Reception and Creation of Musical Theatre in the Arab World: A Decolonial Approach

The dynamics underlying the first experiments in modern Arab theatre are closely linked to the question of ‘modernity’ which has dominated Arab thought since the nahḍa. The encounter with Europe stimulated a vigorous debate among the Arab literati of the time concerning the adoption or rejection of the new artistic genres imported from the West. This chapter seeks to examine the issue through the perspective of Lebanese scholar Tarek El- Ariss, who argues that by exploring this encounter in all its complexity and ‘displacing the West from its central position’, it becomes possible to rid the Arabic cultural output ‘of the anxiety of influence vis- à- vis European cultural models to which traditional comparative studies have subjected it for so long’.