للكاتب المسرحيّ السّوريّ سعد الله ونّوس

Abstract

This article is an examination of the theatrical writings of the Syrian playwright Saad Allah Wannous (1941-1997) in the first stage of his career as a dramatist. This stage, during which he wrote under the influence of the theater of the absurd, has received little attention from Arab critics and academics.

During this stage of Wannous’s evolution, his understanding of experimentation differed from the concept that he established so clearly later in his statements about a new Arab theater and the formulation of a foundational experiment in Arab theatre termed “the theatre of politicization.”

This early phase in Wannous’s development also constituted what might be classified as “mental writings”, which reflect the influence of European existential philosophy and the ideas of absurdist playwrights. The result was a hybrid mix of reality and the absurd with a distinctiveness that was at once artistic and substantial. This distinctiveness formed part of Wannous’ theatrical enterprise, in which he searched for experimental theatrical forms that conveyed profound sociopolitical messages closely tied to Arabs’ concrete reality, especially political corruption, tyranny and classism.

Key words: theater of the absurd, the myth of Sisyphus, experimentation, philosophy of the absurd, Arab reality, heritage, tyranny, dramatic structure, dialogue, satire, irony