Travelling Theatre: Saadallah Wannous's Journeys between the Local and the International

Abstract

This article examines the legacy of Syrian dramatist Saadallah Wannous through his early commitment to internationalism, with specific attention to his practice as a translator. It argues that to see Wannnous as an international playwright allows for an understudied dimension of the playwright's oeuvre to emerge and sheds light on an important era of post-colonial theatrical practice. By focusing on one of Wannous's most-staged plays, his adaptation of a little-known Peter Weiss play, the article places Wannous in his historical moment and sees how he was affected not just by international developments in theatre and performance, but also by a global geopolitics in which he was deeply invested.