Political Performance in Syria: From the Six-Day War to the Syrian Uprising

by Edward Ziter

Political Performance in Syria, charts the history of a theatre that has sought the expansion of civil society and imagined alternate political realities. In doing so, the manuscript situates the current use of performance and theatre by artists of the Syrian Revolution within a long history of political contestation.

269 pages, Hardcover

First published November 19, 2014

Reviews

[Phillip · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read portions of this book to begin getting a sense of Syria's theatrical culture. I am preparing a paper about rereading ancient Greek refugee plays in the era of the Syrian refugee crisis and the paper will probably include brief discussions of connections between Greek and Syrian theatre.

Ziter's book is well organized and includes very detailed readings of several plays in each chapter. The chapters are organized thematically--focusing on topics like War, Palestinians, or History and Heritage--and Ziter examines both the texts themselves and their performance histories to establish some broad brush stroke thematic interests that many Syrian playwrights seem interested in. We get more detailed information about some playwrights--particularly Sadallah Wannus (or Sa'adallah Wannous), whose work is discussed extensively over several chapters. One potential limitation of Ziter's work is that the focus on Wannus sometimes overshadows the goal of providing a description of how Syrian playwrights in general treat particular subjects (for instance, the chapter on History and Heritage focuses only on plays by Wannus), and so it sometimes isn't clear to what degree Wannus' work--and consequently Ziter's analysis--represents Syrian theatre writ large.