CUNY Academic Commons

The Freedom Theatre in the Jenin refugee camp in occupied Palestine gained international notoriety in 2011 when an unidentified masked assailant shot and killed founding co-director Juliano Mer […]

In a time where Arabs are at the forefront of news cycles worldwide, theatre plays a vital role not only in recognizing, but also in presenting and creating narratives for Arabs, about Arabs, by Arabs. In an […]

Tales of a City by the Sea by Samah Sabawi has received critical acclaim in its touring and several stagings in Palestine and Australia. It is an eye- opening play based on real-life experiences from the 2008-2009 […]

Israeli soldiers burst into a Palestinian home in the middle of the night, hurling orders for the residents to “stop filming.” A young Palestinian woman skypes her cousin in London and nervously asks if the cou […]

The US-led invasion of Iraq in March, 2003, and ensuing occupation, was seen by some Iraqis, initially, as an act of liberation from the brutal dictator Saddam Hussein. Such enthusiasm, however, was quickly […]

When it comes to countering the implicit, and sometimes explicit prejudices that the larger society exhibits toward Arabs and Muslims, American theatres are not particularly ahead of the curve. While some theatres […]

In her book Choreographing Difference: The Body and Identity in Contemporary Dance (1997), Ann Cooper Albright situates dance “at the intersection of bodily experience and cultural representation” (Albright 119). […]

In the absence of a developed playwriting tradition, government support, and funding opportunities, and with the presence of prior censorship, theatre-makers in Lebanon find themselves using every accessible […]

A goat for a life; a factory for a nation. Liwaa Yazji’s  Goats and Mohammad Al Attar’s The Factory both draw on events that have occurred in Syria since 2010, whilst continuously questioning and challenging inte […]

Introduction

‘Alternative Dramaturgies’ in contemporary Moroccan theatres have become highly visible, re-framing our preconceived questions related to both classical and modern dramaturgies. In the present unde […]

There are two things that I know are true.

1.Theatremakers (which includes artists and audiences because you need both to make theatre) hunger for stories because we are so in love with life we are not content […]

The Freedom Theatre, located in the middle of the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank, Palestine, was started in 2006 with the aim of building cultural resistance against the Zionist occupation of Palestinian land […]

The dramaturgical model I would like to briefly describe to you today is one that I developed with Sahar Assaf at the American University of Beirut over the last five years. We believe that it is a singular model […]

The special focus of this issue is Eastern European theatre, for an obvious reason: the anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall. Thirty years later, it’s no surprise that the key word for the traditionally v […]

This is one behemoth of an evening, and no theatre in the US would have begun a five-and-a-half-hour night at 7pm, or dared to limit it to one intermission. Castorf has a reputation for testing the limits—of his a […]

Madrid’s Teatro del Barrio has had a regular presence at Barcelona’s Teatre Lliure during Lluís Pasqual’s time as artistic director (2011-18). Ruz-Bárcenas, a verbatim production on People’s Party treasurer […]

The sound of a quartet tuning. An alchemical procedure of attunement before a performance.

The respite of an extended silence imbued with utter darkness.

Then, the melancholic sound of a violin that […]

It has been said about Hamlet that it stands for one thousand plays. It is the staging option that makes the difference. This “sponge-play” (to paraphrase Jan Kott) can be approached as a metaphysical, political, […]

Plays staged at the National Theatre in Belgrade have left their mark on the theatre scene in the recent years. The National Theatre houses three ensembles under its roof – the Drama, the Opera, and the B […]

The Shadow of My Soul is the first ever production of shadow theatre that was created and performed by completely blind actors. However, it is unique not only because of their outstanding performances but also […]