Outside looking in : unexpected encounters of dramatic time and place

Abstract EN

This article describes the intentions, conceptualizations, collaborative processes, and public and critical receptions of three plays in the author's nineteen-year directing career at the American University in Cairo.

These are Caryl Churchill's Mad Forest (2012), a response to the aborted 2011 Egyptian revolution; Sophocles's Antigone (2002), an interpretive response to the post-9/11 world; and Naomi Wallace's The Fever Chart: Three Visions of the Middle East (2008), an American playwright's attempt to interpret aspects of the contemporary Middle East for a western audience.

The article explores efforts to shape western dramatic texts and perspectives to meet contemporary local realities.