Theatre Tradition on Trial

This treatise re-visits Greek and Arab-Muslim theatres from the avant-garde perspective to illuminate the aesthetics of theatre to which scholars in the School of Orientalism and the School of Arab Intelligentsia should return in their attempts to evaluate Arab-Muslim theatre. Without this illumination, scholars will fail to objectively read and evaluate Arab-Muslim histrionic practices. Availing itself of Abdelkbir Khatibi's double approach and proceeding from the conviction that theatre is the achievement of both actors and spectators while drama is an artistic linguistic creation, it critiques the findings of these schools and challenges Orientalist writing. This treatise thus deems it needful to unearth or more precisely to review avant-garde aesthetics of performance to explain the concept of theatre and to call into question the findings of the schools in question. It sheds significant luster on Greek tragedy from the avant-garde perspective to direct attention to the urgent epistemological task of reconsidering and deconstructing hegemonic European historiography which thrives with creating "gaps, absences, lapses, ellipses" in the cultures of others.