesque."(6) A further crucial alteration made by Fosse was a slight modification of the musical’s ending. In the original book, Pippin closes the show by declaring himself “trapped, but happy;” Fosse opted to eliminate the final two words, leaving Pippin “trapped” in a state of tantalizing ambiguity.(7) This directorial choice not only underlines the pervasive fear of being trapped by social expectations, which is woven into the revised narrative, but also challenges the convention of a happy marital resolution as the best and most desirable conclusion. Pippin might have found a wife, but that is no guarantee of his happiness. The work concludes on an ambiguous note regarding Pippin’s fate and the dynamics of desire, ambition, and the quest for fulfillment that he strives for but ultimately fails to achieve. The ending of Pippin has evolved over time, creating an enduring sense of ambiguity for critics and audiences regarding its significance and the role of the Leading Player in it.(8) As Elodie Paillard and Silvia Milanezi describe, metadrama encompasses “theatricality, reflexivity, auto-referentiality, forms of theatrical illusion, or what is called play-within-the-play.”(9) This framework of metadrama introduces a sense of self-reflexivity and dramatic irony, a narrative deice that Yifen Beus acknowledges has early origins despite its seemingly postmodern ambiance and tone. (10) The use of metatheatricality in Pippin is emblematic of the form’s evolution over dramatic history, as the technique can be traced back to the works of early Greek playwrights of the fourth century BCE, including Euripides and Aristophanes.(11) In these classical Greek comedies, characters could be acutely aware of their role within the theatrical performance and frequently broke the fourth wall to address the audience directly, a dramatic tradition also notably employed by William Shakespeare in works such as Hamlet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream .(12) Closer to Pippin ’s time, the backstage musical films of the 1920s and 30s, including The Broadway Melody (1929), 42nd Street (1933), Footlight Parade (1933), and Dames (1934), interpolated the lives of performers into the performance itself, suggesting an equally resonant influence on the form of Pippin. This blurring of the boundaries between the world of the play and the real lives of the actors is a recurring theme in the history of musical theatre, including perhaps the most famous example of Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate (1948). The plot conceptually turns on the juxtaposition of reality and fiction as a theatre troupe stages an adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew . In Porter’s musical, the interplay between the characters’ on-stage personalities and their off-stage struggles becomes a central thematic focus, a dynamic explored in darker and more sombre ways in later works such as A Chorus Line (1975) and Follies (1971). Iconic pieces of 1970s musical theatre, these two works drew not merely on the metadramatic mode employed in earlier musicals and musical movies, but also upon Bertolt Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt (or “alienation effect”) to challenge prevailing norms of dramatic representation that prompted audiences to engage with the material in a more introspective and critical way. By using methods such as direct address, visible stage mechanics, and deliberate breaking of the fourth wall, Brecht aimed to disrupt the passive consumption of theatre and instead promote a socially aware audience experience. More recent musicals such as Nic Doodson, Andrew Kay, and Ben Norris’s The Choir of Man (2017) have taken this self-reflexivity in a new direction that, in the twenty-first century, now seeks to engage rather than alienate or distance the audience. In it, the actors use their real names, and the book is updated with each successive cast, incorporating specific real-life details such as their birthplaces and family backgrounds into the narrative, blurring the line between the performers’ onstage personas and their authentic identities. Metatheatrical techniques witnessed a remarkable revival during the postmodern era. The Fantasticks (1960) and Man of La Mancha (1965) transpose the original metatextual elements of their source material—Edmund Rostand’s Les Romanesques (1894) and Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote (1605 and 1615)—into productions that first emerged during a time of significant social and cultural upheaval in the United States involving personal liberation, self-discovery, and the questioning of social norms. These works stand alongside Cabaret (1966), Hair (1967), Godspell (1971) and King of Hearts (1978) as part of a movement toward more experimental and thematically complex musicals that collectively began to push the boundaries of the genre—not only by moving away from the conventions of the book musical form but, in doing so, introducing political and social commentary in a way that was more explicitly daring than in earlier eras. Pippin ’s self-referential and metatheatrical approach elevates the act of performance to a central narrative device. With a conscious and continuous self-awareness within the narrative structure of the work, Pippin’s developmental journey is entirely dependent on the unfolding of that journey within the play-within-a-play structure. In this sense, Pippin represents a fusion of the long history of metatheatre with a new postmodern reckoning with the validity of historical narrative. More specifically – and in sharp distinction to The Fantasticks , Man of La Mancha , Cabaret , Hair , and Godspell – Pippin is an example of what Phillip Zapkin describes as “historiographic metatheatre . ”(13) Historiographic metatheatre refers to a type of performance that not only recounts an historical event, but also self-consciously examines the nature of historical representation itself and, in doing so, modulates and manipulates both the methods of the historian and the established historical record. Thus, works of historiographic metatheatre question the ways in which history is constructed and understood, often blurring the lines between fact and fiction, and reality and performance. Zapkin is drawing upon Linda Hutcheon’s influential definition of “historiographic metafiction,” defined by Hutcheon as fiction that “works to situate itself within historical discourse without surrendering its autonomy as fiction” by manipulating and challenging its own very nature as historical.(14) E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime (1975), a classic example of historiographic metafiction, weaves together the lives of three fictional families with historical figures such as J.P. Morgan, Harry Houdini, and Henry Ford, blending reality and fiction in a way that questions the traditional boundaries of historical storytelling and, through this, scrutinizes the history that America told of itself through the twentieth century. Doctorow’s Ragtime would later be adapted into Flaherty, Ahrens, and McNally’s Tony Award-winning musical of the same name, which led to the emergence of more historiographic metatheatre musicals into the twenty-first century, including Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton (2015) and Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss’s Six (2017). The significance of these works inhere in their ability to reflect on the nature of historical storytelling itself, questioning and reshaping the way historical narratives are constructed and consumed. Both critical and popular successes, the works examine the interplay between historical facts and representation in the form of musical theatre, portraying both historical events and the processes through which they are remembered and interpreted. There is a long tradition of historical musicals that detail real events or the lives of individuals, such as Sherman Edwards and Peter Stone’s 1776 (1969) , Maury Yeston and Peter Stone’s Titanic (1997), and Jason Robert Brown and Alfred Uhry’s Parade (1998) . But what establishes Pippin as an early frontrunner in the historiographic metatheatre tradition of Ragtime, Hamilton, and Six is its innovative use of metatheatricality to interrogate the nature of historical representation, personal identity, and, ultimately, the psychological forces that shape our understanding of both. Pippin stands apart by not only dramatizing historical moments or figures, but by using metatheatricality to explore the internal dynamics of its characters’ psyches. This self-referential technique places Pippin at the forefront of the historiographic metatheatre tradition, prefiguring later works that similarly use metatheatrical devices to explore and comment on the representation of historical figures and events, offering new perspectives on the past through the lens of contemporary performance. The events of the inset play, Pippin: His Life and Times , are set in the early Middle Ages: however, the period and context during which that story is told have varied considerably across productions. The original 1972 production broadly adhered to the eighth-century setting, with a group of itinerant miracle play performers set in an imaginary design tapestry that blended elements of eighth-century costumes with the flair and sensuality of twentieth-century vaudeville and burlesque. The effect was striking, and Tony Walton won a Tony Award for Best Scenic Design, while Patricia Zipprodt was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Costume Design. In many ways, this bold visual design served as a metaphorical reflection of the fragmentary nature of history and its retelling, visually representing the historiographic metatheatrical maneuvers of the play-within-a-play while emphasizing the musical’s attentiveness to themes more consistent with the sexual revolution of the late twentieth century. Later revivals, however, have made use of a number of innovative interpretive interventions in the staging of the musical’s metatheatrical narrative arc and the startling ending. The 2013 Broadway revival, directed by Diane Paulus, moved the setting of the inset play to the world of the early-twentieth-century circus, a rich terrain for examining tensions between external glamour and internal fulfillment, and the musical’s Off West End revival in 2021 was set in the 1967 Summer of Love. Staged as a protest storytelling circle that gathered to denounce war, this reinterpretation contextualiszd Pippin’s quest within the ethos of social upheaval created by the Vietnam War and the countercultural rebellion that emerged alongside it. In each of these interpretations, metatheatrical elements highlighted the permeability of the historical record: the traveling wonder play, the circus, and the countercultural hippie context each illustrate how the story of a young man’s growth toward individuation can adapt to different cultural, historical, and social contexts. In navigating the function and design of the play-within-a-play, directors and designers are confronted with the challenge of maintaining plausibility and coherence in the seeming chaos of the invented and at times contradictory narratives. At the heart of the metatheatrical dynamics of Pippin is the deliberate and artful dissolution of the boundaries between historical fact and narrative fiction. In reforming the historical account of Charlemagne and his eldest son Pippin (in reality, Pepin [c. 768 to 811]), Pippin tests the delicate balance between narrative authenticity and theatrical form. Charlemagne’s reign marked a pivotal moment in European history. Unlike his father, Pepin is mostly forgotten by the established historical record, largely because he was ultimately exiled, leading his younger brother Louis the Pious to become their father’s successor. The musical’s historiographical narrative artifice (embodied in the form of the Leading Player, who manipulates his constructed historical record), challenges both personal and collective historical narratives and, perhaps more provocatively, draws attention to the artifice of the historical record itself. As the putative director of the inset play, the Leading Player explicitly directs Pippin’s own developmental story in favor of spectacle, enticing him with a series of caricatured versions of “meaningful” pursuits: war, politics, and hedonistic sexual pleasure. The Leading Player’s cruelty and sadism trivialize the portrayal of events, such as in the Act I song “Glory,” which stylizes the horrors of war as a battle against the Visigoths, a historically inaccurate context as the Visigoths had already been largely defeated before Charlemagne’s reign. Here, the Leading Player reframes battle as an opportunity for personal glory, which relies only on the existence of an anonymous enemy. Fosse’s signature “Manson Trio” dance routine, which first appeared in the original production of this song, shows the Leading Player responding to the bloodshed with a stylized detachment and a parodically mechanical vaudeville dance that trivializes violence with jazz hands and bravado. His manipulation of these moments reduces complex, often violent historical events to consumable performance, emphasizing his control over the inset play and underscoring the performative nature of historical narrative. In her seminal work The Death of Character , Elinor Fuchs discusses the role of metatheatricality in disrupting narrative immersion, particularly in the reemergence in the 1930s of the mystery play in the symbolist works of playwrights such as Maurice Maeterlinck and August Strindberg. “The medieval mystery plays told the sacred history of the world,” Fuchs writes,. “The moralities, based not on history but on doctrine, recapitulated this universal form through a central figure’s progress toward salvation.”(15) Just as miracle plays used allegory to explore spiritual questions, Pippin employs its metatheatrical structure to interrogate contemporary notions of selfhood and identity rather than medieval concerns regarding the correct way to embody spiritual devotion and redemption. This shift brings with it a distinctly Jungian engagement with the psyche, and Pippin thus not only explores the nature of identity and selfhood but also enacts this process of individuation through the metatheatrical form. Pippin’s Individuation Embedded within the thematic tapestry of Pippin is the exploration of individuation through a quest for life’s meaning, a journey frequently hindered within the musical by Pippin’s pursuit of external validation. His search for purpose leads him through a series of episodic vignettes—he tries to find his purpose in war, hedonism, politics, love, and fatherhood. Each illuminates different facets of his personal and psychological journey toward what Jung called “individuation” the integration of different aspects of the self in order to achieve psychological wholeness. Jung explained that “the aim of individuation is nothing less than to divest the self of the false wrappings of the persona, on the one hand and the suggestive power of primordial images on the other.”(16) Jung’s theories, particularly his concepts of the collective unconscious and archetypes, are deeply rooted in his study of artistic and cultural artifacts. He believed that these artifacts, including myths, fairy tales, and religious narratives, contain symbols and motifs that reveal universal patterns of the human psyche. In their influential book King, Warrior, Magician, Lover , Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette highlight four of Jung’s twelve primary archetypes—the four named in the book’s title—which they identify as the essential functions of mature masculinity. The King archetype represents the benevolent and authoritative aspect of masculinity and embodies qualities such as leadership, responsibility, and wisdom. The Warrior archetype represents assertiveness, courage, and the ability to protect and fight for what is just. The Magician is associated with insight, knowledge, and transformative power and emphasises the importance of intellect and spiritual awareness. Finally, the Lover emphasizes the relational aspects of masculinity and represents sensitivity, emotional depth, and the capacity for intimate relationships,. Though Moore and Gillette’s work postdates Pippin and thus did not directly influence the original production, there are striking parallels between their archetypal framework and Pippin’s journey. In Pippin , the protagonist literally embodies the roles of King, Warrior, and Lover throughout his quest for meaning and, at various points in the musical, he also reflects the Magician archetype, particularly in his search for existential understanding and transformation. These symbols are manifestations of the collective unconscious, a shared reservoir of experience and knowledge that transcends individual consciousness. Jung believed that individuation entails a psychic journey of personal discovery in which the individual confronts and integrates his or her hidden or shadow aspects, those aspects of self, such as desires, fears, repressions and unresolved conflicts that have been pushed to the limits of our own awareness as a protective strategy for the ego. Pippin presents an allegory of this process. Following the opening number, “Magic to Do,” in which the Leading Player and ensemble remind audiences that history is not a singular, unchanging truth, but rather a rich field of diverse stories, perspectives, and interpretations, the actor playing the role of “Pippin” is introduced. “He may be a little nervous; this is his first time playing the role,” the Leading Player explains to the audience, breaking the fourth wall and explicitly identifying the metatheatrical nature of Pippin’s character arc as both a participant in the mystery play, and a new actor to the role. This self-referential comment draws an uncanny parallel between the character Pippin and the performer playing the role; the character of Pippin’s nervousness comes from having to give a valedictory speech to the faculty of the University of Padua, while the nervousness of the performer of that character comes from this being his “first” performance of the role. Here, Pippin, recently honored as Scholar of the House, struggles with the tension between accepting this prestigious role and pursuing a more meaningful existence, mirroring the performer’s own apprehensions about stepping into this new role. In a gesture that will be brought into sharper focus in the musical’s final moments, there is a convoluted overlap of “self” and “role,” between the nervous character of Pippin and the “first-time actor” performing that role, insomuch as all social behaviours are a performance. Pippin’s intention, as introduced in “Corner of the Sky,”is to find his own unique place in the world and to transcend the mundane to achieve the extraordinary. In this widely popular song (indeed, one of the most musically successful numbers in the show), Pippin explores the complexity of human ambition, which seems to necessitate a ceaseless pursuit of meaning. For the youthful Pippin, meaning and purpose seem attainable only through grand, exceptional achievements, dismissing the ordinary as inherently unfulfilling. This dichotomy between the extraordinary and the ordinary underscores Pippin’s internal conflict and his relentless search for significance beyond conventional success. For Pippin, the “false wrappings of the persona”(17) are reflected in his frequent desire to fulfill the expectations imposed on him by his position in society (first as a student, then as a warrior, lover, leader and, finally, father), while at the same time painfully and pitifully recognizing that the persona society imposes on him does not suit him. His negotiation of identity comes through engagement with archetypal figures—the authoritarian father, a menacing mentor embodied by the Leading Player, and the nurturing anima represented by Catherine—who, together, serve as symbolic manifestations of various facets of Pippin’s subconscious mind. Each of these characters plays a crucial role in developing Pippin’s understanding of himself and the world around him, contributing to the rich palette of themes explored in the musical. “The suggestive power of primordial images,” to use Jung’s phrase, is powerful and unmistakably reflected in the figure of the Leading Player and his coercive performers, emblematic of the overwhelming desire for greatness and visibility that Pippin must ultimately reject in favor of a more authentic understanding of self. In Jungian analysis, as in Pippin’s own journey, this process often involves confronting the “shadow,” the repressed or rejected aspects of the self that have been pushed into the depths of the unconscious in order to find harmony between the self and its public expression. Midway through Act II (18), the song “Extraordinary” offers a striking encapsulation of the pursuit of the extraordinary and, ultimately, the futility of the search, as Pippin will only later come to fully realize at the musical’s conclusion. The seductive lure of fame and greatness, a fundamental facet of social masculinity, captures Pippin’s imagination and mirrors the societal expectations surrounding him as he navigates the maze of masculine archetypes and expectations. This otherwise light, pop-inflected song reflects the collective desire for recognition and significance that often defines a man's worth in the eyes of society. It ultimately captures the inner conflict still stunting Pippin’s individuation—the struggle between conforming to external expectations and carving out an authentic identity. As a whole, the musical gestures toward the paradoxical recognition that the more exceptional someone wants to be, the more he runs the risk of losing his authenticity through the erosion of personal coherence and the fragmentation of the self. In this way, the song captures a key paradoxical insight at the thematic heart of the musical: the more one seeks to stand out and achieve exceptionality, the greater the risk of losing one’s true self. The quest for extraordinary achievement often leads to a fragmentation of identity, where the pursuit of external validation undermines personal authenticity. Theo’s Individuation Pippin was, in its formative stages, a fairly standard book musical about the growth and development of a minor historical figure, and did not include any of the metatheatrical elements now most associated with the work. Indeed, in an earlier formation, the musical ended with Pippin’s attempted assassination of his father, until producer Hal Prince encouraged Schwartz to use that material as the first act and then continue Pippin’s story in the second act.(19) In the Fosse ending, Pippin’s decision to settle down with Catherine while feeling “trapped”(20) reflects a dejected yet also deeply human capitulation to societal norms. It represents a mature compromise between his personal desires and commitment to family, highlighting the complex negotiation of masculinity in relation to societal expectations of being father, protector, and provider. Carol de Giere imagines that “on one level, the show’s ending reflected transitions in Schwartz’s own life as he and [his wife] Carole settled into the first home of their own in rural western Connecticut.”(21) It is thus not insignificant that the Theo ending once again extends the timeframe depicted by the musical by expanding the story to imagine Theo’s own subsequent search for his “corner of the sky,” ultimately mirroring Prince’s initial suggestion to explore what happens beyond the climax. Just as Prince’s advice questioned the boundaries of when a narrative can or should conclude, the “Theo Ending” proposes an ongoing cycle of self-discovery and endeavor and is not confined to a single life, but is a recurring journey that is passed down through generations. By positioning Theo as the new seeker of the “corner of the sky,” the “Theo Ending” offers a poignant echo of the burden of parental and societal expectations that Pippin experienced and had to overcome. This original Fosse ending is a clear example of what the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index of folktales, used to categorize similar narrative structures across a wide range of folkloric traditions, calls a “treasure at home” narrative, in which a journey is undertaken only to find that what the protagonist had been seeking was already at home. The significance of this narrative archetype lies in the dramatic irony of a protagonist embarking on a long journey in search of riches, only to discover that the treasure or fulfillment he sought lay within the familiar confines of his own home. The “treasure at home” narrative emphasises the idea that true happiness and contentment are often found in the ordinary and mundane aspects of life, rather than in distant and extraordinary adventures. It emphasises the importance of appreciating and valuing what one already has and suggests that the pursuit of external success and wealth only ultimately lead back to the simplicity and richness of one’s home and family. In the context of Pippin , Pippin’s desires and dreams, symbolized by his search for his “corner of the sky,” gradually intertwine with the realization that the seeds of his own contentment have already been sown in the family life he has created and, at least for a time, tried to discard. What is most striking when considering the masculine archetype and metatheatrical form of Pippin is that the alternate “Theo Ending” explicitly points out that the voice of the Leading Player is not merely symbolic of Pippin’s ego and subconscious. Rather, it symbolizes a collective psyche that is crucial to the development of the individual from youthful innocence to mature masculinity. Each whispered word of the Leading Player, which Pippin has now learned to recognize and control by the show’s culmination, represents the conflicting demands of societal expectations and personal desires that each individual must learn to deal with. The Leading Player becomes a manifestation of the Jungian collective unconscious, the deepest and most inaccessible layer of the human psyche comprising symbols, archetypes, and primordial images that are common across humans. These archetypes and their associated drives are innate and not shaped by personal experience. According to Jung, the collective unconscious forms a reservoir of common myths and symbols of humanity that influence our thoughts, behaviours, and perceptions: The existence of the collective unconscious means that individual consciousness is anything but a tabula rasa and is not immune to predetermining influences. On the contrary, it is in the highest degree influenced by inherited presuppositions, quite apart from the unavoidable influences exerted upon it by the environment. The collective unconscious comprises in itself the psychic life of our ancestors right back to the earliest beginnings. It is the matrix of all conscious psychic occurrences, and hence it exerts an influence that compromises the freedom of consciousness in the highest degree, since it is continually striving to lead all conscious processes back into the old paths.(22) The collective unconscious acts as a source of personal and cultural expression, tapping into a vast reservoir of archetypal meanings that transcend individual experience. Whereas the Fosse ending emphasized the singularity of Pippin’s developmental story (i.e., that his conflict with the Leading Player and the other performers represented an inward psychic journey toward individuation that was unique to him), the “Theo Ending” reemphasizes the universality of the journey toward individuation that occurs in all humans. Although not biologically related to Pippin, Theo nevertheless inherits the “predetermining influences” that shaped his stepfather, and the explicit recognition of the Leading Player of these influences underlines the crucial role they play in Pippin’s development from youthful naivete to mature masculinity. The reintroduction of Theo at the end and his subsequent confrontation with the Leading Player demonstrates the ongoing process of individuation that goes beyond a single life. It points to the permanence of archetypal challenges and the perpetual human search for meaning, establishing the idea in the show’s final moments that the path to maturity and self-knowledge is a universal journey. The musical’s initial Broadway run in 1972 was met with much critical acclaim, and the work has enjoyed considerable success in Broadway and West End revivals over the past 50 years. While the musical was very much a product of its time and place, its enduring appeal is due in no small part to the mutability afforded by the metatheatrical structure, which allows directors to continue to reshape the thematic contours of the work. The “Theo Ending” reiterates the universal human search for purpose and meaning, achieved by reconciling the innate complexity of the self with its external, public expression and, even more so than the Fosse ending, speaks to a conceptual pluralism in which all humans are united by a shared journey of self-discovery. This interplay between the individual and social expectations—between the authentic self and its social mask—is the central theme of Pippin . More importantly though, the musical’s engagement with a notoriously porous historical record of a largely forgotten son of Charlemagne embeds it within a broader postmodern context in which the boundaries between truth and fiction are constantly renegotiated. By presenting Theo’s journey toward individuation as a continuation of Pippin’s, the musical emphasizes the eternal cycle of growth and transformation that characterizes human experience. Despite the typically postmodern ambiguity of the metatheatrical close, the revised “Theo Ending” points out that the search for one’s own “corner of the sky” is not unique to Pippin, but is a universal experience shared by others, including Theo, who also encounters the fantastical voices of the collective unconscious in his own psychic drama of growth and individuation. This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. References Paul R. Laird, The Musical Theater of Stephen Schwartz: From Godspell to Wicked and Beyond (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), p. 76. Robert Emmet Long, Jerome Robbins and the Great Choreographer-Directors 1940 to the Present (London: Continuum, 2003), p. 165. Robert Emmet Long, Jerome Robbins and the Great Choreographer-Directors 1940 to the Present (London: Continuum, 2003), p. 165 Paul R. Laird, The Musical Theater of Stephen Schwartz: From Godspell to Wicked and Beyond (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), p. 62; Robert Emmet Long, Jerome Robbins and the Great Choreographer-Directors 1940 to the Present (London: Continuum, 2003), p. 165. Douglas Watt, ‘Bob Fosse Added a “Leading Player” Made Pippin Easy’, Sunday News 19 November 1972, Leisure, p. 3; Carol de Giere, Defying Gravity: The Creative Career of Stephen Schwartz from Godspell to Wicked (New York: Applause, 2008) , p. 88. Stuart Ostrow, A Producer’s Broadway Journey (London: Praeger, 1999), p. 117. Paul R. Laird, The Musical Theater of Stephen Schwartz: From Godspell to Wicked and Beyond (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), p. 66. Paul R. Laird, The Musical Theater of Stephen Schwartz: From Godspell to Wicked and Beyond (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), p. 76. Elodie Paillard and Silvia Milanezi, ‘“Theatre”, “Paratheatre”, “Metatheatre”: What Are We Talking About?’ in Theatre and Metatheatre: Definitions, Problems, Limits, ed by Elodie Paillard and Silvia Milanezi (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2021), 1-20, p. 1. Yifen Beus, ‘Self-Reflexivity and the Play within the Play and its Cross-Genre Manifestation’, in The Play within the Play: The Performance of Meta-Theatre and Self-Reflection, ed by Gerhard Fischer and Bernhard Greiner (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007), pp. 15-26. See: Emilie Ruch, ‘Metatheatre and Dramaturgical Innovation: A Study of Recognition Scenes in Euripides’ Tragedies Electra, Helen, Iphigenia in Tauris, and Ion, in Theatre and Metatheatre: Definitions, Problems, Limits, ed by Elodie Paillard and Silvia Milanezi (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2021), 153-176; Marco Vespa, ‘Animal Metaphors and Metadrama’ in Theatre and Metatheatre: Definitions, Problems, Limits, ed by Elodie Paillard and Silvia Milanezi (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2021), 193-212. Bernhard Greiner, ‘The Birth of the Subject out of the Spirit of the Play within the Play: The Hamlet Paradigm’, in The Play within the Play: The Performance of Meta-Theatre and Self-Reflection, ed by Gerhard Fischer and Bernhard Greiner (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007), 3-14. Phillip Zapkin, ‘Compromised Epistemologies: The Ethics of Historiographic Metatheatre in Tom Stoppard’s Travesties and Arcadia’ , Modern Drama, 59:3 (2016), 306-326. Linda Hutcheon, ‘Historiographic Metafiction, Parody and the Intertextuality of History’, in Intertextuality and Contemporary American Fiction, ed. by Patrick O'Donnell and Robert Con Davis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), p. 4. Elinor Fuchs, The Death of Character: Perspectives on Theater After Modernism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), p. 39. Carl Jung, ‘The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious’ in The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, vol. 7, (London: Routledge, 1977), p. 172. Carl Jung, ‘The Relations Between the Ego and the Unconscious’ in The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, vol. 7, (London: Routledge, 1977), p. 172. The original production had no interval; however, all recent productions have now employed a two-act format with interval. Carol de Giere, Defying Gravity: The Creative Career of Stephen Schwartz from Godspell to Wicked (New York: Applause, 2008) , p. 83. Paul R. Laird, The Musical Theater of Stephen Schwartz: From Godspell to Wicked and Beyond (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), p. 66 Carol de Giere, Defying Gravity: The Creative Career of Stephen Schwartz from Godspell to Wicked (New York: Applause, 2008) , p. 86. Carl Jung, ‘The Significance of Constitution and Heredity in Psychology’, in The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, vol. 7, (London: Routledge, 1977), p. 112. Bibliography Bacon, Lloyd, director. 42nd Street . Warner Bros., 1933. 89 minutes. Bacon, Lloyd, director. Footlight Parade . Warner Bros., 1933. 104 minutes. Beaumont, Harry, director. The Broadway Melody . Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1929. 100 minutes. Beus, Yifen. “Self-Reflexivity and the Play within the Play and its Cross-Genre Manifestation.” In The Play within the Play: The Performance of Meta-Theatre and Self-Reflection, edited by Gerhard Fischer and Bernhard Greiner. Rodopi, 2007. Brown, Jason Robert. Parade . Book by Alfred Uhry. TCG, 1998. de Giere, Carol. Defying Gravity: The Creative Career of Stephen Schwartz from Godspell to Wicked.New York: Applause, 2008 . Edwards, Sherman. 1776 . Book by Peter Stone. Concord Theatricals, 1969. Fuchs, Elinor. The Death of Character: Perspectives on Theater After Modernism . Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996. Enright, Ray, director. Dames . Warner Bros., 1934. 91 minutes. Flaherty, Stephen, and Lynn Ahrens. Ragtime . Book by Terrence McNally. TCG, 1998. Greiner, Bernhard. “The Birth of the Subject out of the Spirit of the Play within the Play: The Hamlet Paradigm.” In The Play within the Play: The Performance of Meta-Theatre and Self-Reflection, edited by Gerhard Fischer and Bernhard Greiner, 3-14. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007. Hamlisch, Marvin. A Chorus Line . Book by James Kirkwood Jr. and Nicholas Dante, lyrics by Edward Kleban. Concord Theatricals, 1975 Link, Peter. King of Hearts . Book by Joseph Stein, lyrics by Jacob Brackman. Samuel French, 1978. Hutcheon, Linda. “Historiographic Metafiction, Parody and the Intertextuality of History.” In Intertextuality and Contemporary American Fiction, edited by Patrick O'Donnell and Robert Con Davis. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989. Jung, Carl. The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, vol. 7. London: Routledge, 1977. Kander, John, and Fred Ebb. Cabaret. Book by Joe Masteroff. Concord Theatricals, 1966. Laird, Paul R. The Musical Theater of Stephen Schwartz: From Godspell to Wicked and Beyond . New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. Leigh, Mitch. Man of La Mancha . Lyrics by Joe Darion, book by Dale Wasserman, 1965. Long, Robert Emmet. Jerome Robbins and the Great Choreographer-Directors 1940 to the Present. Continuum, 2003. MacDermot, Galt, James Rado, and Gerome Ragni. Hair . Hair . Theatrical Rights Worldwide, 1967. Marlow, Toby, and Lucy Moss. Six: The Musical. Concord Theatricals, 2017. Miranda, Lin-Manuel. Hamilton: An American Musical. Hamilton Uptown LLC, 2015. Ostrow, Stuart. A Producer’s Broadway Journey . Praeger, 1999. Paillard, Elodie, and Silvia Milanezi, ““Theatre”, “Paratheatre”, “Metatheatre”: What Are We Talking About?” In Theatre and Metatheatre: Definitions, Problems, Limits, edited by Elodie Paillard and Silvia Milanezi. de Gruyter, 2021. Porter, Cole. Kiss Me, Kate . Book by Samuel and Bella Spewack, Concord Theatricals, 1948. Roberts, David. “The Play within the Play and the Closure of Representation.” In The Play Within the Play: The Performance of Meta-Theatre and Self-Reflection, edited by Gerhard Fischer and Bernhard Greiner. Rodopi, 2007. Ruch, Emilie. “Metatheatre and Dramaturgical Innovation: A Study of Recognition Scenes in Euripides’ Tragedies Electra, Helen, Iphigenia in Tauris, and Ion. ” In Theatre and Metatheatre: Definitions, Problems, Limits, edited by Elodie Paillard and Silvia Milanezi. de Gruyter, 2021. Schmidt, Harvey. The Fantasticks . Lyrics and book by Tom Jones. Samuel French, 1960. Schwartz, Stephen. Godspell . Book by John-Michael Tebelak. MTI, 1971. Schwartz, Stephen. Pippin . Book by Roger O. Hirson. MTI, 1972. Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night’s Dream . Oxford University Press, 1994. Shakespeare, William. Hamlet . Arden Shakespeare, 1982. Sondheim, Stephen. Follies . Book by James Goldman, 1971. Vespa, Marco. “Animal Metaphors and Metadrama.” In Theatre and Metatheatre: Definitions, Problems, Limits, edited by Elodie Paillard and Silvia Milanezi. de Gruyter, 2021). Watt, Douglas. “Bob Fosse Added a “Leading Player” Made Pippin Easy.” Sunday News 19 November 1972, Leisure, 3. Yeston, Maury. Titanic . Book by Peter Stone, 1997. Zapkin, Phillip. “Compromised Epistemologies: The Ethics of Historiographic Metatheatre in Tom Stoppard’s Travesties and Arcadia .” Modern Drama 59, no. 3 (2016): 306-326. Footnotes About The Author(s) ALLAN JOHNSON is Associate Professor in English Literature and Associate Dean (Doctoral College) at the University of Surrey. He is the author of Alan Hollinghurst and the Vitality of Influence (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), Masculine Identity in Modernist Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), The Sacred Life of Modernist Literature: Immanence, Occultism, and the Making of the Modern World (Bloomsbury, 2022), and numerous articles and chapters on twentieth-century literature and drama. Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue Editorial Introduction A Comedy of Sorts: Race, Gender, and Satire in Slave Play Performing Girlhood, Riffing on Lolita: Fornés and Vogel Respond to Nabokov “It’s Cumming yet for a’ that”: Bringing the Scottish Bard to Life in the 21st Century Historiographic Metatheatre and Narrative Closure in Pippin’s Alternate “Theo Ending” “Each One, Teach One”: Interview with Harvey Fierstein Artists as Theorists in Their Craft: Interview with James Ijames The Spectacular Theatre of Frank Joseph Galati: Reshaping American Theatre in Chicago, Illinois. Julie Jackson. London: Methuen Drama, Bloomsbury Publishing. 2022. 215pp. Playing Real: Mimesis, Media, and Mischief. Lindsay Brandon Hunter. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2021; Pp. 192. Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity. Ryan Donovan. New York: Oxford University Press, 2023; Pp. 316. Precarious Forms. Performing Utopia in the Neoliberal Americas. Evanston. Candice Amich. Northwestern University Press: 2020; Pp. 232. Queering Drag: Redefining the Discourse of Gender Bending. Meredith Heller. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020; Pp. 236. New England Theatre Journal: A fond farewell 1989-2023 New England Theatre in Review American Repertory Theater . Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2023–2024 Barrington Stage. Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 2023 The Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre (The Gamm). Warwick, Rhode Island, 2023-24 Greater Boston’s Independent Theatres. 2023-24 Season Hartford Stage. Hartford, Connecticut, 2023-24 The Huntington. Boston, Massachusetts, 2023-24 Long Wharf Theatre. New Haven, Connecticut, 2023-24 Portland Stage Company. Portland, Maine, 2023-24 Shakespeare & Company. Lenox, Massachusetts, 2023 Trinity Repertory Theatre Company. Providence, Rhode Island, 2023-24 Vermont Stage. Burlington, Vermont, 2023-24 Yale Repertory Theatre. New Haven, Connecticut, 2023-24 Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages 18 Winter 2025 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Performance Review: COSMOS/AWALEM by Ashtar Muallem and Emile Saba. By Malek Najjar Published: December 1, 2025 Download Article as PDF Ashtar Muallem’s Awalem/Cosmos is a one-woman performance infused with text, music, and aerial arts performance, co-written by Ashtar Muallem, and co-written and directed by Clément Dazin and Emile Saba. Muallem, who has toured the production around the world, performs the work in Arabic, English, and French. I attended this production in Portland, Oregon, at the AWOL Dance Collective, produced by BOOM Arts on Saturday, March 1 st , 2025, after attending a movement workshop with Muallem earlier that day. A self-described Jerusalemite artist who navigates life between Palestine and France, Muallem bills Awalem/Cosmos as “a one-woman theatrical performance” ( Cosmos English). In the press materials, she describes the show thus, Ashtar practices yoga, and meditation, and explores tarot reading and hypnosis on the internet. Her elastic body mirrors her dual life, between two countries, cultures, and languages, between solitude and togetherness. In a satirical manner, she presents her beliefs, inviting us to participate in a ceremony where poetry blends with humour and subjectivity merges with the universal. Through Ashtar’s art, we embark on a journey of balance, contradictions, and the beauty of interconnectedness. ( Cosmos English) The audience enters to Muallem sitting in the lotus position wearing a white blouse tied at the waist and black yoga pants on a large white cloth pooled on the stage, which also ascends high above her to the rafters. She performs several actor vocal exercises and speaks casually to the audience as they take their seats, asking if they are comfortable and whether anyone has practiced yoga or meditation. She then asks everyone to inhale and exhale together, “to get into the group’s atmosphere” (YouTube). This metaphor of “inhale, exhale” becomes central to the piece as it progresses. Muallem begins the actual performance with a Tibetan singing bowl, which she rings and circles with a mallet while laying on her side. Ashtar Muallem performs in Cosmos/Awalem by Ashtar Muallem and Emile Saba, . Directed by Clément Dazin and Emile Saba. Photo by Christophe Raynaud de Lage. She tells the audience she is neither Christian, nor Jewish, nor Muslim, nor from the East or West. “I abdicated duality and saw that the two worlds aren’t but one. Everything is one,” she states. She then begins a series of exercises with a yoga stretching strap while she speaks about the primacy of the body and the need for harmony between the body, soul, and spirit. She tells the audience of her grandmother, a religious woman who wanted Muallem to be like her, a “prayer addict” living in Jerusalem, a city of peace with a market filled with the smells of za’atar, sumac, sesame, and curry. However, despite the beauty of the city, there was a tension that convinced her at the age of eighteen to leave her country to study circus in France. She spends months in the new country, unable to speak the language until she attends a pro-Palestine rally where she hears the shouts “Free Palestine! Victory to Palestine!” There, she is asked about the history of her country and explains the 1948 War, the 1967 War, the division of Jerusalem into quarters, and the occupation zones that dictate where Palestinians are allowed to live or travel under occupation. When asked by foreigners what the solution is to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, she says: “The solution is simple. It is within us.” (YouTube) Although never mentioned, her tenure in France seemed to coincide with the COVID-19 lockdown, leaving her with a hopeless feeling that she would never be allowed to perform theatre again. She flirted with the idea of becoming a YouTube influencer but found little success. With her vanishing hope, she came to study Zen and its koan “You cannot control external circumstances. Pain is a part of life” (YouTube). She learns that everything happens for a reason and that there is a predestiny at work. Music begins, and she performs a beautifully choreographed aerial sequence as she ascends the silk and performs gravity-defying maneuvers. Suddenly, she stops, pulls out a cigarette, lights it, and smokes high above the stage floor. “Are you surprised that I’m smoking?” she asks. “I have plenty of time to burn” (YouTube). She says that her true lover, solitude, complements her as she cooks, reads, dances, and repeats affirmations in her lockdown. She realizes she is a vortex of creativity and creates rituals where she hugs and kisses herself, sometimes cradling and speaking baby talk to her own leg as she would an actual baby. She watches a tarot reader named Estelle online who always predicts correctly. She also learns to read the aura surrounding people by crossing her eyes and looking directly at them; a technique she employs on the actual audience watching the production. Ashtar Muallem performs in Cosmos/Awalem by Ashtar Muallem and Emile Saba, . Directed by Clément Dazin and Emile Saba. Photo by Christophe Raynaud de Lage. She then tells us that she finds that some people have blockages, and that men are told not to cry and they, in turn, tell their children not to cry either. To remedy this, she pulls a male audience member from the audience and leads them upstage right to a table with a chopping block and a chef knife, where they sit on a chair facing the audience. She produces a basket of onions and tells the participant to cut them until they are done. “You will cry freely and I will move freely” she says. As a mournful Arabic song plays, she dances, returns to the aerial silk, ascends, and performs a balletic dance high above the stage with unbelievable accuracy and speed. When she descends and escorts the man from the stage, she tells us how we, like the onion, are constituted of many layers, with each layer representing an identity we have assigned ourselves. “For us to access our truths,” she states, “we need to peel off these layers.” (YouTube) [1] She repeats a mantra, “Those who never cry are full of tears” (YouTube). She says she has seen too many men carrying weapons, but too few who cry. “I wonder if men let their tears fall then perhaps our world would be washed from all the wars?” she asks. She then breaks into a humorous infomercial voice as “Ashtar the Influencer,” urging audiences to purchase onions in the lobby. Her last words are “May peace be upon you. Namaste.” Muallem’s embodied performance of physical and vocal mastery, her congenial tone, her direct address, and her spiritual quandaries combine to make Cosmos/Awalem an enjoyable and thoughtful evening of performance. It is clear that she is exploring her role as an artist in the world and her life as a woman, as a Palestinian, and as a spiritual seeker in the hopes of unravelling her complicated emotions regarding the patriarchy, toxic masculinity, war, and occupation. Perhaps, instead of an onion, a more apt metaphor might be the artichoke. One may not cry while peeling an artichoke, but each layer peeled leads not to tears, but to the heart. After all is said and done, isn’t that the journey Muallem has asked us to take during this poignant evening of performance? Ashtar Muallem performs in Cosmos/Awalem by Ashtar Muallem and Emile Saba, . Directed by Clément Dazin and Emile Saba. Photo by Christophe Raynaud de Lage. Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes SOURCES: Cosmos: A One-Woman Theatrical Performance, Co-written and Performed by Ashtar Muallem. Co-written and directed by Clément Dazin and Emile Saba.” ASHTAR Theatre, 11 September, 2003. Media kit. Muallem, Ashtar. “AWALEM with English sub.” YouTube, uploaded by ASHTAR Theatre 7 January, 2024. https://youtu.be/HUhNyBJnASU?si=sHnGUAGOPOKxj0Vx . [1] On this particular evening of performance, I was unexpectedly the one asked onstage to chop the onions. As I sat there cutting the onions I found myself much less interested in the task as I was in the mesmerizing aerial performance unfolding before me. References About The Author(s) Malek Najjar is a Full Professor of Theatre Arts with the University of Oregon. He holds a PhD in Theater and Performance Studies (UCLA) and his Master of Fine Arts in Directing (York University). He is the author of Middle Eastern American Theatre: Communities, Cultures and Creators and Arab American Drama, Film and Performance: A Critical Study, 1908 to the Present. He edited Heather Raffo’s Iraq Plays: The Things That Can’t Be Said and The Selected Works of Yussef El Guindi ; Four Arab American Plays: Works by Leila Buck, Jamil Khoury, Yussef El Guindi, and Lameece Issaq & Jacob Kader . He is co-editor of Until I Return: The Selected Plays of Ismail Khalidi and Mona Mansour: The Vagrant Trilogy (with Hala Baki) and Six Plays of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (with Jamil Khoury and Corey Pond). Malek has directed with Silk Road Rising, Golden Thread Productions, New Arab American Theatre Works. Malek is a performance editor for Arab Stages and a board member of the Middle East North African Theater Makers Alliance. Arab Stages Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents Practicing Place: Site-Specific Performance and the Reinscription of Memory in Palestine Resisting the Unleashed Evils of the US- Invasion of Iraq in Amir Al-Azraki’s The Widow (2017) Dina Mousawi’s RETURN: a Compelling site of representing Women’s Status of Agency Under Occupation Renewed Awareness Toward Salvation: The Journey of The Story of Zahra from Page to Stage Site-Specific Performance and Theatrical Memorialization of the Nakba Performance Review: WAILING SONGS OF THE PAST, MIGHT THEY GROW OUR RESILIENCE. By Maya al-Khaldi. Performance Review: DUMMY IN DIASPORA. By Esho Rasho. Performance Review: ENGLISH. Written by Sanaz Toossi Performance Review: THE CAVE. By Sadieh Rifai Performance Review: IRAQ, BUT FUNNY by Atra Asdou Performance Review: COSMOS/AWALEM by Ashtar Muallem and Emile Saba. Previous Next Attribution: Entries under this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages 14 Spring 2023 Volume Visit Journal Homepage “Indigenous Avant-Gardes”: The Shiraz Arts Festival and Ritual Performance Theory in 1970s Iran By Matthew Randle-Bent Published: May 1, 2023 Download Article as PDF Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes References About The Author(s) Arab Stages Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents Review: Mother Courage adapted and directed by Alison Shan Price Review of Theaters of Citizenship: Aesthetics and Politics of Avant-Garde Performance in Egypt written by Sonali Pahwa Review: Decolonizing Sarah: A Hurricane Play written and directed by Samer Al-Saber “Indigenous Avant-Gardes”: The Shiraz Arts Festival and Ritual Performance Theory in 1970s Iran Review: Baba written by Denmo Ibrahim, directed by Hamid Dehghani Review of MUKHRIJĀT AL-MASRAḤ AL-MIṢRĪ (1990-2010): DIRĀSA SĪMIYŪṬĪQĪYAH [Female Egyptian Directors (1990-2010): A Semiotic Study], written by Hadia Abd El-Fattah Review of Syrian Refugees, Applied Theater, Workshop Facilitation, and Stories: While They Were Waiting written by Fadi Skeiker Review: Layalina written by Martin Yousif Zebari, directed by Sivan Battat Up There by Wael Kadour, Introduction Review: Playwright Showcase, New Arab American Theater Works Two Giants of Egyptian Theatre: Conversations with Mohamed Abul-ʿEla El-Salamouny and Lenin El-Ramly Crossing Borders: A Theatre Practitioner’s Odyssey, An Interview with Hassan El Geretly On Writing Egypt from the Diaspora: An Interview with Adam Ashraf Elsayigh Performance Review: A FAMILY THAT HAS BEEN BLOCKED Performance Review: BETHLEHEM SITE-SPECIFIC THEATER FESTIVAL Performance Review: HOOTA. By Amer Hlehel Performance Review: LITTLE SYRIA Book Review: ACTING EGYPTIAN Book Review: MANSOUR, MONA. THE VAGRANT TRILOGY Previous Next Attribution:

Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages 15 Spring 2024 Volume Visit Journal Homepage MIDNIGHT IN CAIRO: THE DIVAS OF EGYPT'S ROARING '20S. By Raphael Cormack (REVIEW) By Suzi Elnaggar Published: June 15, 2024 Download Article as PDF Raphael Cormack’s Midnight in Cairo offers a glimmering portrait of the female stars of Egypt’s Roaring ‘20s. The book combines meticulous research and a narrative style that appeals to a broad audience, which bring to life the 'divas' of the era through detailed biographical vignettes. These stories capture the jubilant glamor of the period, showcasing the lives of these fascinating performers both on and off the stage. Midnight in Cairo has resonated with readers beyond academia, as it offers an entertaining and insightful foray into a pivotal moment in Egypt’s performance history. Cormack organizes the narrative into “a theatrical story in three acts”: Act I: Setting the Scene , which focuses on the historical performance context pre-1920s; Act II: The Leading Ladies , which provides the biographies of the key female performers; and Act III: Curtain Call , which tracks the political and social developments in Egypt from the 1950s forward, providing a brief retrospective in contrast to the earlier era (10). In the first act, Setting the Scene , which encompasses chapters one through four, Cormack provides a brief overview of Egyptian theatre and performance history up to the 1920s. By beginning with Ibn Daniel’s thirteenth-century shadow plays, Cormack pushes against the narrative that Egyptian drama began with the intrusion of European colonialism. This approach not only counters pervasive historiographic narratives but also positions Cairo of the 1920s within a broader regional performance history. Cormack vividly paints Cairo of the 1920s as a sort of cosmopolitan fever dream, suggesting, “Egypt was all over the front pages, and Cairo’s residents must have felt they were living at the centre of the world” (100). He focuses, in particular, on the vibrant nightlife and cultural scene in Ezbekiyya, a Cairene district known at that time for an abundance of dance halls, theatres, and other performance venues. Written in an engaging narrative style, this first ‘act’ of Midnight in Cairo serves as an excellent primer on performance history in Egypt; the focus on a diverse array of notable figures, writers, producers, and actors, as the narrative throughlines makes for a delightful read. In the second act of Midnight in Cairo , The Leading Ladies , which spans chapters five through eleven, Cormack explores the lives of significant female film, stage, and musical stars of 1920s Egypt through chapter-long vignettes. The biographies intersect and build on each other, with some women becoming recurring figures, background players in the others’ narratives. The chapters focus respectively on stage-actress turned journalist Rose al-Youssef, theatre troupe leader Fatima Rushdi, singer and actor Fatima Sirri, widely known songstress Oum Kalthoum, musical theatre star Mounira al-Mahdiyya, film actor Aziza Amir, and comic actor and dancer Badia Masabni. While a few men, such as Aziz Eid, feature prominently throughout, the chapters focus on the women’s groundbreaking careers and complex lives. Notably, Cormack addresses both their triumphs and challenges, a choice that is exemplified by the highlighting of Rose al-Youssef’s controversial editorial choices, use of misogynistic cartoons, and an all-male staff for her eponymous still-running magazine. Yet, her story is ultimately portrayed as a tale of triumph, as Cormack emphasizes her unlikely rise in Egyptian society, stating, “it is hard to imagine that a young girl who had turned up alone in Alexandria at the beginning of the twentieth century could possibly have started her own literary journal in Egypt if she had not found her way into the world of arts and become one of Egypt’s biggest stars” (148). Cormack extends the stories of these women into the twilight of their careers and lives in the 1950s, fulfilling the book’s core mission to “tell the history of Cairo’s nightlife through the eyes of the women who made it what it was” (321). Curtain Call , the final act, which covers chapter twelve and the conclusion, serves as a fitting denouement, opening with an anecdote of a young Edward Said visiting Badia Masabni’s establishment in 1950 to watch the famous dancer Tahiyya Carioca. Cormack leverages this happenchance encounter between Said and Carioca to chronicle Egypt’s journey from the precipice of the 1952 Revolution to the present day. In the concluding chapter, Cormack adopts a more personal tone, reflecting on feminism, contemporary Egypt, and regional cultural transformations. While providing a modern perspective, this subjective shift sometimes contrasts sharply with the detailed historical narrative he established earlier, which casts a somewhat somber tone on the ending. This discordance may feel jarring, yet it also effectively draws the reader into the ongoing dialogue about Egypt’s past and its present. In crafting nuanced portraits of the iconic ‘divas’ of the era, Cormack extends beyond drama and theatre to include music, dance, and film. He situates these arts within the broader historical, political, and cultural contexts that shaped the performers’ lives, their artistic expressions, and their legacies. Cormack enriches the narrative by interweaving tales of lesser-known figures and personal dramas, creating a rich tapestry that captures the vibrancy of the 1920s Cairo stage scene. The book touches upon fraught subjects, if too briefly, such as intercultural tensions, misogyny, blackface, and colonialism. While Cormack does not approach these critically or in-depth (as that is neither the style nor objective of the text), their inclusion serves to make Midnight in Cairo a well-rounded entry into the performance history of the region. This approach makes the book accessible and informative, appealing to a general audience as well as theatre students and scholars from other disciplines, such as historians and literary scholars who focus on Egypt or the Middle East. However, performance and theatre scholars will also find much of interest within the text as Cormack gives a glimpse into oft-overlooked pre-1950s Egyptian drama, music, and dance. Cormack’s use of archival photographs and excerpts from interviews and the writings of the stars themselves adds authenticity and depth, showcasing the era’s glamour and the significant, yet often overlooked, contributions of these women. Cormack’s Midnight in Cairo is a love letter to a bygone era of Egyptian glitz and glamour. Bringing to light some of Egypt’s most fascinating female figures, often marginalized in narratives that typically focus on Western perspectives, the text makes these women both legible and truly dazzling. Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes References About The Author(s) Suzi Elnaggar is an Egyptian-American performance scholar, freelance dramaturg, and theatre-maker. She was a 2021 Kennedy Center Dramaturgy Intensive Fellow and works as both a developmental and production dramaturg. She is pursuing an Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Theatre and Drama and MENA Studies at Northwestern University. She holds an M.A. in Theatre Studies from Baylor University, where she researched the work of Heather Raffo through the lens of trauma studies. She has been published in Asian Theatre Journal , Arab Stages , and Theatre Times . Her research interests include recontextualizing Greek tragedy, post-colonial theatre contexts, decoloniality in performance, theatre of social change, the intersection of trauma and performance, and work that centers around SWA/MENA (Southwest Asian/Middle Eastern and North African) experiences. Her scholarship and practice center community, collaboration, and context. Arab Stages Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents Carving a Path: Desiring-Production in Displaced Syrian Theatre Interview with Nasser Rahmaninejad by Babak Rahimi Arab American Drama: Five Books that Inspired My Journey Five Arab American Plays Everyone Should Read MIDNIGHT IN CAIRO: THE DIVAS OF EGYPT'S ROARING '20S. By Raphael Cormack (REVIEW) Previous Next Attribution:

European Stages, created in 2013 by merging Western European Stages and Slavic and East European Performance, serves as an inclusive English-language journal, providing a detailed perspective on the unfolding narrative of contemporary European theatre since 1969. It explores the evolution of both Western and Eastern European theatrical scenes, offering insightful analyses, artist interviews, and comprehensive coverage of major festivals. Back to Top Untitled Keep Reading < Back European Stages Volume 22, Fall 2026 Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents Steve Earnest Editor's Statement - European Stages Volume 20 Gergana Traykova Poetics of the Unfulfilled: The Seagull at the Jordan Hadji Konstantinov-Dzhinot Theatre, Veles, North Macedonia Savas Patsalidis Staging Tradition, Testing Form: The Second Showcase of the National Theatre of Sofia Ion M. Tomuș Displacing the Orient: Postcolonial Negotiations in Purcărete's Adaptation of One Thousand and One Nights Ognjen Obradović, Jelena Knežević NE:BITEF 2025: The Festival that Refused to Disappear Tomasz Domagała Robert Wilson Beneath a Cabbage Leaf: 7 Solitudes at the Nacionalinis Kauno Dramos Teatras David Barlow, Cindy Sibilsky Finding Lear’s Shadow: Compagnia de' Colombari's King Lear at the 2026 Craiova International Shakespeare Festival Steve Earnest Spring in Europe – Beyond the Theatertreffen Aglika Stefanova “The more I give to thee, the more I have…” 15th edition of the International Shakespeare Festival in Craiova Steve Earnest Power, Shame, Vanity and Opportunism – Productions of the 63rd Berliner Theatertreffen Timothy Koch Review of 'In The Heights' at the Teatro Variedades European Stages European Stages, created in 2013 by merging Western European Stages and Slavic and East European Performance, serves as an inclusive English-language journal, providing a detailed perspective on the unfolding narrative of contemporary European theatre since 1969. It explores the evolution of both Western and Eastern European theatrical scenes, offering insightful analyses, artist interviews, and comprehensive coverage of major festivals. ISSN Number: 1050-199 Entries under this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. Visit Journal Homepage

Derek R. Munson Back to Top Untitled Article References Copy of References Authors Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume Issue 30 1 Visit Journal Homepage New York's Yiddish Theater Derek R. Munson By Published on December 11, 2017 Download Article as PDF New York’s Yiddish Theater: From the Bowery to Broadway. Edna Nahshon, ed. New York: Columbia University Press in association with the Museum of the City of New York, 2016; Pp. 237. New York’s Yiddish Theater: From the Bowery to Broadway is a collection of thirteen scholarly articles edited and introduced by Edna Nahshon, professor of Jewish theatre and drama at the Jewish Theological Seminary and a senior associate at Oxford University’s Center for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. Written to complement a recent exhibit of the same name at the Museum of the City of New York, this accessible work successfully combines scholarship and art to form a captivating portrait of the American Yiddish theatre and early twentieth-century American Yiddish culture. Creatively rendered and chockfull of photographs, drawings, and ephemera—a scholarly coffee table book, if you will— New York’s Yiddish Theater is a feast for the eyes and senses and is, in this age of e-books and digital media, a reminder of the authority and beauty of print books. Nahshon argues that Yiddish theatre in the United States emerged from the unexpected collaborations of uptown-downtown German Jews and the Yiddish culture of Eastern European Jews, while the Romanian origins of the first Yiddish theatre is credited to Abraham Goldfaden. His traveling players of commedia dell’arte-style skits soon grew into lavish operas such as The Witch (1879), a classic of the Jewish repertory. Once Goldfaden’s acting troupe landed in the U.S., extravagant stages were quickly built in and around New York’s Lower East Side, thereby becoming home to the Yiddish theatre movement that eventually migrated uptown and—later in the century—onto Broadway. Nahshon cleverly divides the work into multiple sections, similar to a playbill program, setting the stage in the Overture for the subsequent acts/essays written by other notable scholars. She also includes an intermission/portrait gallery and a Gallery of Stars, which functions as an annotation of Yiddish luminaries from the era. In addition to Nahma Sandrow’s “Popular Yiddish Theater” and Edward Portnoy’s “Yiddish Puppet Theater,” Barbara Henry provides a compelling historical and critical analysis of “Jacob Gordin: The Great Reformer” who, in addition to adapting Shakespeare into The Jewish King Lear , was also the first writer to adapt a Yiddish play into English, The Kreutzer Sonata . Nahshon and Judith Thissen discuss “Yiddish Vaudeville” and its influence on burlesque and the powerful legacy of Jews during the early days of Hollywood. The success of notable contemporary artists like Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, and Bette Middler are tied to the Yiddish theatre. One of the spotlight segments features an unpublished survey from the 1932-33 Yiddish theatre season, listing 185 different Yiddish language productions. The season was represented by 155 professional actors in melodramas, operettas, comedies, and reviews. However, after World War II the Yiddish theatre suffered from a steady drop in attendance, and as American entertainment choices shifted from stage to Hollywood, the Yiddish theatre declined and eventually faded into obscurity. A persuasive thematic argument runs through the collection suggesting that Yiddish entertainment is synonymous with American entertainment, and nowhere is this more evident than in Alisa Solomon’s essay about Fiddler on the Roof , “Tevye’s Travels: From Yiddish Everyman to American Icon.” Opening with Al Hirschfeld’s iconic caricature of the Broadway production starring Zero Mostel, Solomon traces the seventy-year genesis of the story of Tevye, from its inception by beloved Yiddish author Sholem Aleichem to its record-breaking Broadway run and its status as an American classic. Tevye the milk-man, or Tevye der milkhiker, and his family appeared in numerous Yiddish stories from 1894 through 1914 during which time Aleichem’s writing found a global audience. Tevye’s struggles to survive in a cruel motherland, where he is not wanted, spoke to a generation of European Jews, and Aleichem’s stories were eventually embraced in the U.S. After two failed attempts as musicals, Aleichem’s stories found a home at the Yiddish Art Theatre and later as a successful 1939 film. English language adaptations followed and finally, in 1964, the creative team of Joseph Stein, Jerry Bock, Sheldon Harnick, and Jerome Robbins created a labor of love known by millions of theatregoers as Fiddler on the Roof . What began as a popular anthologized Yiddish story is now embedded in popular American culture, and Aleichem’s Tevye is an everyman for the ages. A distinctive feature of the collection, and one that sets it apart from Joel Berkowitz and Barbara Henry’s recent case book, Inventing the Modern Yiddish Stage: Essays in Drama, Performance, and Show Business , is the book’s visual inventiveness. New York’s Yiddish Theater is filled with beautiful architectural renderings, historical photographs and drawings, and spotlight sections featuring pivotal moments in Yiddish theatre, such as Sholem Asch’s controversial God of Vengeance (1923). Sholem’s play is one of the first early twentieth century plays to look at same-sex attraction and was newly reimagined by Paula Vogel in Indecent (2015). However, it is the entire package that makes the collection such a special work and opens the door to additional historical and theatrical scholarship. As outlined in this collection, one needs very little background in American or Jewish American theatre history to appreciate the social complexities and dynamics of the Yiddish theatre movement. From its humble Eastern European beginnings and its immense popularity in the United States, to its influences on contemporary pop culture, the Yiddish theatre is embedded in American art and life. New York’s Yiddish Theater: From the Bowery to Broadway is a valuable addition to our understanding of the significant legacy of the early Jewish American experience. References Footnotes About The Author(s) Derek R. Munson University of Missouri Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen. Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents - Current Issue May Irwin American Musical Theater Musical Theatre Books New York's Yiddish Theater Chinese Looks Reclaiming Four Child Actors through Seven Plays in US Theatre, 1794-1800 The Illusion of Work: The Con Artist Plays of the Federal Theatre Project On Bow and Exit Music Legitimate: Jerry Douglas's Tubstrip and the Erotic Theatre of Gay Liberation Previous Next Attribution: This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Back to Top Untitled Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages Volume 19 Visit Journal Homepage Download Issue Table of Contents Amir al-Azraki Reframing the Past: Situating Mesopotamian Theatrical Traditions Within a Cross‑Cultural Performance Continuum Deniz Başar Gen Z Theatre from Turkey Taps into Repertoires of Millennial Resistance: A Comparison of the Short Festival Plays 'Helezoni' and 'Orange' Marina Johnson Performance Review: THE CLOWN, by Mariam Basha. Directed by Kamal El Basha. El Hakawati Theatre, Jerusalem. August 28, 2025 in person, September 11, 2025 via WhatsApp video. Jovita Jacob Selwyn Performance Review: DODI AND DIANA, by Kareem Fahmy. Directed by Reginald L. Douglas. Mosaic Theater, DC. September 23, 2025. Marina Johnson Performance Review: ALMONDS BLOSSOM IN DEIR YASSIN, by Hanna Eady. Directed by Hanna Eady. Cherry Street Village, Seattle. October 25, 2025. Hadia Mousa Book Review: Samer Al-Saber. A Movement’s Promise: The Making of Contemporary Palestinian Theatre (Stanford University Press, 2025). Pp. 328. Hardcover, Paperback, E-book. Arab Stages Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Visit Journal Homepage

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Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages 14 Spring 2023 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Two Giants of Egyptian Theatre: Conversations with Mohamed Abul-ʿEla El-Salamouny and Lenin El-Ramly By Tiran Manucharyan Published: November 26, 2023 Download Article as PDF The author with El Salamouny. Courtesy of Karim Helemish. Two Giants of Egyptian Theatre: Conversations with Mohamed Abul-ʿEla El-Salamouny and Lenin El-Ramly By Tiran Manucharyan On 19 June 2023 I was working on the final edits of my upcoming book Of Kings and Clowns: Leadership in Contemporary Egyptian Theatre since 1967 , when I read that Mohamed Abul-ʿEla El-Salamouny (1941-2023) had passed away. El-Salamouny is one of the playwrights whose work is at the centre of my book alongside that of Yusuf Idris (1925-1991), Fathia El-ʿAssal (1933-2014), and Lenin El-Ramly (1945-2020). I was fortunate enough to meet both El-Salamouny and El-Ramly on two occasions, in 2015 and 2016 in Cairo (1). Both playwrights were extremely generous with their time in discussing their work with me, a foreign PhD student who was a relative newcomer to their work back then. For a long time, I could not see how such long conversations could be converted into publishable interviews because these were not interviews in a traditional sense but rather long discussions about their work, their visions of the state of theatre in Egypt, and of the political atmosphere in their country. After El-Ramly’s death on 7 February 2020 I wanted to publish parts of my conversations with him to celebrate his contribution to theatre and to invite the attention of a non-Arab readership and theatre public to this playwright whose work has been enormously popular in Egypt and in other Arab countries but has remained almost unnoticed outside the Arab world. Very little scholarship or indeed any information at all can be found in English on the playwright’s work, and I hoped that publishing my interview could have contributed to promoting his name outside the Arab world, even if only in a small way. However, shortly after El-Ramly’s death the world was hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. We all needed to adapt to a new normality of isolation, and I had to postpone the work on the interview. El-Salamouny’s work has also been almost unremarked upon in Western academia, to an even greater extent than El-Ramly’s. This is despite the fact that he was a pioneering figure among his generation of playwrights. It was after the production of his play Revenge: Quest of Pain (2) in 1982 that critics began to speak about the revival of Egyptian theatre after the so-called decline that followed the Naksa —the defeat of the Arabs in 1967 Arab-Israeli war—and about the emergence of a new generation of playwrights onto the scene (3). Now after El-Salamouny’s death, it seems appropriate to gather together parts of my conversations with these two of the most influential Egyptian playwrights of the previous five decades, whose passing marked the end of an era in the theatre scene of the country. As artists El-Salamouny and El-Ramly are obviously very different and, as a result, unique in terms of their paths, writing modes and styles, and even in relation to the sectors of the theatre establishment they predominantly worked with. El-Salamouny mostly worked with state theatre and El-Ramly worked with the private sector, although neither of them shut themselves off from the other sector. What unifies them however is their lifelong devotion to theatre and their commitment to promoting and popularising this form of art. It is symbolic that El-Salamouny’s last public appearance was in a discussion at The National Centre of Theatre, Music, and Folk Arts, where he voiced his opposition to the Centre’s plans to close the print version of the journal Al-Masrah (‘Theatre’) and to keep only the online version of the periodical. As the Egyptian media reports of the meeting describe, El-Salamouny spoke enthusiastically about the importance of the journal in promoting theatre and its exceptional role for younger playwrights in disseminating their work. During his speech he felt unwell and lost consciousness. News of his death emerged shortly afterwards (4). One might wonder whether the playwright’s opposition to the publication’s proposed move from print to digital mode represented another clash of the old and the new: the representative of the older generation was unwilling to adapt to the changing world in which the online realm provides us with opportunities to engage in intellectual discourse with a wider public than ever. However, perhaps it is thanks to the devotion of people like El-Salamouny to this quite conservative art form that theatre still exists and that neither cinema and television nor the Internet have managed to take over the space that belongs to theatre. Even though these new modes might have occupied more visible, larger, and perhaps more effective spaces for public engagement, the directness of interaction between the art on stage and the public in the auditorium has remained irreplaceable. At the same time, both El-Salamouny and El-Ramly were always innovative in their playwriting, trying to find effective ways of maintaining and increasing direct contact between the stage and the auditorium. Conversations with Mohamed Abul-ʿEla El-Salamouny: ‘ We felt that we were lost, so we held on to our roots’ ‘The influence of heritage surely brought a unique taste to Egyptian theatre and made it flourish’ Tiran Manucharyan: There seems to be a consensus among researchers in Egyptian culture that theatre in Egypt has declined since the 1970s, with the implication that the art form was not worthy of much scholarly interest. You started as a playwright in this atmosphere of the so-called decline. How would you describe the beginning of your path and of the path of your generation in Egyptian theatre? Abul-ʿEla El-Salamouny: Our generation [of playwrights] is considered the third generation in Egyptian theatre. The first generation is the generation of the pioneers, up to Tawfiq al-Hakim. The second generation is the generation of the Sixties. The theatre of the Sixties was associated with the national project (5). This project collapsed in 1967. My generation succeeded those two generations and was informed by them. We have borne the responsibility of theatre after its collapse in the Sixties. As Faruq Abd El-Qadir, one the most important theatre critics, described our path, we rose onto the collapsed stage (6). We had experienced the Naksa of 5 June and at the end of the Sixties Egyptian theatre turned into a theatre of lamentation, mourning, and sorrow. Our generation has borne the responsibility of confronting this collapse by resurrecting hope. We felt that we were lost, so we held on to our roots. The medium of confronting defeatist thought in theatre was through revisiting the history of the struggle of the Egyptian people and through a return to our cultural heritage. We found inspiration in the history of our people. For example, my play Al-Nadim’s Story about the Uprising of the Leader was an attempt to raise the moral spirit of the people in the face of the occupation of Sinai (7). TM: In many of your plays, and Al-Nadim’s Story among them, the antagonists are the representatives of colonial power. However, the main target of your criticism seems to be the local, Egyptian system of power. Al-Nadim’s Story ends with anti-capitalist slogans which were not exclusive to Abdallah al-Nadim’s times but were also applicable to the time period when the play was produced. El-Salamouny: We live in an authoritarian society where there is oppression and lots of uneasiness. We have problems that have no beginning and no end: tyranny, corruption, poverty, ignorance. As a writer, I have to address all of these issues, but I cannot speak directly without my work being banned. I wrap what I want to say in a package, so it reaches out to the people. In my writing I did not aim to speak about or to glorify a specific figure. My aim was to learn from the history of people. History for me is a raw material which I cultivate. Art in general does not speak directly. Al-Nadim’s Story was indeed addressed to Anwar el-Sadat. I still remember the demonstrations against Sadat by the people who wanted to resist the occupation [of Sinai], but it is not just an anti-colonialist play. The chants at the end of the play refer to the realities of Sadat’s era and the capitalist direction of the country adopted by him which increased social injustice. Poverty, ignorance, and diseases started to spread. When we were arrested during a staging of this play, and later were taken in cars from prison to court, in cars we were chanting similar slogans, addressing Sadat. In The Man in the Castle I draw the example of Muhammad Ali’s fall as he gives up popular leadership (8). My quest here was to discuss the importance of democracy, because tyranny leads to failure eventually, as happened with Mubarak. In Revenge: The Quest of Pain , which dramatises the pre-Islamic poet and king Imruʾ al-Qays, I respond to Sadat saying that 99 percent of the cards are in the hands of America, but the play was only staged after Sadat’s death. Imruʾ al-Qays’s father was killed. He wanted to avenge his father’s assassination and thus he sought help from the great powers. He had to choose between the Romans and the Persians. The outcome was his defeat, and it was the great powers that brought about this defeat, because they were never interested in assisting him. TM: You have chosen a form of public engagement which is in general quite niche, particularly in an era when there are so many different ways for intellectuals and artists to access the public. How can theatre remain attractive for people when they have the choices of cinema, television and now the Internet? El-Salamouny: Perhaps the classical style of Revenge could be a bit difficult for the wider public. The target audience of the play was the elite, although in fact Revenge was my first big success on stage as well as my first play on a state-run stage. Before that my other plays had only been staged in cultural palaces (9). In my other plays I tried to reach out to the wider public, beyond the urban elites. It was our generation’s fundamental diligence to have our work reach out to the public. It is true that the theatre of the Sixties was triumphal and the enthusiasm then was predominant. In that same period, there was a movement of employing the popular heritage and the theatrical techniques that exist, for example, in samir , in folk personification, and in other forms of festivities and public performances (10). We resorted to the same means to reach out to the public. In Al-Nadim’s Story I reworked the folk performance in an historical setting. In The Man in the Castle I reworked a zar ritual (11). In my plays I also applied samir and personification, all of those with the same aim of reaching out to the public. Other playwrights of my generation have also experimented with local forms of performance, to such an extent that this is considered to be the predominant direction in Egyptian theatre. Even Lenin El-Ramly, who is a realist and mainly dramatises a contemporary reality, resorted to cultural heritage in at least one play, Welcome Beys . To what extent we have succeeded is a question that the critics and specialists should judge, but this influence of heritage surely brought a unique taste to Egyptian theatre and made it flourish. The use of cultural heritage in contemporary theatre usually contributes to making a good show and creating a nice atmosphere in the auditorium. I believe I have succeeded in this, although people know me more from television than from theatre because television reaches out to those people that theatre does not. If we speak about impact, unfortunately theatre does still not have any other impact than among the elites who watch it. TM: In most of your plays you rework a form of local folk performance or entertainment. I wonder whether it is also your intention to reaffirm the existence of the theatre tradition in the Arab world in the pre-modern era. El-Salamouny: There is a point of view which considers that this region did not know theatre before the Europeans introduced it. The reason for this perspective is that the Arabs were interested in oral and narrative forms of art, while they despised performing arts. They existed in Spain for 800 years and never spoke a word about theatre, not a single historian, a writer, or a poet. When the French expedition arrived [in Egypt], al-Jabarti mentioned that the expedition brought a theatre with it. Ibn Daniyal was a poet and perhaps a good poet, but because he resorted to folk performance, the educated looked down upon him: they would mention that he wrote poetry but would not mention theatre. When Tawfiq al-Hakim started writing plays for the Okasha Brothers’ Troupe at the beginning of his career, he would not use his name for fear of his father (12). Yaqub Sanu was rejected from Muhandis Khana School because he was practising folk theatre (13). The educated classes had double standards in regard to theatre. There is another example: when Muhammad Taymur acted in Ibrahim Ramzi’s play Azza, the Caliph’s Daughter , Sultan Hussein Kamel, the sultan of Egypt, attended the production (14). He applauded the performance, but he did not know about Muhammad Taymur’s involvement in it. When he learned that the son of Taymur Pasha, who was working at the court, had participated in the play, he banned him from practising theatre and sent him to the palace, to work with the protocol. Still today if your son practises theatre, for example, joins the Higher Institute of Theatrical Arts, he is questioned: what are you going to work as (15)? Will you work as an artist [ in a derogatory manner ]? Still the general stance is against theatre. TM: It seems that theatre inherently shatters the existing order of things. This is in line with the role that you attribute to various forms of performing practices in your plays, in that they confront authoritarianism, religious extremism, or societal stagnation. However, theatre can also be exploited by the system of power for its own agenda, a topic that is also touched upon in your work. How can the artist or the writer avoid that? El-Salamouny: In The Minarets of the Protected City I dramatised folk performances of muhabbazin performers (16). These were the local equivalents of clowns who personified a fool or a specific ruler in their performances, whenever this was needed. The events of the play take place during Napoleon’s expedition. Napoleon attempts to get close to the people through festivities in which the muhabbazin are involved but the muhabbazin manage to turn the tables on him. I wanted to say that the role of the arts is always to confront tyranny, power, and colonisation, and it has the means to do it even when the ruler tries to exploit art for his own interests. Similarly, in Abu Naddara I depicted a tyrant ruler who was against freedom of thought but was confronted by Yaqub Sanu and his theatre troupe (17). TM: Abu Naddara ends up with the exile of the artist who confronts the tyranny. In 1974 during the staging of Al-Nadim’s Story , you and the director were arrested for practising your own freedom of expression. What are your reflections on this event? El-Salamouny: I was kept in prison for four months. At the time, we were running a literary association in Damietta which was calling for a writers’ union. The idea was that this union would be independent from the government, whereas the government wanted it to be under its umbrella and under its control. The government created a political organisation called The Socialist Organisation and wanted us to be affiliated with it, while we wanted to be independent from official agencies. So we organised a conference in Port Said which took place at the time that Al-Nadim’s Stoy was being staged on the occasion of Victory Day, on 23 December, 1974. We were planning to work on the proposal during that night and convene the conference. We made a statement which we hung on the door of the Culture Palace in Port Said and started to discuss our cause. The head of the Palace was terrified and contacted the security services. They arrived and arrested everyone involved in the performance. We were all thrown into prison. This was done under the existing emergency law. For ages Egypt has been ruled by emergency law which allows the state to imprison people without investigation, without a trial or anything. Then we tried to inform the public, to leak the news and to make some noise until they arranged a trial. There was a court and in the first session they released us. We have had censorship in all ages, whether in the age of Mubarak or in the age of Sadat. Often the issues with censorship can be solved just by talking with the censors. They might have understood the text incorrectly and might object as a precaution before making the final report, but when they understand the matter, they might back down. My biggest issue is not with official censorship but with the mid-level artistic administration, those who act out of fear of losing their chairs. They are constantly afraid of being reproached by their superiors and of being told off for their mistakes. Higher-level authorities are not among us and do not see what we do. When someone reports on us, as happened in Port Said, the authorities or the police learn about the incident from the point of view of those who have reported it. The reactionary, backward, fearful, and cowardly mid-level bureaucracy, who act out of fear, with their hands trembling and have no daring, are our biggest problem. TM: Is there a specific theme that is more difficult to get past censorship? El-Salamouny: Often they are afraid when there is anything related to religion. If there is any mention of Islam in the play, they want to send it to al-Azhar. Then you need to explain to them that there is nothing to worry about. I have a big problem with various administrations in theatre itself as well as directors who do not want to host performances on the theme of religious extremism and terrorism, trying to be more royal than the king. There is an illustrative example that when I wrote the play The Chronicles of the Cows and Karam Motawie staged it, Dr Huda Wasfi was responsible for El-Hanager Arts Centre (18). She allowed the performance to happen despite all the pressures and nothing terrible happened. In other words, fear is from inside as those in responsible positions are the ones who are afraid. With a head of theatre like Huda Wasfi and a strong director like Karam Motawie a play like this could be staged even during the peak of terrorism in 1995. Meanwhile, in 1993 I wrote another play called The Prince of Assassins that portrayed what resembled the terrorist groups (19). The play was being staged by the director Saʿd Ardash. The rehearsals took place in El-Salam Theatre. The head of the theatre company was Fahmi El-Khuli. He had to stop the production because of the threats from extremist groups. In regard with my play The Incident that Happened in September , which is about 11 September, the heads of two different theatres mentioned in the newspapers that the play was against Islam (20). They should have said that it was against the Muslim Brotherhood rather than Islam. By doing so they give justification in shedding blood similar to what happened to Naguib Mahfouz and Farag Foda, who were both attacked as a result of announcements in the newspapers that their works were against Islam (21). How can a writer reach out to the public if such incidents occur in theatre administration? TM: When it comes to the plays that target religious extremism, as you say, higher authorities would be more willing to give the green light to productions whereas the mid-level officials are afraid of the reaction of Islamist groups. In a way your engagement with the theme of religious extremism since Mubarak’s era aligns you with the official politics. How do you maintain your independence as a writer in this new atmosphere? El-Salamouny: Throughout our history politics and religion have been intermingling, even if they seem to be in opposition with each other. Everything I write challenges tyranny, but the dangers of the extremist groups are still there. They are inside us, in our houses, and among my own relatives. So I invite these people to watch my plays and to see on stage the dangers of the ideas that they embrace, even if this makes me be seen with the system of power. We have military rule, the military authority, because of these groups. TM: Do you like what the younger generation brings to theatre in Egypt? El-Salamouny: I am very optimistic in regard to the current theatre movement as it relies on a group of talented young people. I consider that they are the future. The intellectual content of the new generation in current theatre is of a very high quality on the technical side. They brought their innovations and perhaps benefited from the Experimental Theatre Festival greatly, because it was a window on a world of experiments (22). We needed to see that and to see those experiments and movements that exist in theatre. But our directors need content. In the Sixties there was high quality content and less technique. Now while there are advanced directors as well as advanced critics, we need new writers. I believe that, with time, change will occur. The author with El-Ramly. Courtesy of author. Conversations with Lenin El-Ramly: ‘ My aim was to bring meaning to theatre rather than to hunt for laughter by “tickling” the audience’ TM: The start of your career as a playwright coincided with the so-called decline in Egyptian theatre. In your experience, what were the main factors contributing to this decline? Lenin El-Ramly: During the Nasserian age there was state support for the field of the arts, not exclusively for theatre. Books were published—there was a state politics called ‘a book every six hours’—and there were opportunities for the arts and for artists to flourish. The spirit of the revolution was in the air, which was also nourished by the powerful charisma of Nasser even though in fact he was a dictator. The generation of writers, directors, and actors of this period prospered in this atmosphere. After the defeat in the war in 1967, the belief in the revolution was completely lost. The writers started to expose the true nature of the reality that they had been falsifying before. As a result, many writers and their works were banned until Nasser’s death, although in their writings they were not even attacking Nasser personally, but rather the situation. It was not possible to criticise Nasser in person anyway. Then Sadat came to power. He was not interested in theatre or the arts at all and did not care much about the artistic field. However, the playwrights who remained on the scene still had to play safe, because of the restrictions enforced by theatre officials. Therefore, in the Seventies the quality of the plays declined. The field became corrupt. The writers who had connections in the government had more chances to get their plays onto the stage of the National Theatre than those who wrote good plays. The other factor that contributed to the decline of theatre was the emergence of the private sector. Troupes that worked in this sector would stage things only for commercial interest. Their productions were simplistic performances that aimed to provoke laughter through unsophisticated humour. TM: How did you negotiate your writing within the existing situation at that time? El-Ramly: My first play was staged at the end of 1974, in the period that I described. I deliberately refused to stage a play with a state-run theatre because of the reasons that I mentioned: I had a huge mistrust in the state-run sector. My friend from the theatre institute, a director, took my play, which had been published beforehand, to the National Theatre and offered to stage it. This was done without my knowledge. They had an unusual system of control with only one person responsible for deciding whether they would stage a play or not. The person in charge rejected it. When my friend asked her to explain, she told him that the play was very bleak. She did not have any further reservations in relation to politics. So I decided to write for the private sector. For my next play, I collaborated with Mohamed Sobhy who was an unknown actor then. The first play that we produced, called The Class Is Over, Stupid , ended up being a huge success (24). However, while working in the private sector, my aim was to bring meaning to theatre rather than to hunt for laughter by ‘tickling’ the audience and making the actors appear like clowns. In effect, with Sobhy I created a troupe which was different from anything that existed on the theatre scene at that point and was not related to the commercial theatre [of the time] at all (25). I wrote plays in which laugher is achieved through sophisticated and meaningful content. TM: While extremely funny, your plays are also highly political. What has your relationship with censorship been? El-Ramly: I don’t like to interject politics directly into my plays but that doesn’t forbid me from saying what I want. My dislike of direct references to politics is not due to my fear of censorship. Politics is inherent in what I write without the need for direct references. The people who watch the plays understand the political essence, but nobody ever banned my plays. The censors did not have any outstanding reasons for it. Only a few minor things were censored. Afterwards I went to Saʿd al-Din Wahba, who was in the government then. He got involved so that whatever I wrote was permitted (26). TM: Although your first attempt to access the National Theatre did not succeed, you eventually worked with state-run theatres and your plays, such as Welcome Beys , have enjoyed huge success in the National Theatre too (27). This is not a ‘bleak’ play, but it is as political as any of your plays. I wonder how it got past the censors. El-Ramly: Welcome Beys has been the most successful play in Egypt to date. The play is about two old friends who meet after a long time apart and during the meeting find themselves in Ottoman times. One of them is a scientist who adapts to the past and invents things in the service of the authorities so that they do not harm him. The other is a painter who wants to change the people and bring to them ideas from his own time, such as the liberation of women. When people watched the play, they would applaud the arguments of both the scientist and the painter. I asked the critics to explain why people applaud two contrasting opinions in the same way, and no one could find an explanation. Some might have thought that the painter should be more sympathetic, but the actor was criticised for representing the character as messy and confused. However, that was how I intended him to be. As a writer, I present arguments and all the sides of the reality. People reflect on what they watch and take from it whatever they want. It is from that position that I say I do not do politics and I do not take sides, but politics is inherently there in my writing. TM: In this play your stance seems critical of both characters. Neither of them manages to bring about change for the people. One is not interested; the other does not understand the reality in which he lives and does not know how to negotiate it. In the play there are also clear references to the politicisation of Islam. I wonder how the audience reacted to it. El-Ramly: I will tell you something funny about a specific scene, in which the shaykh in the past comes out of the mosque and with a microphone, he makes an announcement. He says: ‘God assigned science and progress to the foreigners, exploiting them so that they invent and create for our service, leaving us free to worship His Sublime Glory and enter Paradise through its wide doors’. These are the words of shaykh al-Shaʿrawi whom people used to worship in our country (28). I heard these words many times before writing the play. When people watched the play, they would applaud and laugh at this scene without realising where the line comes from. I wrote the scene so that first it represents an Ottoman neighbourhood and then the time frame changes with everything remaining the same, except three things: there is a microphone that the shaykh uses, there is a magazine seller and there is a radio playing some old and banal song that has gone out of fashion. I wanted to show how little change there is. The Prime Minister, Atef Sedqy, watched the play and after shaking my hand, he told me: ‘Bravo, it’s a powerful thing, but take care of yourself’. Although that was a joke, there was also a true warning in his words, of the dangers coming not from him but from the terrorists of the Muslim Brotherhood who also tried to murder him. As you know, they tried to assassinate Naguib Mahfouz, and they assassinated Farag Foda. The Brotherhood accused me of everything, their supporters wrote against me in the media, there were people who brought legal cases against me for insulting Islam and for contempt of religion. That is what they saw in my work, but these cases were not successful and were eventually dropped. When the film The Terrorist was in cinemas, for which I wrote the script with Adel Imam in the lead role, the cinemas were guarded by the police forces so that there were no terrorist attacks (29). The stores that were selling the video tapes of the film were being attacked. For Adel Imam the result was that his wage rose by forty percent. There were critics who alleged that the Interior Ministry requested that I write the film. These accusations first came from the left wing here, then an American critic repeated them. I never considered it worth replying to any of these accusations. TM: You mentioned about the meaningfulness of the details that you wrote into your play. You give so much detail in your plays that sometimes it seems there is nothing left for the directors to do but follow your directions. You also directed some of your plays yourself. How important is it for you that your directions are followed precisely? El-Ramly: When I direct, I do not like working with professional actors. I have worked a lot with amateurs as a director, but I work with them until they are recognised by the public. From then on, I am not interested in working with them. You are right in noticing that everything is detailed in my plays. When I work with a director, he can make two or three suggestions, as long as these suggestions are in line with my vision. If I see he is doing nonsense and doesn’t precisely understand my vision, I will not work with him. What I mean is I am not a dictator, but I only work with those [actors and directors] who like my work, understand it and are passionate about it. Every detail is important in my plays and nothing should be ignored. Perhaps later there can always be new perceptions of my plays brought by directors, as happens with productions of Shakespeare’s Hamlet , but even when some details are changed in these new perceptions, the details still matter as the public know what has been changed, what comes from Shakespeare and what comes from the director. TM: You have had a very productive, successful, and influential path in Egyptian theatre. People quote your plays in random discussions in the street and on social media. There is always something that one can quote from your plays in reference to almost any occasion that one might encounter in life. It seems you have written about everything that has happened and can happen. Are you working on anything new now? El-Ramly: After Welcome Beys I wrote another play with the same characters called Goodbye Beys , in which the scientist and the painter go to the future where they do not recognise anything (30). Here the scientist falls in love with someone and then finds out that she is a robot. The catastrophes that humanity is encountering are also the result of the stupidity of scientists and intellectuals, and in this play I wanted to expose that side of the scientist more vividly. So you are right that I have written about the future, but whether I write about the future, the past, or the present, the reality of my plays is the current reality, the present. Now I am working on a play that is similar to Welcome Beys but is blunter and more direct. I have a couple of pages to write to finalise this play, and I am writing my opinion into it in an honest and unconcealed manner (31). The characters here are in the present. Again they are two old friends. They meet after the revolution. The debate between them here is different than that in both Welcome Beys and Goodbye Beys . At some point in this new play, one of the characters says: ‘We still live in the Middle Ages’ and this is my opinion too (32). Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes My first meeting with El-Salamouny took place at the Higher Institute of Theatrical Arts in Giza in August 2015. In August 2016 I visited Egypt again when we met a second time in a café in Cairo. Both meetings with El-Ramly took place in his flat in the Mohandiseen district of Giza, in September 2015 and August 2016. Al-Thaʾr wa-rihlat al-ʿadhab was first staged in 1982, directed by Abdelrahim El-Zurqany (1913-1985), and published in 1983, English translation 1999. See, for example, the many reviews reprinted in the 1983 publication of the play. See Muhammad al-Khuli, 2023. ‘Abu-l-ʿIla al-Salamuni… al-sarkha al-akhira’. Al-Akhbar , 23 June < https://www.al-akhbar.com/Culture_People/364796/ > [2/10/2023]. El-Salamouny here implies specifically the attempts of reinventing an Egyptian or Egyptian-Arab national form of theatre in the 1960s, for example as discussed by Yusuf Idris in his influential series of articles ‘Towards and Egyptian Theatre’ (1964, ‘Nahwa Masrah Misri’) and implemented in his play 1964 play The Farfurs ( Al-Farafir ) as well as Tawfiq al-Hakim’s (1898-1987) book Our Form of Theatre ( Qalibu-na al-masrahi ). El-Salamouny referred to the influence of these two playwrights on his writing modes on many occasions. Faruq Abd El-Qadir entitled his study of the new playwrights of the 1970s’ and 1980s’ Egyptian theatre The Knights Rising onto the Collapsed Stage (1984, Al-Fursan al-saʿidun ila al-khashaba al-munhar ). Riwayat al-Nadim ʿan hoogit al-zaʿim , 1974, had several productions, including by Mohamed Salim in 1974, Abbas Ahmed in 1974 and Abdel Ghaffar Ouda (1940-2003) in 1981.The play’s protagonist is the 19 th century Egyptian intellectual and social reformer Abdallah al-Nadim (1842-1896). Rajul fi al-qalʿa was first staged in 1987 by the director Saʿd Ardash (1934-2008). There seems to be a clear parallel between the character of the early 19 th century ruler of Egypt Muhammad Ali (reign 1805-1848) in this play and the president Gamal Abdel Nasser (in power 1954-1970). Cultural Palaces are cultural centres in Egypt owned by the state, tasked with extending theatre, film, literature, and folk arts to a mass public across the country. By contrast, the typical audience of state-owned theatre venues in Cairo is the Cairene middle class. Samir is a rural form of evening entertainment with elements of performance, which Yusuf Idris discusses in his ‘Towards an Egyptian Theatre’. Zar is a dance ritual, practised in North Africa and the Middle East, for exorcising or pacifying spirits, often referred to as Masters (al-asyad) which supposedly possess the person for whom it is organised. The Okasha Brothers’ Troupe was an Egyptian theatre troupe founded in 1921 by Zaki, Abdallah and Abd al-Hamid Okasha brothers. Yaqub Sanu (1839-1912), known by the nickname Abu Naddara (‘the man with spectacles’), ran a theatre troupe in Cairo from 1870 to 1872. Muhandis Khana School is the School of Engineering. The play Azza bint al-khalifa by Ibrahim Ramzi (1884-1949) was staged in May 1916. The performance was famously attended by Sultan Hussein Kamel of Egypt (1914-1917). Muhammad Taymur (1892-1921), the Egyptian writer of short stories and plays and a member of the famous Taymur literary family, the son of Ahmed Taymur (1871-1930) and the brother of Mahmoud Taymur (1894-1973), participated in the performance. My first meeting with al-Salamouny took place at the Higher Institute of Theatrical Arts in Giza. Maʾadhin al-mahrusa was first staged in the courtyard of the Wikala of al-Ghuri caravanserai in Cairo by Saʿd Ardash in 1983. The play Abu Naddara (meaning : the man with spectacles ) was staged in 1994 at the Mohamed Farid Theatre in Cairo, directed by Mohsen Helmy (d. 2019). Diwan al-baqar was staged in 1995 by Karam Motawie (1933-1996). Amir al-hashshashin was staged in 2009 in the Cultural Palace of Badrashin. Al-Haditha allati jarrat fi shahr sibtambir was staged in 2010 in El-Taleaa Theatre. Farag Foda (1945-1992) was assassinated in 1992 by the members of the Islamist groups. In 1994 Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006) was stabbed by an Islamist extremist but the writer survived this attempted assassination. The Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre was founded in 1988. Who Killed al-Buraʿi ( Man qatala al-Buraʿi ) was staged in 1974 by the director Galal El-Sharkawy (1934-2022) under the title They Kill the Donkeys ( Inna-hum yaqtulun al-hamir ). The play Intaha al-dars ya ghabbi was staged by the director El-Sayed Radi (1935-2009). Sobhy (b. 1948) was in the lead role. The first production of Studio 80 , the troupe founded by El-Ramly and Sobhy, dates to 1981. It ceased to exist in 1993. The playwright Saʿd al-Din Wahba (1925-1997) held various posts in the Ministry of Culture from 1964 to 1980, including that of deputy minister from 1975 to 1980. Ahlan ya bakawat was staged in 1989 by the director Essam El-Sayed (b. 1952). This production became one of the longest-running performances in Egypt and was staged for around eighteen years, with only a few breaks. Shaykh Muhammad Metwalli al-Shaʿrawi (1911-1998) was an extremely popular Islamic preacher, whose sermons resonated with the public in Egypt and in the Arab countries. The film Al-Irhabi was released in 1994, directed by Nader Galal (1941-2014). Adel Imam (b.1940) is an extremely popular comedy actor in Egyptian cinema. Wadaʿan ya bakawat was staged in 1997 by the same director as Ahlan ya bakawat , Essam El-Sayed. Laugh When You Are Dying ( Idhak lamma tamut ) was eventually staged on the stage of the National Theatre in 2018, by Essam El-Sayed. The final published text of 2016 is hugely different from the manuscript that El-Ramly shared with me in 2016 and many of the more direct references to the political realities of the country have been removed. However, as in his other plays, the playwright’s vision is clear and uncompromised. The interviews are edited for length and clarity. The translation from Arabic is mine. I am grateful to Karim Helemish who accompanied me during both meetings with El-Ramly and the second meeting with El-Salamouny helping with the nuances of Egyptian Arabic when needed, as well as a lecturer from the Higher Institute of Theatrical Arts who did the same at the first meeting with El-Salamouny. I am also grateful to Ferdinand Arslanian for his help in transcribing the recordings. References About The Author(s) Tiran Manucharyan is an Associate Lecturer in Arabic at the School of Modern Languages, University of St Andrews where he teaches various modules in Arabic language and culture as well as Comparative Literature. He completed his PhD at the same university in 2019. His thesis was devoted to studying politically and socially engaged Egyptian theatre in the second half of the 20 th and in the early 21 st century, focusing on the work of the prominent Egyptian playwrights Mohamed Abul-ʿEla El-Salamouny and Lenin El-Ramly. His upcoming monograph, which derives from his PhD research, focuses on the work of these playwrights as well as the work of Fathia El-ʿAssal and the later work of Yusuf Idris for theatre. Arab Stages Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents Review: Mother Courage adapted and directed by Alison Shan Price Review of Theaters of Citizenship: Aesthetics and Politics of Avant-Garde Performance in Egypt written by Sonali Pahwa Review: Decolonizing Sarah: A Hurricane Play written and directed by Samer Al-Saber “Indigenous Avant-Gardes”: The Shiraz Arts Festival and Ritual Performance Theory in 1970s Iran Review: Baba written by Denmo Ibrahim, directed by Hamid Dehghani Review of MUKHRIJĀT AL-MASRAḤ AL-MIṢRĪ (1990-2010): DIRĀSA SĪMIYŪṬĪQĪYAH [Female Egyptian Directors (1990-2010): A Semiotic Study], written by Hadia Abd El-Fattah Review of Syrian Refugees, Applied Theater, Workshop Facilitation, and Stories: While They Were Waiting written by Fadi Skeiker Review: Layalina written by Martin Yousif Zebari, directed by Sivan Battat Up There by Wael Kadour, Introduction Review: Playwright Showcase, New Arab American Theater Works Two Giants of Egyptian Theatre: Conversations with Mohamed Abul-ʿEla El-Salamouny and Lenin El-Ramly Crossing Borders: A Theatre Practitioner’s Odyssey, An Interview with Hassan El Geretly On Writing Egypt from the Diaspora: An Interview with Adam Ashraf Elsayigh Performance Review: A FAMILY THAT HAS BEEN BLOCKED Performance Review: BETHLEHEM SITE-SPECIFIC THEATER FESTIVAL Performance Review: HOOTA. By Amer Hlehel Performance Review: LITTLE SYRIA Book Review: ACTING EGYPTIAN Book Review: MANSOUR, MONA. THE VAGRANT TRILOGY Previous Next Attribution: Entries under this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

By Marvin Carlson | A comprehensive catalogue of New York City research facilities available to theatre scholars. < Back More Information & Order Details To order a print copy of our pocket edition, go to Lulu (https://bit.ly/theatreresourceslulu) Theatre Research Resources in New York City Marvin Carlson Download PDF Edited by Frank Hentschker and Margaret Araneo Theatre Research Resources in New York City is now in its seventh edition. An essential text for anyone conducting research in theatre and performance in NYC, the book includes a comprehensive list of discipline-specific research facilities, including public and private libraries, museums, historical societies, university and college collections, acting schools, and film archives. Each entry features an outline of the facility’s holdings as well as contact information, hours, services, and access procedures. The book is available in print form in a new pocket edition as well as online. To access the book online, click here. Explore Other Books To play, press and hold the enter key. To stop, release the enter key. See All Books

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Watch The Black Rider by Theo Janssen & Ralph Quinke at the Segal Film Festival on Theatre and Performance 2026. This documentary chronicles the creation of The Black Rider: The Casting of the Magic Bullets, the celebrated theatrical collaboration between Robert Wilson, Tom Waits, and William S. Burroughs. The production, adapted from August Apel's supernatural short story "Der Freischütz" — which was made famous in the operatic tradition by Friedrich Kind and Carl Maria von Weber's 1821 opera — premiered on March 31, 1990, at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, Germany. Wilson directed and designed; Burroughs wrote the book; Waits composed the music and lyrics. The story centers on Wilhelm, a young file clerk in love with Käthchen, whose father will permit the marriage only to a skilled hunter. Desperate, Wilhelm makes a Faustian pact with Pegleg — the Devil — for magic bullets, with catastrophic consequences. The work is dark, expressionistic, and sung largely in English, with spoken dialogue in German, drawing on the aesthetic traditions of German Expressionism and the Theater of the Absurd while filtering them through the distinct visions of all three collaborators. Janssen and Quinke's film follows the production from rehearsals in September 1989 through to the opening night, providing rare behind-the-scenes access to Wilson, Waits, and Burroughs at work. The documentary includes extended interviews with all three artists alongside rehearsal footage and excerpts from the premiere performance — making it one of the most complete records of Wilson's creative process in collaboration, and an invaluable document of a singular meeting of artistic minds. The Martin E. Segal Theater Center presents The Black Rider Theo Janssen & Ralph Quinke At the Segal Theatre Film and Performance Festival 2026 Screening Information This film will be screened on May 31 at 8:00 PM, at Anthology Film Archives RSVP Please note that these screenings are ticketed and require prior registration at the Anthology Film Archives website. Country Germany Language English, German Running Time 120 minutes Year of Release 1990 About The Film This documentary chronicles the creation of The Black Rider: The Casting of the Magic Bullets, the celebrated theatrical collaboration between Robert Wilson, Tom Waits, and William S. Burroughs. The production, adapted from August Apel's supernatural short story "Der Freischütz" — which was made famous in the operatic tradition by Friedrich Kind and Carl Maria von Weber's 1821 opera — premiered on March 31, 1990, at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, Germany. Wilson directed and designed; Burroughs wrote the book; Waits composed the music and lyrics. The story centers on Wilhelm, a young file clerk in love with Käthchen, whose father will permit the marriage only to a skilled hunter. Desperate, Wilhelm makes a Faustian pact with Pegleg — the Devil — for magic bullets, with catastrophic consequences. The work is dark, expressionistic, and sung largely in English, with spoken dialogue in German, drawing on the aesthetic traditions of German Expressionism and the Theater of the Absurd while filtering them through the distinct visions of all three collaborators. Janssen and Quinke's film follows the production from rehearsals in September 1989 through to the opening night, providing rare behind-the-scenes access to Wilson, Waits, and Burroughs at work. The documentary includes extended interviews with all three artists alongside rehearsal footage and excerpts from the premiere performance — making it one of the most complete records of Wilson's creative process in collaboration, and an invaluable document of a singular meeting of artistic minds. Directors: Theo Janssen, Ralph Quinke Production: Thalia Theater, Hamburg Featuring: Robert Wilson, Tom Waits, William S. Burroughs About The Artist(s) Theo Janssen and Ralph Quinke are German filmmakers who documented the landmark 1990 theatrical production of The Black Rider at the Thalia Theater Hamburg. Their film captures the creative collaboration between Robert Wilson, Tom Waits, and William S. Burroughs in extensive detail, from early rehearsals to opening night, and remains the primary documentary record of one of the defining avant-garde theater productions of the late 20th century. Get in touch with the artist(s) and follow them on social media Find out all that’s happening at Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance (FTP) 2026 by following us on Facebook , Twitter , Instagram and YouTube See the full festival schedule here

Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages 18 Winter 2025 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Dina Mousawi’s RETURN: a Compelling site of representing Women’s Status of Agency Under Occupation By Hind Sabah Bilal Published: December 1, 2025 Download Article as PDF A significant wave of theatrical productions emerged in the United States and the United Kingdom, engaging with real events surrounding the conflict amid the humanitarian crisis and prolonged violence in Iraq following the US-led invasion in 2003. Drawing on personal testimony, interviews, public records and oral histories, many of these works challenged reductive narratives that justified the war. They highlighted a multiplicity of voices and underscored the importance of lived experiences in navigating the complexities of occupation and resistance. Feminist theatre in the diaspora is one form of this emerging repertoire. Since the 1990s, feminist theatre scholars and practitioners, particularly in the US and UK, have advocated for transnational feminist approaches that resist colonial stereotypes related to gender, race, and nationality. These frameworks emphasise the intersection of local and global contexts and the necessity of cross-border collaborations (Aston 2003, 8). In 2003, Elaine Aston called for a feminist perspective aimed at understanding and transforming the sociopolitical conditions shaping women's lives, one that recognises their heterogeneity (9). In their joint essay, Feminist Futures and the Possibilities of “We,” Aston and Géraldine Harris contend that despite the growing influence of utopic Post-feminism, women practitioners from different generations and locations still create compelling, politically active theatre and performance that highlight “pressing social concerns and political problems for women” in the present, expressing a collective, though nuanced, form of resistance (2006, 11-12). I argue in this article that Documentary theatre contributes to both creating politically-provocative drama and promoting a self-expressive medium that resists violence. Documentary theatre, particularly verbatim theatre, has emerged as an essential genre for artists to express resistance. However, during the 2003 Iraq War, this form of theatre often centred Western viewpoints. Plays such as David Hare’s Stuff Happens (2004) and Emily Ackerman and K.J. Sanchez’s verbatim piece ReEntry (2009) explore the reasons behind the invasion and examine the psychological impact on American soldiers. Nonetheless, these works tend to overlook or diminish Iraqi voices, resulting in a lack of representation for Iraqi experiences, especially those of women. An example of Iraqi-authored documentary theatre, however, is 9 Parts of Desire (2003) by Heather Raffo, an American Iraqi playwright. Although not strictly verbatim, the play conveys authentic truths through poetic monologues and a hybrid structure that blends personal narratives with documentary elements, based on ethnographic interviews with Iraqi women. Despite the growing body of work on documentary theatre in the USA and the UK post-9/11 and the ‘war on terror’, critical engagement with Iraqi-authored or Iraq-centred plays remains limited. This article seeks to address that gap by examining Dina Mousawi’s Return (premiered in 2012), a contemporary Iraqi verbatim theatre piece in the diaspora that centres the narratives of Iraqi women who lived through the invasion and its aftermath. I argue that Return operates as a crucial site of feminist resistance. It offers a platform for expressing feminist agency by witnessing the realities of post-war narratives as emotionally embodied, politically urgent, and culturally situated. By exposing the personal costs of global conflict and reclaiming silenced voices, Return reframes the occupation as a lived, gendered experience; one in which Iraqi women have not only survived but asserted their presence and power in the face of political, epistemological, and documentary erasure. Return . Written by Dina Mousawi and 3Fates. Directed by Poonam Brah. Designed by Alice Hoult. AV Design by Eva Auster. Photo courtesy of ©EAuster & ©3Fates/Dina Mousawi. The British Iraqi artist Mousawi created Return in collaboration with 3Fate Theatre Company and director Poonam Brah. The production draws from Mousawi’s personal experiences of growing up in Baghdad during the Iran-Iraq War and her field work trip to the SWANA region in 2011, during which she interviewed Iraqi women living in Syria, Jordan, and Iraq to ask them about what it means to live under the occupation. In this project, Mousawi acts as both a witness and an interlocutor, incorporating video diaries, interviews, emails, and social media posts into the performance. The play interrogates dominant Western media representations of Iraq and Iraqi women, reframing these narratives through a feminist and diasporic lens. Mousawi observes that “the media typically portrays the men’s stories and the Western experience of involvement in Iraq when it comes to war, power and politics” (cited in Ditmars 2012). Return responds to this representational void by foregrounding the voices of Iraqi women, inside Iraq and in diaspora, across various religious, generational and social backgrounds: voices that are often neglected or stereotyped in mainstream discourse. The play’s reception further underscores its feminist and political resonance. As Lauren Strain notes, Return presents “a complex, sensitively put together patchwork of experiences” with a particular focus on the “domestic changes” in women’s lives under occupation (Strain 2013). Similarly, Rachel Bower observes that the play “asks urgent questions that demand attention,” especially regarding the gap between official claims of liberation and the lived fears of Iraqi women. Her review affirms the play’s role in foregrounding defiance and determination, making women’s stories impossible to ignore (Bower 2012). Although Return has received some attention in theatre reviews, it has not been the subject of sustained academic analysis. This article helps fill that gap. By doing this, as Cathy Turner and Synne Behrndt assert in Dramaturgy and Performance , verbatim theatre avoids irony in favour of repositioning theatre as a socially engaged platform for public debate (2008, 194). Mousawi mobilises verbatim theatre to challenge patriarchal and imperial narratives, highlighting the resilience of women under occupation. Thus, this article marks the process relationship between theatre and reality, foregrounding the play’s construction through interviews with Iraqi women in a work of civilian journalism, political intervention, and feminist dramaturgy. The play becomes a vital performance that bridges testimonial, theatrical, and political registers, offering both an artistic and an activist intervention, specifically from the perspective of an Iraqi diasporic female playwright. Dina Mousawi and her Iraqi Heritage Mousawi is a British Iraqi actress, performer, theatre-maker and producer residing in London. She was born in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, in 1978 to an Iraqi father and a Ukrainian mother. She remained there for six weeks before her family moved to Baghdad, Iraq, and then returned in 1986. At eight years old, Mousawi and her family fled the dangers of the Iran-Iraq war conflict, which lasted for eight years (1980 - 1988) ( Bradford Telegraph and Argus 2005). Spending the informative years of her childhood in Iraq, she still identifies Iraq as her home. Yet, she has a dual national heritage, and England is also her home (Mousawi, Personal Interview, 2023). Mousawi’s creative impulse to develop a project centred on Iraq, her country of origin, emerged from a deep sense of frustration with the dominant narratives produced in the West. While she witnesses the increase of UK-based films about Iraq, such as Green Zone (2010) and In the Valley of Elah (2007), Mousawi’s work is rooted in the desire to correct this imbalanced representation and to reclaim how agency of the Iraqi identity, especially female identity, is portrayed on stage and screen. Reflecting on her experiences in the British film industry, Mousawi recounts her disillusionment during the casting process for The Devil’s Double (2011). Although the film featured several female roles, she was overlooked for auditions and later brought in only to record background Arabic dialogue (ADR). Watching a white actress, disguised as an Iraqi woman, perform a role she herself could have embodied highlighted for her the erasure of Arab women from their own narratives. This moment provoked her sense of exclusion, not only from the industry but from stories that should have been hers to tell. These experiences, coupled with the emotional weight of witnessing her homeland, both physically devastated by war and misrepresented in Western media as well, stimulated Mousawi’s resolve to create her own work. Her writing asks urgent questions: Where are the Iraqi women in these narratives? How have war and occupation impacted their lives? How do they wish to be represented? Her project is a response to these silences, a deeply personal and political act of storytelling that places Iraqi women at the centre of their own histories (Mousawi 2021, 8). Mousawi’s RETURN to Iraq: Production and Style With the help of funding from the British Institute for the Study of Iraq (BISI) and the Arab British Centre, Mousawi collaborated with 3Fates Theatre Company to produce Return, which premiered at The Yard Theatre/ London in July 2012. Between 2012 and 2014, Return was showcased in various stages of its development, including Tara Theatre/ London 2012, The National Theatre Studio/ London 2013, Liverpool Arab Arts Festival/ Liverpool 2013, and the Aat International Theatre Festival/ Amman, Jordan 2013 (Auster 2017), and finally two sold-out shows at Rich Mix/ London in February 2014, attracting 200 people (Ditmars 2012). This piece connects an Arabic-speaking audience with the British mainstream spectators, promoting discussions with a greater understanding of life in Iraq. Skilfully shaped from interviews into a theatre performance by the British Asian female director Poonam Brah, the play “uses texts and videos to great effects” (Ibid.), projecting onto the screen some of Mousawi’s own Facebook messages to her mother from the time of her travels. It also features a diverse, all-female cast of five, that includes Mousawi, three actresses with Arabic heritage, and two British actresses. This diverse ensemble serves as a performative medium, showcasing the layered stories of Iraq’s postwar upheaval. They portray the physicality of the experience through a total of 16 named characters and one unnamed character, inspired by interviews with local Iraqi women in Iraq and migrant Iraqi women in Syria and Jordan, as well as some of the people Mousawi encountered along the way during her journey to the region. All cast members were tasked with playing multiple roles, bringing to life a spectrum of characters ranging from ordinary housewives, simple workers and students to activists, poets and political advocates for women’s rights. Some characters narrate their stories in monologues; each staged with distinct lighting and settings that highlight their resilience and the individuality of their experiences under occupation. The play gives voice to vulnerable Iraqi women who are also talented, positive, and inspired. Most importantly, it sheds light on their experiences and choices in adapting to the new changes in their lives following the invasion. Mousawi, performing the character of Dina, represents her personal journey in this theatrical project. As a character and actor, Mousawi shares her opinion on Iraq under occupation, in contrast to her nostalgic perceptions of her pre-invasion homeland. Some scenes include touching reflections on old memories of Mousawi’s mother, father, and grandmother, who is known in the play as Nana. In my interview with Mousawi (October 2023), she expressed pride in her return to Baghdad and in the theatre project, describing it as a deeply personal journey. She also spoke about her desire to teach her young son Arabic, reflecting her commitment to preserving cultural continuity. These reflections underscore the diasporic consciousness embedded in Return , where personal memory and political critique converge. Methodology In my analysis of Return, I follow a qualitative, performance-based approach, drawing primarily on the unpublished play script received through Professor Salih Mahdi Hameed, [1] who obtained the script directly from Mousawi, translated it into Arabic, and published it in 2021. Supplementary materials include my interview with Mousawi (2023), conducted via the Zoom platform, in which she described key mise-en-scène elements. Additionally, my information about the performance is derived from published production photographs, performance footage from YouTube, and the 3Fate theatre website. Published reviews by Rachel Bower and Hadani Ditmars, along with audience feedback on the 3Fate website, also inform the reception analysis. This study is framed within transnational feminist perspectives, with a particular attention to Arab feminist scholarship. The concept of agency is informed by the work of Saba Mahmood (2001, 2005), who emphasises how autonomy and resistance can be expressed through culturally embedded practices, especially within religious and social structures. Similarly, Lila Abu-Lughod (2013) critiques Western narratives that portray Muslim women as passive victims in need of saving, urging scholars to consider the specific historical and political contexts that shape Arabic/Muslim women's lives. These perspectives help situate the representation of Iraqi women in Return as contextually grounded, resisting simplistic binaries of oppression and liberation. Additionally, the analysis draws on verbatim theatre tools, recognising Return as a form of documentary performance that foregrounds real voices and lived experiences. As Peter Weiss argues (1998), documentary theatre seeks to expose political realities through aesthetic means. Stephen Bottoms (2006) further elaborates that verbatim theatre resists passive consumption by demanding critical engagement from audiences. These frameworks help assess how Return uses verbatim techniques, such as monologues, direct address and transmedia storytelling, to challenge dominant narratives and promote ethical spectatorship. The play’s representation of Iraqi women is analysed through two selected scenes out of the twenty-four available scenes. These scenes were chosen for their thematic relevance to the article’s focus on women’s agency under occupation. Due to word limit constraints, a broader analysis was not feasible, especially as each scene presents a distinct narrative that would require separate study. The selected scenes offer compelling portrayals of resilience and resistance. Rather than depicting them as passive victims, Return presents women as culturally grounded agents shaped by both tradition and the chaos of occupation. My analysis endeavours to addresses two central questions: 1. How do these representations, directed at a Western audience and written by a second-generation Iraqi woman playwright, challenge dominant portrayals of Iraqi women in Western media and culture?2. How does contemporary Iraqi diasporic theatre resist occupation through performance? The Western Gaze and the Spectacle of Liberation: The performance opens with a daring and ambivalent scene that questions women’s agency under occupation. Behind the transparent plastic curtain, the audience can see a bride being dressed by two other women who are singing a joyful traditional Iraqi wedding song. The light is dim, initially creating a mood of quiet intimacy and anticipation. However, a heartbeat begins to throb beneath the surface of the soundscape, turning the atmosphere threatening. Suddenly, the woman is pushed through the curtain; no longer a bride in ceremonial garb but bound by ropes in a visual echo of captivity. This transition violently fractures the audience’s expectation, subverting the promise of celebration with the spectacle of restraint (Mousawi, 2021, scene 1:3). Ditmars, in his review of Return , states that “this moment in Return heralds not only the beginning of a powerful piece of theatre, but also serves as a metaphor for the East/West conundrum” (Ditmars 2012). This collision of celebration and coercion reconfigures a traditionally joyful cultural ritual into a haunting spectacle of control, rendering it a terrifying embodiment of stripped feminine agency under occupation. Such imagery critiques how occupation, though often framed as liberation, distorts cultural norms and extinguishes individual freedoms. Staging this moment through the use of shadow play, plastic barriers and lighting shifts highlights the idea of perception: how cultural rituals are perceived from the outside versus how they are experienced within. The plastic curtain serves both as a veil and a screen; what lies behind it is obscured, distorted and ultimately misrepresented, echoing the Western gaze that Mousawi critiques. This moment encapsulates a broader thematic concern in Return : the paradox of ‘liberation’ under military occupation, particularly within the context of gender. The bride’s transformation into a prisoner or a captive visually challenges the rhetoric of emancipation adopted by occupying forces. Rather than empowering women, such interventions often impose new structures of control, replacing one form of oppression with another, although under the guise of progress. Leila Abu-Lughod provides a key lens through which to understand this scene. Abu-Lughod critiques the way Western media and policy often frame Muslim women as passive victims of their own culture, in need of liberation by external (often military) forces (Abu-lughod 2013). In this performance, the representation of a vulnerable bride shows the simplistic and conventional understanding of the West, which potentially serves to perpetuate societal expectations and beliefs about women as submissive individuals who are prone to victimisation by their family male members. Mousawi inverts that logic: the bride is not liberated through intervention but is rendered voiceless, immobilised and thus lacks agency. Her bondage does not originate in her cultural tradition of the marriage system, but in the violence of occupation. Thus, the play does not critique Iraqi customs, but rather the misrepresentation and manipulation of these customs by external forces. From a theatrical standpoint, the use of sound (heartbeat), lighting changes, and the plastic curtain emphasises dissonance. The heartbeat rising beneath the scene functions as a sonic marker of impending trauma, suggesting both human vulnerability and the intrusion of militarised power. Patrick Duggan examines how sound design, particularly repetitive or rhythmic elements like a heartbeat, can reveal signs of trauma. He discusses how such auditory cues can create an “affective elongation of the experience” (Duggan 2012), immersing the audience in a profound sense of upcoming violence and human vulnerability. This technique disrupts the spectators’ ability to distinguish between representation and reality, thereby intensifying the emotional impact of the performance (Ibid., 67-8). Similarly, during this moment of staging, changes in lighting can signify shifts in narrative or emotional tone, while the plastic curtain can serve as both a visual barrier that reveals and conceals. The moment the woman is pushed through the curtain is not just a visual disruption but an assault on audience expectations. We are forced to reckon with the reality that what lies beyond the ‘curtain’ of occupation is not freedom, but a reconstitution of dominated power. Moreover, this scene visually challenges Western feminist discourse regarding the homogenisation of ‘Third World women’, as argued by Chandra Mohanty who emphasises the transnational feminist attitude of acknowledging women’s cultural specificity (Mohanty 1984). By beginning with a culturally specific and intimate moment, a traditional Iraqi wedding song, the performance invites empathy and identification. The choice of a bride and the wedding setting is particularly evocative. In many cultures, including Iraqi society, the bride represents not only personal joy and familial continuity but also cultural identity and a rejoicing tradition. By invoking this deeply rooted symbolism, Mousawi creates an atmosphere of intimacy and celebration. However, that intimacy is shattered, revealing how global conflict distorts cultural practices. The ropes binding the woman’s body symbolise not tradition, but the geopolitical machinery that assumes the authority to ‘free’ her. In doing so, Mousawi exposes how the West projects oppression onto the East while simultaneously enacting its own forms of control. Furthermore, Mousawi’s transnational identity as a British Iraqi helps shape this critique. Her perspective bridges both the Western feminist and SWANA experiential frameworks, allowing her to examine the ideological contradictions embedded in interventionist narratives. This positionality enables her to challenge simplistic dichotomies, East/West, oppressed/liberated, and to centre complexity of Iraqi women’s lives under occupation. By dramatising the contrast between a bride’s traditional preparation and her sudden objectification as a prisoner, Return forces the audience to confront how ‘freedom’ is too often performed as spectacle rather than truly experienced. Resistance Through Representation: Mousawi’s Transnational Identity In Return , Mousawi stages more than a verbatim performance: she enacts a politically charged return to a homeland she knows only partially, signifying both a literal and symbolic act of agency. It represents a challenge commonly explored by second-generation migrant and diasporic theatre: the desire to reconnect with an ancestral homeland while acknowledging the privilege and distance created by life in the West. For Mousawi, this return is neither romanticised nor heroic; it is an act of responsibility and solidarity. Mousawi locates herself within a complex network of diasporic identity, political urgency and feminist ethics. Her decision to travel to Iraq during the US occupation despite her mother's concerns, both in reality and in the play, is emblematic of her commitment to first-hand witnessing. In scene 2, her character Dina firmly asserts the importance of hearing directly from local Iraqi women: Dina: I have to meet women there and interview them for my theatre project. Mum: Can’t you just interview Iraqi women living in England? Dina: No, it’s not the same thing. (Mousawi, scene 2:4) This exchange encapsulates a key element of Mousawi’s transnational feminist position in which she refuses to homogenise Iraqi women’s experiences by relying solely on diasporic voices. Instead, she confronts the physical and emotional risks of the return: “Dina: I'm not stupid, I know that it is a dangerous place and I'm taking all precautions to ensure I'm as safe as possible.” (Scene 11:12). Mousawi brings to the stage a hybrid identity that allows her to mediate between Eastern lived experience and Western modes of storytelling, crafting a counter-narrative that resists reductive tropes about Arab and Muslim women so prevalent in Western media and political discourse. In my interview with her, Mousawi emphasised: We didn’t want the audience to feel sympathetic and consider the Iraqi voices as poor women, poor Iraqis. We wanted people to feel inspired and humbled and moved in a sense of resilience. Iraqi women are resilient... Some are funny, clever, motivated, and businesswomen. We wanted to show that as well. (Oct 4, 2023) This intention is clearly realised through Return , particularly in scene 12, a powerful moment of two narratives occurring in tandem that embodies the complexity and diversity of Iraqi women’s lives. The scene is divided between two actresses performing: Nahal, a Christian mother who tears paper silently, indicating her stress as she recounts three near-death experiences of her son, and Nasreen, a Muslim woman who shares a story of love between her Christian friend, Saria, and an American soldier. As the stories unfold simultaneously from opposite sides of the stage, they interweave emotions of grief, faith, love and irony (Mousawi, 13-14). However, representations of the narrative style of this scene were far from showing victimisation or passivity. On the contrary, Nahal ends her monologue not with despair, but with spiritual resilience: “Nahal: Alhamdulillah, we left in peace...God has never left us.” (scene 12:13). Her words are not passive; they represent a form of situated agency in which faith is a mode of empowerment in a context where choices are limited. As Saba Mahmood argues, religious expression can be a legitimate form of agency rather than a sign of subjugation (Mahmood 2005). Thus, Nahal’s prayers became her means of resistance, not in a Western liberal feminist sense, but within a framework of spiritual and cultural meaning. Nasreen’s story, in contrast, highlights the limits of gender freedom within Iraqi familial structure. She admires her Christian friend’s father for supporting his daughter’s marriage to an American soldier, while lamenting her own inability to attend their wedding in Turkey because her family forbade her from traveling alone: “Nasreen: My parents were like ‘you can’t go alone’.” (scene 12:13). This juxtaposition reveals how patriarchal constraints persist in Iraq, but it also resists turning these limitations into spectacles of victimhood. Nasreen’s voice is critical and reflective; she understands her cultural context and the precautions of safety under occupation yet is not broken by it. The celebratory ending of the scene, enacted by Nahal joyfully throwing the torn pieces of paper into the air, with projected snowfall bathing the stage (13), reframes these stories not as sites of trauma, but as moments of endurance, joy and shared humanity. The structure and direction tools of Return consistently support this style of framing representations. Scenes often conclude with disruptions that prevent the audience from dwelling in pathos. This is done as actresses move and change their costumes onstage and in front of the audience in preparation for the next scene, breaking the fourth wall. Mousawi described the production process as being highly transparent and open to the audience. The set designer, Alice Malia, for example, worked on the scenes directly in front of the audience, cutting papers, hanging them on or sticking them on actors’ bodies (Author interview with Mousawi, 2023). The play’s tone frequently shifts towards humour, everyday banter or logistical transitions, drawing the audience away from sentimental consumption. These are intentional performative tactics, which move beyond empathy to reach what Diamond describes as “the pleasure of cognition” in Brecht’s theory of reception (Diamond 1988). This entails ethical spectatorship where spectators are not only emotionally moved but also critically engaged. Moreover, Mousawi’s use of transmedia elements, such as narrating her journey through the projection of her Facebook posts and emails from her travels in Iraq, inserts the diasporic experience into the real-time media consumption habits of Western audiences. This both demystifies the process of cultural return and democratises the reception of these stories, inviting spectators not to pity but to listen, connect, and understand. Conclusion: In examining Return , Mousawi offers powerful counter-narratives to externally imposed stories of liberation by centering Iraqi women’s lived experiences under the US-occupation. By interrogating the terrain of women’s agency, Mousawi’s verbatim theatre mobilises her diasporic insight to subvert the stereotype of the passive, victimised Eastern woman and instead render women as active interpreters of their own survival strategies. Mousawi’s second-generation Iraqi heritage and Western education enable her to reframe Iraqi women’s resilience through a hybrid aesthetic: she neither sentimentalises suffering nor reduces agency to Western-centric notions of emancipation. She rather reveals how agency is negotiated within and sometimes through the very cultural codes that patriarchy enforces. Through its verbatim style and transmedia elements, Return challenges dominant Western portrayals of Iraqi women by foregrounding their voices, choices and contradictions. The selected scenes demonstrate how Iraqi women assert situated agency through literacy, imagination, solidarity, and everyday resistance, while remaining embedded in complex social constraints. In this way, Return resists occupation not only through its content but through its form. It transforms theatre into a site of ethical representation, where testimony, memory and performance converge to reclaim narrative authority. Mousawi’s work becomes a transnational feminist intervention, resisting the consumption of trauma as spectacle and offering instead a textured portrayal of Iraqi women as culturally grounded subjects who act, adapt, believe, and survive within the structures of occupation and tradition. This form of situated agency reflects how power and autonomy can operate within specific socio-religious and political constraints. Return , therefore, becomes a political act of rewriting the representational structure of Arab womanhood and asserting the role of diasporic theatre in resisting occupation through storytelling. [1] Dr Hameed is a retired Iraqi scholar and professor of English drama, who is based in Iraq. I first came to know Dr Hameed as a drama professor who taught me during my graduate studies, then subsequently, as my MA thesis supervisor and as an academic referee for my PhD study at the University of Exeter, UK. He continually supports me, whether spiritually through words of praise and encouragement or academically, sharing with me ideas and plays! Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes Abu-lughod, Lila. 2013. Do Muslim Women Need Saving? Harvard University Press. Aston, E. (2003) Feminist Views on the English Stage: Women Playwrights, 1990–2000 . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Cambridge Studies in Modern Theatre). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511486005 Aston, E. and Harris, G. 2006. ‘Feminist Futures and the Possibilities of “We”?’, in E. Aston and G. Harris (eds) Feminist Futures? Theatre, Performance, Theory . London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp. 1–16. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230554948_1 Auster, Eva. 2017. ‘Return’. Eauster. https://eauster.co.uk/return . Bottoms, Stephen. 2006. ‘Putting the Document into Documentary: An Unwelcome Corrective?’ TDR (1988-) 50 (3): 56–68. Bower, Rachel. 2012 ‘Review: Return عودة’, 6 July. Available at: https://rachelbower.net/2012/07/06/review-return-%d8%b9%d9%88%d8%af%d8%a9/ “Film with local cast closes 11th festival.” Bradford Telegraph and Argus . March 1 st , 2005. https://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/7993657.film-with-local-cast-closes-11th-festival/ Diamond, Elin. 1988. ‘Brechtian Theory/ Feminist Theory: Toward a Gestic Feminist Criticism’. TDR (1988-) 32 (1): 82–94. https://doi.org/10.2307/1145871 . Ditmars, Hadani. 2012. ‘Stage Fright: Arab Spring Plays out in London’s Theater District’. Haaretz , July 27. https://www.haaretz.com/2012-07-27/ty-article/arab-spring-plays-out-in-theater/0000017f-f07a-d223-a97f-fdfff5840000 . Duggan, Patrick. 2012. ‘Mimetic Shimmering and the Performative Punctum’. In Trauma-Tragedy . Symptoms of Contemporary Performance. Manchester University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt212165r.8 . Mahmood, Saba 2001. ‘Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile Agent: Some Reflections on the Egyptian Islamic Revival’, Cultural Anthropology , 16(2), pp. 202–236. DOI: http://www.jstor.org/stable/656537 Mahmood, Saba. 2005. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject . Anthropology Online. Princeton University Press. https://www.aspresolver.com/aspresolver.asp?ANTO;1666374 . Mohanty, Chandra. 1984. ‘Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses’. Boundary 2 12/13: 333–58. https://doi.org/10.2307/302821 . Mousawi, Dina. 2021. Foreword to Return عودة, translated by Salih Mahdi Hameed al-Shukri. 1st Edition. Babil, Iraq: Dar AL-sawaf for Publishing and Printing. Return | Elliott Franks Photography . 2012. https://elliottfranks.photoshelter.com/gallery-image/Return-3rd-July-2012/G0000bkasjl49h14/I0000SFPaOCYQp9s (Accessed: 18 July 2025). Strain, Lauren . 2013. ‘Return @ Unity Theatre, Liverpool, 12 Jun’, The Skinny Independant Public Journalism [Preprint]. Available at: https://www.theskinny.co.uk/festivals/uk-festivals/festival-guide/return-unity-theatre-liverpool-12-jun (Accessed: 18 October 2025). Turner, Cathy and Behrndt, Synne . 2008. Dramaturgy and Performance . Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Weiss, Peter. 1998. ‘The Material and the Models: Notes Towards a Definition of Documentary Theatre (1968)’. In Modern Theories of Drama: A Selection of Writings on Drama and Theatre 1850-1990 , edited by George W Brandt. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198711407.003.0039 . References About The Author(s) Hind Sabah Bilal is an Iraqi scholar and currently a PhD candidate in Drama at the University of Exeter, UK, funded by the Iraqi government’s HCED scholarship since 2021. Her research examines representations of women’s agency in contemporary Iraqi drama and theatre post-2003 US-led war in Iraq. Hind, who earned her MA in English Drama in 2012, has been a permanent staff lecturer in English Drama and Literature at the University of Kufa, Iraq, since 2015. She has published several papers, with a recent journal article under review in Global Performance Studies. She has actively participated in various local and international conferences and symposia, recently presenting at the IFTR 2025 conference in Cologne, Germany and the TaPRA 2025 conference at the University of Warwick, UK. Arab Stages Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents Practicing Place: Site-Specific Performance and the Reinscription of Memory in Palestine Resisting the Unleashed Evils of the US- Invasion of Iraq in Amir Al-Azraki’s The Widow (2017) Dina Mousawi’s RETURN: a Compelling site of representing Women’s Status of Agency Under Occupation Renewed Awareness Toward Salvation: The Journey of The Story of Zahra from Page to Stage Site-Specific Performance and Theatrical Memorialization of the Nakba Performance Review: WAILING SONGS OF THE PAST, MIGHT THEY GROW OUR RESILIENCE. By Maya al-Khaldi. Performance Review: DUMMY IN DIASPORA. By Esho Rasho. Performance Review: ENGLISH. Written by Sanaz Toossi Performance Review: THE CAVE. By Sadieh Rifai Performance Review: IRAQ, BUT FUNNY by Atra Asdou Performance Review: COSMOS/AWALEM by Ashtar Muallem and Emile Saba. Previous Next Attribution: Entries under this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

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Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Back to Top Untitled Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages Volume 17 Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents O Lord! By Ali Abdel-Nabi Al-Zaidi Ali Abdel-Nabi Al-Zaidi, Amir Al-Azraki, Jeff Casey Mothers Challenging the Divine: Ali Al-Zaidi’s Ya Rab! Amir Al-Azraki The 31st Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre. September 1-11, 2024. Najwa Kondakji ARTIFICIAL HEART. By Mohammad Basha and Firas Farrah. Marina Johnson LEILI & MAJNUN. Written and directed by Torange Yeghiazarian Namrata Verghese SHAHADAT (THE TESTIMONIES) Adapted by Fouad Teymour Suzi Elnaggar Review: TO THE GOOD PEOPLE OF GAZA: THEATRE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE Marina Johnson Staging Revolutions and the Many Faces of Modernism: Performing Politics in Irish and Egyptian Theatre Tiran Manucharya Arab Stages Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Visit Journal Homepage

By Benito Ortolani, Samuel L. Leiter | This volume contains the proceedings of the “Zeami and the Nô Theatre in the World” symposium, held in New York City in October 1997 < Back More Information & Order Details To order this publication, visit the TCG Bookstore or Amazon.com. You can also get in touch with us at mestc@gc.cuny.edu Zeami and the Nô Theatre in the World Benito Ortolani, Samuel L. Leiter Download PDF Edited by Benito Ortolani and Samuel L. Leiter This volume contains the proceedings of the “Zeami and the Nô Theatre in the World” symposium, held in New York City in October 1997, in conjunction with the “Japanese Theatre in the World” exhibit shown at the same time at the Japan Society and, in the spring of 1998, the Villa Stuck in Munich, Germany. The editors, Benito Ortolani and Samuel L. Leiter, both of Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, CUNY, are internationally recognized scholars of Japanese theatre. Explore Other Books To play, press and hold the enter key. To stop, release the enter key. See All Books

By Stéphanie Bérard, with Frank Hentschker | An anthology of six contemporary Francophone Caribbean plays. < Back More Information & Order Details To order this publication, visit the TCG Bookstore or Amazon.com. You can also get in touch with us at mestc@gc.cuny.edu New Plays from the Caribbean Stéphanie Bérard, with Frank Hentschker Download PDF New Plays from the Caribbean Segal Center Publication 2023 The Segal Center anthology New Plays from the Caribbean unveils the rich and diverse production of contemporary Francophone Caribbean theatre, allowing new dramatic voices to be heard and to travel around the world. The creative and innovative mixing of styles and languages (French and Creole) by playwrights from Haiti, Martinique, and Guadeloupe represent the next wave of politically engaged Caribbean theatre. The plays tell the stories and histories of contemporary Caribbean people by exploring passion, desire, and the collective experience of trauma and loss after a natural disaster. The plays denounce social, racial, and gender violence by staging real-life dramas and documentary theatre. The anthology is composed of six plays: - Adoration (L'Adoration) by Jean-René Lemoine (France/Haiti), translated by Amanda Gann; - And the Whole World Quakes/Chronicle of a Slaughter Foretold, (De toute la terre le grand effarement ) by Guy Régis Jr.(Haiti), translated by Judith Miller - Ladjablès-Wild Woman (Ladjablès) by Daniely Francisque, translated by Danielle Carlottu-Smith - Family (Une vie familiale) by Gaël Octavia, (Martinique) - Street Sad (Trottoir Chagrin ) by Luc Saint-Eloy (Guadeloupe), translated by Josh Cohen - The Day My Father Killed Me (Le jour où mon père m'a tué) by Magali Solignat and Charlotte Boimare (Guadeloupe), translated by Amelie Parenteau. Explore Other Books To play, press and hold the enter key. To stop, release the enter key. See All Books

DANCERS 4 PALESTINE + THEATER WORKERS FOR A CEASEFIRE presents Building Cultural Power through Organizing at the PRELUDE 2024 Festival at the Martin E. Segal Theater Center CUNY. PRELUDE Festival 2024 Building Cultural Power through Organizing DANCERS 4 PALESTINE + THEATER WORKERS FOR A CEASEFIRE 3-3:50 pm Thursday, October 17, 2024 Elebash Recital Hall RSVP Organizers from two Palestine solidarity formations in the arts will dialogue about the obstacles and opportunities related to organizing within the arts, specifically as it relates to the current struggle for building solidarity for Palestine today. Topics of discussion will include strategies and tactics, building cultural power, an overview of actions, and provocations for others to develop or join organizing efforts from wherever they are. This event will be livestreamed via Howlround Theatre Commons . Building Cultural Power through Organizing is presented in partnership with ASAP/15: Not a Luxury LOBSTER Nora loves Patti Smith. Nora is Patti Smith. Nora is stoned out of her mind in the Chelsea Hotel. Actually, the Chelsea Hotel is her mind. Actually, the Chelsea Hotel is an out-of-use portable classroom in the Pacific Northwest, and that classroom is a breeding ground for lobsters. LOBSTER by Kallan Dana directed by Hanna Yurfest produced by Emma Richmond with: Anna Aubry, Chris Erdman, Annie Fang, Coco McNeil, Haley Wong Needy Lover presents an excerpt of LOBSTER , a play about teenagers putting on a production of Patti Smith and Sam Shepard's Cowboy Mouth . THE ARTISTS Needy Lover makes performances that are funny, propulsive, weird, and gut-wrenching (ideally all at the same time). We create theatre out of seemingly diametrically opposed forces: our work is both entertaining and unusual, funny and tragic. Needylover.com Kallan Dana is a writer and performer originally from Portland, Oregon. She has developed and presented work with Clubbed Thumb, The Hearth, The Tank, Bramble Theater Company, Dixon Place, Northwestern University, and Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute. She is a New Georges affiliated artist and co-founder of the artist collaboration group TAG at The Tank. She received her MFA from Northwestern University. Upcoming: RACECAR RACECAR RACECAR with The Hearth/Connelly Theater Upstairs (dir. Sarah Blush), Dec 2024. LOBSTER with The Tank (dir. Hanna Yurfest), April/May 2025. Needylover.com and troveirl.com Hanna Yurfest is a director and producer from Richmond, MA. She co-founded and leads The Tank’s artist group TAG and creates work with her company, Needy Lover. Emma Richmond is a producer and director of performances and events. She has worked with/at HERE, The Tank, The Brick, and Audible, amongst others. She was The Tank’s 2022-23 Producing Fellow, and is a member of the artist group TAG. Her day job is Programs Manager at Clubbed Thumb, and she also makes work with her collective Trove, which she co-founded. www.emma-richmond.com Rooting for You The Barbarians It's the Season Six premiere of 'Sava Swerve's: The Model Detector' and Cameron is on it!!! June, Willa, and (by proximity) Sunny are hosting weekly viewing parties every week until Cameron gets cut, which, fingers crossed, is going to be the freakin' finale! A theatrical playground of a play that serves an entire season of 'so-bad-it's-good' reality TV embedded in the social lives of a friend group working through queerness, adolescence, judgment, and self-actualization. Presenting an excerpt from Rooting for You! with loose staging, experimenting with performance style, timing, and physicality. THE ARTISTS Ashil Lee (he/they) NYC-based actor, playwright, director, and sex educator. Korean-American, trans nonbinary, child of immigrants, bestie to iconic pup Huxley. Described as "a human rollercoaster" and "Pick a lane, buddy!" by that one AI Roast Bot. 2023 Lucille Lortel nominee (Outstanding Ensemble: The Nosebleed ) and Clubbed Thumb Early Career Writers Group Alum. NYU: Tisch. BFA in Acting, Minor in Youth Mental Health. Masters Candidate in Mental Health and Wellness (NYU Steinhardt: 20eventually), with intentions of incorporating mental health consciousness into the theatre industry. www.ashillee.com Phoebe Brooks is a gender non-conforming theater artist interested in establishing a Theatre of Joy for artists and audiences alike. A lifelong New Yorker, Phoebe makes art that spills out beyond theater-going conventions and forges unlikely communities. They love messing around with comedy, heightened text, and gender performance to uncover hidden histories. She's also kind of obsessed with interactivity; particularly about figuring out how to make audience participation less scary for audiences. Phoebe has a BA in Theatre from Northwestern University and an MFA in Theatre Directing from Columbia University's School of the Arts. The Barbarians is a word-drunk satirical play exploring political rhetoric and the power of words on the world. With cartoonish wit and rambunctious edge, it asks: what if the President tried to declare war, but the words didn't work? Written by Jerry Lieblich and directed by Paul Lazar, it will premiere in February 2025 at LaMama. The Barbarians is produced in association with Immediate Medium, and with support from the Venturous Theater Fund of the Tides Foundation. THE ARTISTS Jerry Lieblich (they/them) plays in the borderlands of theater, poetry, and music. Their work experiments with language as a way to explore unexpected textures of consciousness and attention. Plays include Mahinerator (The Tank), The Barbarians (La Mama - upcoming), D Deb Debbie Deborah (Critic’s Pick: NY Times), Ghost Stories (Critic’s Pick: TimeOut NY), and Everything for Dawn (Experiments in Opera). Their poetry has appeared in Foglifter, Second Factory, TAB, Grist, SOLAR, Pomona Valley Review, Cold Mountain Review, and Works and Days. Their poetry collection otherwise, without was a finalist for The National Poetry Series. Jerry has held residencies at MacDowell, MassMoCA, Blue Mountain Center, Millay Arts, and UCROSS, and Yiddishkayt. MFA: Brooklyn College. www.thirdear.nyc Paul Lazar is a founding member, along with Annie-B Parson, of Big Dance Theater. He has co-directed and acted in works for Big Dance since 1991, including commissions from the Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Old Vic (London), The Walker Art Center, Classic Stage Co., New York Live Arts, The Kitchen, and Japan Society. Paul directed Young Jean Lee’s We’re Gonna Die which was reprised in London featuring David Byrne. Other directing credits include Bodycast with Francis McDormand (BAM), Christina Masciotti’s Social Security (Bushwick Starr), and Major Bang (for The Foundry Theatre) at Saint Ann’s Warehouse. Awards include two Bessies (2010, 2002), the Jacob’s Pillow Creativity Award (2007), and the Prelude Festival’s Frankie Award (2014), as well an Obie Award for Big Dance in 2000. Steve Mellor has appeared on Broadway (Big River ), Off-Broadway (Nixon's Nixon ) and regionally at Arena Stage, Long Wharf Theater, La Jolla Playhouse, Portland Stage and Yale Rep. A longtime collaborator with Mac Wellman, Steve has appeared in Wellman's Harm’s Way, Energumen, Dracula, Cellophane, Terminal Hip (OBIE Award), Sincerity Forever, A Murder of Crows, The Hyacinth Macaw, 7 Blowjobs (Bessie Award), Strange Feet, Bad Penny, Fnu Lnu, Bitter Bierce (OBIE Award), and Muazzez . He also directed Mr. Wellman's 1965 UU. In New York City, he has appeared at the Public Theater, La Mama, Soho Rep, Primary Stages, PS 122, MCC Theater, The Chocolate Factory, and The Flea. His film and television credits include Sleepless in Seattle, Mickey Blue Eyes, Celebrity, NYPD Blue, Law and Order, NY Undercover, and Mozart in the Jungle. Chloe Claudel is an actor and director based in NYC and London. She co-founded the experimental company The Goat Exchange, with which she has developed over a dozen new works of theater and film, including Salome, or the Cult of the Clitoris: a Historical Phallusy in last year's Prelude Festival. She's thrilled to be working with Paul and Jerry on The Barbarians . Anne Gridley is a two time Obie award-winning actor, dramaturg, and artist. As a founding member of Nature Theater of Oklahoma, she has co-created and performed in critically acclaimed works including Life & Times, Poetics: A Ballet Brut, No Dice, Romeo & Juliet, and Burt Turrido . In addition to her work with Nature Theater, Gridley has performed with Jerôme Bel, Caborca, 7 Daughters of Eve, and Big Dance, served as a Dramaturg for the Wooster Group’s production Who’s Your Dada ?, and taught devised theater at Bard College. Her drawings have been shown at H.A.U. Berlin, and Mass Live Arts. B.A. Bard College; M.F.A. Columbia University. Naren Weiss is an actor/writer who has worked onstage (The Public Theater, Second Stage, Kennedy Center, Geffen Playhouse, international), in TV (ABC, NBC, CBS, Comedy Central), and has written plays that have been performed across the globe (India, Singapore, South Africa, U.S.). Upcoming: The Sketchy Eastern European Show at The Players Theatre (Mar. '24). Theater Workers for a Ceasefire exists to organize U.S.-based theater workers in solidarity with the people of Palestine. We aim to use our bodies and talents in pursuit of a comprehensive ceasefire, which we understand is merely the first step among many in realizing a Free Palestine. Dancers for Palestine (D4P) is an autonomous group of dance workers who organize in solidarity with the global movement for Palestinian liberation. Formed during Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza beginning in 2023, D4P seeks to both cohere and create a dance community which is vocal and active in its support of the Palestinian people. D4P is a local and international endeavor with a core organizing group in NYC and an ever expanding network of dancers and organizers working toward a dance field free from complicity in genocide, imperialism, white supremacy, and all systems of oppression. D4P’s work has included protest and direct action, political education events, art-based fundraising, and campaigns in alignment with the Palestinian Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) and against repressive anti-boycott policies. D4P works alongside with other arts and culture-based groups organizing for Palestine, including Artists Against Apartheid, Theatre Workers for a Ceasefire, and Writers Against the War on Gaza, and aligns strongly with labor organizing movements in the arts. Explore more performances, talks and discussions at PRELUDE 2024 See What's on

JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Published by the Martin E. Segal Theater Center at the Graduate Center CUNY, supported by American Theater Drama Society. Back to Top Untitled Copy of Untitled Keep Reading < Back Journal of American Drama & Theatre Volume 30 Visit Journal Homepage Issue 1 May Irwin Franklin J. Lasik BOOK REVIEW American Musical Theater Eric M. Glover BOOK REVIEW Musical Theatre Books Curtis Russell BOOK REVIEW New York's Yiddish Theater Derek R. Munson BOOK REVIEW Chinese Looks Christine Mok BOOK REVIEW Reclaiming Four Child Actors through Seven Plays in US Theatre, 1794-1800 Jeanne Klein ARTICLE The Illusion of Work: The Con Artist Plays of the Federal Theatre Project Paul Gagliardi ARTICLE On Bow and Exit Music Derek Miller ARTICLE Legitimate: Jerry Douglas's Tubstrip and the Erotic Theatre of Gay Liberation Jordan Schildcrout ARTICLE Issue 2 Stages of Struggle and Celebration: A Production History of Black Theatre in Texas Sharyn Emery BOOK REVIEW Immersions in Cultural Difference: Tourism, War, Performance Eero Laine BOOK REVIEW Stage for Action: U.S. Social Activist Theatre in the 1940s Erin Rachel Kaplan BOOK REVIEW Samuel Beckett’s Theatre in America: The Legacy of Alan Schneider as Beckett’s American Director Richard Jones BOOK REVIEW The Contemporary American Monologue: Performance and Politics Kevin T. Browne BOOK REVIEW Black Performance on the Outskirts of the Left Kristin Moriah BOOK REVIEW Introduction: Mediations of Authorship in American Postdramatic Mediaturgies Johan Callens, Guest Editor EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION Kaldor and Dorsen's "desktop performances" and the (Live) Coauthorship Paradox Claire Swyzen ARTICLE Ecologies of Media, Ecologies of Mind: Embodying Authorship Through Mediaturgy Christophe Collard ARTICLE Dropping the Needle on the Record: Intermedial Contingency and Spalding Gray's Early Talk Performances Ira S. Murfin ARTICLE #HEWILLNOTDIVIDEUS: Weaponizing Performance of Identity from the Digital to the Physical Ellen Gillooly-Kress ARTICLE Journal of American Drama & Theatre JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative articles and reviews on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Please refer to our Style Guide for submission information and general formatting guidelines. Send all general queries to the editors at jadtjournal@gmail.com . Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Visit Journal Homepage