Between Identity and Renewal

On Arab-Israeli Theatre Today

Abstract

The current state of Arab-Israeli theatre and the challenges it facesmust be understood against the background of Palestinian literatureand art since the 1948 war that dispossessed most of the Arab nationof its land. Poetry constituted - and still does today - the majorityof Arab-Israeli literature. Its central theme has been the question ofidentity. The birth ofthe Arab theatre in Israel too can be characterizedby the title "Between Identity and Renewal".This article briefly surveysthose issues linked to the tension between problems of identity andexistence and those of renewal and growth, including: the place ofthe Arab-Israeli theatre and the question of its "Arabness" againstthe background of the broader Middle East and the modern Arabon the one hand, and the local space in which the Hebrew-Jewishculture dominates on the other; a reduction in audience numbers;traditional spectator habits; "dictatorship" of the director and lack ofa dramaturge; the increasing number of one-man shows due to lackof resources; and - against and in spite of all these -the phenomenonof increasing activity of Arab-Israeli theatre in recent years, focusedon children's theatre and on developing a culture of festivals in orderto renew the Arab theatre and return its audiences.