Theater in the Middle East: between Performance and Politics ed. by Babak Rahimi (review)

Given the dearth of English-language scholarship on theatre of the Middle East, Rahimi’s Theater in the Middle East presents a much- needed scholarly yet accessible survey on the subject. The collected essays in this text explore a sample of Middle Eastern theatrical works from multiple perspectives, all while foregrounding the complex interculturality of this transcontinental region. In addition, each of the chapters in this volume stands alone as informed snapshots of the diversity of Afro-Eurasian theatre. They introduce new readers to modern and contemporary Middle Eastern performances as well as nuanced existing views on the subject by rethinking and reimagining this genre of theatre in relation to academia, politics, and transnationalism.

Theater in the Middle East offers valuable resources for teaching the subject to an unfamiliar public, the need for which is highlighted in the very first chapter by Michael Malek Najjar. In it, he outlines the challenges of teaching Middle Eastern theatre in US universities and offers recommendations for navigating the complexities of the task. Najjar stresses the need to define and engage the region outside the limited frame of Mideast-US relations, which is shaped by the War on Terror, the Iraq War(s), and the Arab-Israeli conflict, among others. Educators and scholars will find this chapter indispensable because it models ways of rethinking global pedagogy and collaborating with international specialists or artists in the field. It also lists numerous English-language resources for use in teaching and research, such as anthologies and critical writings, while underscoring the need to produce additional publications on the subject.

The remaining chapters in this volume seem to heed Najjar’s call. The next three chapters round out the first part of the book titled “Pedagogy and Tradition” with snapshots of Iranian, Egyptian, and Moroccan performance. Rana Salimi’s chapter on late nineteenth century Qajar performances by harem women explores how Middle Eastern identities were reimagined during an era of modernization and social change. Not only does this chapter offer a concise introduction to indigenous performances like ta’zieh and bāzi, but it also rereads harem women’s performances through an agential lens and disrupts the perception of Middle Eastern women as disempowered subjects. Marvin Carlson’s following chapter on Nehad Selaiha, one of the leading theatre critics in late twentieth century Egypt, achieves a similar effect. It centers the often unacknowledged role of women as leaders in theatrical experimentation and advocates for freedom of expression in the region. Khalid Amine’s chapter also strongly features women’s voices by looking at ways in which the indigenous halqa tradition is reimagined and deployed in contemporary performance to challenge socio-political worldviews, particularly taboo subjects like sexuality and gender inequality. Most importantly, he asserts that performative hybridity in Morocco is a first step of coming to terms with postcolonial and neocolonial modernity. This critical view, echoed silently across the volume, can be applied across the transcontinental Middle East and encourages readers to view performance from this region as an innovative agential tool for countering subalternity and exploring paths toward alternative futures.

Part two of the volume, titled “Politics and (Trans)Nation,” complicates this idea of agential performance by exploring its impact on Middle Eastern identity in relation to conflict, occupation, and migration. Gary English opens this section with his chapter on The Freedom Theatre in Jenin, a company in occupied Palestine. Analyzing several of their productions, he argues that the practice of theatre under both military and “mental occupation” acts as cultural resistance, allowing subaltern Palestinian actors to grapple with oppressions inflicted by both Israeli and Palestinian constraints. Continuing the focus on Israel-Palestine, Shelley Salamensky’s chapter looks at how transnational artists Sigalit Landau and Emily Jacir use performance and installation art as a tool for exploring loss and displacement. She argues that their work foregrounds social construction and impermanence in its unsettling treatments of identity and homeland. Edward...