The Middle Eastern American Theatre: Negation or Negotiation of Identity

After 9/11, hundreds of theatric performances exploring the consequences of the ‘war on terror’ have been staged from Cairo to New York. This book provides insights into how the Middle Eastern American dramatists and characters responded to the war and to other post-9/11 events – although there is no direct reference to the event in three dramas, namely Browntown, Ten Acrobats in an Amazing Leap of Faith, and Nine Parts of Desire – via exploring how the Middle Easterners in the American context were stereotyped, how they resisted those policies, and to what extent their lives were influenced by consequences of those politics, by reading between the lines according to Homi Bhabha’s  postcolonial concepts.

This book argues for the necessity of understanding and recognizing the Middle Eastern people in the American context, by negotiation instead of negation of hyphenated identities to prevent transferring into potential problems for the whole society, and calls for the Middle Eastern dramatists to produce works that claim a recognition of their identity in America as well as in a more global context and correct distorted images.