The Rooting of Theater in the Arab Environment: Between the Illusion of Contrast and True Similarity

In the mid-20th century, Arab theatre had a strong will to break with Western forms as a way to reject European colonialist practices. Many artists, from North Africa to the Middle East, started favouring gatherings of the audience in a circle, a halqa, instead of Western proscenium theatre arrangement. Many independence movement politicians encouraged theatre activity as a way to empower the majority of illiterate people. After independence movements, an increasing number of Arab students who had studied abroad started to adapt Shakespeare and Molière plays within the local context.  Meanwhile, local playwrights such as Yusif Idris started calling for an original Arabic theatre. Yusuf Idris (1927 - 1991) masterpiece, "al-Farafir" (The Flipflops), is still considered a central reference for experimental theatre in the region. Works of Tawfiq al-Hakim (1898 - 1987) and Saad Allah Wannous (1949 - 1997), are very essential to the term "establishing theater in the Arab environment".
In light of the foregoing, the research raises a set of questions about the avant-garde idea of having an active spectator became a firmly established convention current and the influence of "establishing theater in the Arab environment" current, on expanding the process of engaging the audience in political activism, trying to discover its features, steps, and techniques. The study investigates the reality of the relevant performances of the sixties and seventies, and examines what was written about them, especially the extent to which material is drawn from the past or from history, to build a contemporary theatrical form, under the moto of benefiting theatrically from the "theatrical phenomena among the Arabs".