Staging difference: An ethnography of new-generation Egyptian theatre.

摘要

This dissertation is an ethnographic and socio-linguistic study of new Egyptian theatre, in which members of a generation coming of age in a time of post-socialist globalization stage questions of identity in alternative dramatic genres and performance spaces to those of progressive theatre made under the auspices of the state. Within the framework of the independent theatre movement, young dramatists are creating a new avant-garde which expands upon canonical genres by incorporating visual media, freely adapting translations, and borrowing techniques from the international experimental theatre festival held annually in Cairo since 1988. Their eclectic genres for refracting everyday discourse through performance have produced narratives, characters and speech genres that resonate with young audiences and have even won the approval of older critics and administrators seeking a revival in avant-garde theatre. However, the new generation of avant-garde dramatists is unwilling to assimilate into state theatre. Located at the margins of state institutions and of new transnational media that stage trans-Arab identity, the independent dramatists carve a space for avant-garde culture critical of both state cultural ideologies and the notion of seamless integration into a global society.;The research is based on fieldwork in Cairo among dramatists who espoused the socialist-era notion of theatre as a means of cultural modernization in Egypt, acted as amateurs in university troupes or the state cultural centres called Cultural Palaces, and then decided to work independently. I examined their individual reasons for making time for theatre alongside jobs and families, and the collective aims for their avant-garde movement articulated in manifestoes, festivals and a new co-operative. Next I turn to focuses analyses of five successful plays by leading troupes. Through attendance at rehearsals and performances, studies of scripts and videotapes, I examined how troupes mobilized discourse in performance to cast new light on social roles inscribed in authoritative discourses. By counterposing the reconfiguration of place and role in these performances with more conventional dramatic genres at Cairo's state and commercial theatres, I ask how they stage the difference of identity formation for a new generation.