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Introduction: Rehearsing Arab Performance Realities

More than a year and half ago, when the two editors of this special issue started conceptualizing a collection of essays on theatre and the Arab Spring, they were occasionally greeted with a measure of scepticism from those who thought that the developing situation in the region was far more reminiscent of a bleak winter than any spring of hope. In fact, part of this scepticism was due to the very phrase ‘Arab Spring’, a cliché long promoted by Western media outlets which routinely celebrated the (typically young) forces of regeneration in their presumed longing for the ‘global’ values of Western liberal democracies, but especially when these values were manifested in – you guessed it – neo-liberal capitalism. Even more challenging for a project like the one at hand, the usual highlighting of the role of theatre and allied artistic practices in the current Arab zeitgeist has often been dismissed by many well-informed commentators as naively euphoric. Citing the example of a young Egyptian theatre director who refused to see any play with the word ‘Tahrir’ in its title, Margaret Litvin in her piece in this issue cautions against the rush to produce ‘revolutionary’ plays that depend for their appeal on ‘emotional release and self-glorification’. As she puts it,