Trans*versal Afterlives of Comedy: The Queer Arab Plays of Raphaël Amahl Khouri

Abstract

Abstract This article explores No Matter Where I Go and She He Me, two plays by Raphaël Amahl Khouri, a contemporary queer and trans playwright of Arab and German heritage. After charting the histories of comedy and Arab theatre, it examines the dialogue of the two plays with Greco-Roman, Arab and German avant-garde theatre through Abraham Weil’s notion of trans*versality, a queer reformulation of Félix Guattari’s concept. It proposes that Khouri’s plays enact trans*versality thematically, by depicting characters of various gender identities and sexual orientations, and aesthetically, in their eclectic deployment of dramatic conventions from various cultural traditions. It is argued that Khouri’s comedies outgrow a Eurocentric understanding of what constitutes ‘theatre’, while they also shed light on the specific intersection of trans and queer gender identities, sexual orientations and Arab identities in a world that is keen to erase or ignore these anti-normative subject positions.