Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • 5 - Historiography as Resistance in the Later Plays of Wannous

  • from Part II - Reading Wannous
  • Edited by Sonja Mejcher-Atassi, American University of Beirut, Robert Myers, American University of Beirut
  • Book:
    The Theatre of Sa'dallah Wannous
    Published online:
    14 May 2021
    Print publication:
    27 May 2021, pp 96-118

  • Summary

    This chapter examines Sa’dallah Wannous’ use and interrogation of history as means of carving out a space for critical reflection on pressing contemporary issues such as state violence. It focuses on two of Wannous’ late plays, Historical Miniatures and Drunken Days and argues that Wannous’s highly literary dramatic language consistently interrogates history and tradition. The chapter also includes an analysis of two significant productions of Historical Miniatures, one in Beirut in 2000, staged by the renowned Lebanese director Nidal al Achkar, and the other a daring site-specific production in the prison area of the actual thirteenth-century citadel in Damascus where the play is set, by Syrian director Naila Al-Atrash, which was staged shortly after Wannous’ death in 1997. Since the citadel had been used to house political prisoners during the early years of the regime of Hafez al-Assad, who died three years later, Al-Atrash’s production was inevitably interpreted as a pointed critique of the Syrian state’s continuing use of violence and incarceration as means of suppressing dissent.