Anti-plays, the postdramatic and the poetics of genre : Stein’s circular play and ‘Abdul-Hadis circle talk

الملخص EN

Traditionally and following Aristotle's postulates in the Poetics, the dramatic has been more associated with being representational as opposed to possessing epic or narrative qualities.

Interestingly, with Brecht's influence, there became a shift of interest from the dramatic to the epic.

In addition, later on the postdramatic became a term used to describe plays that move more towards the performative spectrum.

The move from the dramatic to the epic yielded to the new performative and experimental culture of the postdramatic.

Anti-theatre is the avant-garde theatre that rejects certain traditional aspects and mimesis, and is presumed in this research to mark theatre's transition towards postdramatic performances in two different cultures.

By means of a methodology informed by Literary Genre Studies and Performance Studies, this article explores two plays— or rather anti-plays— as moments whereby a type of anti-theatre was vanguard: the plays were similarly a passage or a bridge from the representational to the postdramatic; i.e..

performance-centered theatre.

That is.

anti- theatre usually happens in transitional moments; as a precursor and a bridge.

This article thus proposes a reading of A Circular Play (1920).

a modernist/cubist play, by the American playwright/novelist Gertrude Stein and Of the Circle’s Talk (Min Hadith ad- Z)a ’erah) (1994).

a postmodernist play, by the Egyptian playwright/poet £Alaa' ‘Abdul- Had!, as vanguard anti-plays that responded to a certain moment in their respective cultures.