What happens if a body is dissected with words rather than physically? If what is taken apart is reassembled? What impact does this have on how we see things? This volume is the first comprehensive introduction to the work of Lebanese theatre artists Lina Saneh (b. 1966) and Rabih Mroué (b. 1967) and provides an insight into their approach to theatre and their understanding of political matters. The artists offer new perspectives and ways of looking at things by deconstructing omnipresent images, long-established beliefs and myths. They do so using theatre, performance and video to unravel existing constructions of reality and uncover the interspaces. The study presents five works by the artists and analyses them in light of different theories from the fields of theatre and cultural studies. Saneh and Mroué are also considered in relation to local theatre history and within the context of contemporary art in Lebanon as well as international developments.
Monique Bellan studied Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Bonn and the American University of Beirut (AUB). From 2000 to 2005 and 2011 to 2013, she worked in the Performing Arts Section of the Academy of Arts in Berlin. From 2007 to 2010, she worked as a research assistant at the collaborative research centre “Aesthetic experience and the dissolution of artistic limits” at the Free University of Berlin. She has translated several articles and theatre plays from Arabic to German. In 2012, she completed her PhD thesis at the Free University of Berlin. Since April 2013, she has been working as a research associate at the Orient-Institut Beirut (OIB).
Literatures in Context is a peer-reviewed book series devoted to Near Eastern and North African literatures. The editors want the title of the series to be understood programmatically. They presuppose a concept of world literature that includes Near Eastern and North African literatures. What is more, they assume that literatures are in many ways marked by intertextuality, that they constitute readings of extremely diverse earlier texts, and that they are posited within a field of tensions, much broader than their respective national language. For the earlier eras of Near Eastern and North African literatures, this field of tensions geographically covers the regions of the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean and Asia Minor. In modern times, it has become a space of interaction that has long since included “global” Western literatures (and realities). This does not imply that the modern Near Eastern and North African literatures have severed themselves from their predecessors. Instead it is precisely the tension between different sets of references in modern Near Eastern and North African literatures, or their “local historical context”, which is a great part of their attraction, that remains a crucial field of research for the modern scholar.
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