The Theatre of Sa'dallah Wannous

Sonja Mejcher-Atassi is an Associate Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature in the Department of English at the American University of Beirut. Her research centers on modern Arabic literature, writers' biographies and libraries, book culture, archival and museum studies, cultural history and memory, and aesthetics and politics. Her publications include Rafa Nasiri: Artist Books (2016; ed. with May Muzaffar), Reading across Modern Arabic Literature and Art (2012), Archives, Museums, and Collecting Practices in the Modern Arab World (2012; ed. with John Pedro Schwartz), and Writing a 'Tool for Change': 'Abd al-Rahman Munif Remembered (2007; ed.). Robert Myers is Professor of English and Director of the Alwaleed Center for American Studies and Research (CASAR) at the American University of Beirut. He is the author of over fifteen plays, including Atwater: Fixin' to Die, Mesopotamia and Unmanned (adapted as Drone Pilots for BBC's Radio 4), which have been produced at major theatres in New York, Chicago, Washington, and Los Angeles. He is the co-editor/co-translator with Nada Saab of Modern and Contemporary Political Theater from the Levant (2018) and Sentence to Hope: A Sa'dallah Wannous Reader (2019). He has received grants from the MacArthur Foundation and the Mellon Foundation and two Fulbright awards.

'… a very welcome addition to the library of scholars of the Arab world, academics and dramatists interested in the life and work of a leading figure of Arab and world drama, and for anyone interested in the cultural politics of Syria in the last decades of the twentieth century … this volume is both timely and valuable.' Jonathan H. Shannon, Critical Stages/Scènes critiques

• Introduction Robert Myers and Sonja Mejcher-Atassi; Part I. Situating Wannous: 1. Wannous, Syrian and world drama Marvin Carlson; 2. Wannous and Brecht: The Playwright as Political Activist Robert Myers and Nada Saab; Part II. Reading Wannous: 3. Keeping Silent, or the Silence that Kept Wannous Zeina G. Halabi; 4. The Failure of Revolutionary Humanism: Reading Wannous with Fanon Friederike Pannewick; 5. Historiography as Resistance in the Later Plays of Wannous Edward Ziter; Part III. Staging Wannous: 6. Rituals Transformed: Wannous, Intercultural Translation, and the Widening Gyre Margaret Litvin; 7. Speaking the Unspeakable: On Directing Wannous Sahar Assaf; 8. Conversation with Contemporary Playwright Mohammad Al Attar Mohammad Al-Attar; Part IV. Remembering Wannous; 9. Unpacking Wannous' Library Sonja Mejcher-Atassi; 10. A Student of Theatre in Paris Farouk Mardam-Bey; 11. Grammar of Life and Death Elias Khoury; 12. Be What You Want to Be Dima Wannous.