Futures: An Anthology of Contemporary Arab Theater
Agnes Borinsky editor Yasser Abu Saqra editor Paul Spera editor
Format:Paperback
Publisher:53rd State Press
Publishing:12th Mar '26
£17.99
This title is due to be published on 12th March, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
Futures is an anthology of six new plays written in Arabic, published here in English translation. Including five plays selected from over 500 submissions to Masrah Ensemble’s 2021 Open Call and one by Masrah Ensemble’s former playwright-in-residence, these six texts—by Yasser Abu Shaqra, Wael Kadour, Arzé Khodr, Rim Mejdi, Nasr Sami, and Leila Toubel—represent a diverse array of voices and styles, and push at the limits of theatrical form and public discourse. The volume features an introduction by theater writer/director/academic Hanan Kassab Hassan along with short introductions to the plays by US-based playwrights Lucas Baisch, Jess Barbagallo, Jordan Baum, Agnes Borinsky, Nazareth Hassan, and Haruna Lee.
Sometimes We Remember by Arzé Khodr (Lebanon). Translated by Clem Naylor, with an introduction by Nazareth Hassan.
A Fornesian diamond of a play that unfolds in a series of seemingly simple domestic and urban scenes, about the lure of dwelling in memories of war.
Braveheart by Wael Kadour (Syria). Translated by Clem Naylor, with an introduction by Lucas Baisch.
A play about a group of friends writing a novel together, in which relationships collapse and get rebuilt through the act of writing. How do you move out of a state of war into a time of presumed stability?
Ruby by Leila Toubel (Tunisia). Translated by Hisham Ben Khamsa, with an introduction by Haruna Lee.
A rhythmic monologue, lyrical and dark, in which a woman unpacks a life of misogyny and violence as she prepares to meet her daughter for the first time.
Uprooting; Or, the Cat and Dog Pizza Chapters by Nasr Sami (Tunisia). Translated by Jonas Elbousty, with an introduction by Jess Barbagallo.
A dizzying trip into a world of violence and distortion, by way of the Biblical Song of Songs. In which cats are nailed to walls, and two lovers seek to become one.
Eternity by Rim Mejdi (Morocco). Translated by Caline Nasrallah, with an introduction by Jordan Baum.
A young woman is stuck on a train, and just wants to get off. An allegorical knot of a play that moves between liveness and video, vernacular and formal Arabic, with interludes from Rimbaud's French.
Left Out Gone Bad by Yasser Abu Shaqra (Palestine/Syria), with an introduction by Agnes Borinsky.
A Syrian...
“These are texts that neither compromise nor seek to entertain; they do not bow to established norms and conventions. They scar because they are truthful, and their impact on the reader, whether through reading or performance, will transcend the old categories of fear and pity, going beyond mere identification or estrangement. They emanate from us and they are for us. They map our own memory, describe our own reality, and express our own pain.”
—Hanan Kassab Hassan
“When I finished reading the six plays in Futures I felt I’d become a vibrating point in an expanding, impending, defamiliarized world. The six playwrights included—Arzé Khodr, Wael Kadour, Leila Toubel, Sami Nasr, Rim Mejdi, Yasser Abu Shaqra—are each keenly distinct in their work and insight. Gathering them here in translation makes for a stunning, multifarious, explosive book. Displacements, hauntings, authoritarian shadows, linguistic power struggles, families severed and returned, choices and dark absences of choice, mercy and its opposites, remembering and forgetting among ghosts and migrations and others’ dreams…These playwrights (and translators and editors) are preparing their audience, with love and imagination and lucid horror, for our own futures, grabbing our hands as the train picks up speed.”
—Hilary Plum, author of State Champ and Important Groups
ISBN: 9798986581491
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
352 pages