Professor Abir Hamdar abir.hamdar@durham.ac.uk
Professor
Staging Silence: Arab Women's Cancer Experience
Hamdar, Abir
Authors
Abstract
This paper offers a critical reflection on the play I Am Waiting for You [Wasafuli Al-Sabr] which was written by the author and directed by Lina Abyad. Based on extensive interviews with real-life female cancer patients from the Arab world, the play was the first dramatic staging of Arab women’s experience of cancer. To summarise, the paper begins by underlining that the history of women’s cancer in the Arab World has hitherto been a history of silence – of shame, taboo, prohibition, and repression – before going on to reflect upon the creative, textual, and dramatic strategies the play deployed to make this silence ‘speak.’ The essay then focuses on the ways in which this unspoken and unexpressed experience of cancer itself became a (necessary) artistic medium by which the subjectivity of women who had experienced cancer could be articulated. In particular, the essay addresses three layers or forms of silence in the play: (1) the silence of the women the author interviewed; (2) how silence functioned as a structural device or trope within the play and, finally and most importantly, (3) how this silence could be resisted, if not verbally, then at least physically and materially.
Citation
Hamdar, A. (2021). Staging Silence: Arab Women's Cancer Experience. Studies in Theatre and Performance, 41(2), 197-211. https://doi.org/10.1080/14682761.2019.1683348
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Acceptance Date | Oct 3, 2019 |
Online Publication Date | Oct 28, 2019 |
Publication Date | 2021 |
Deposit Date | Oct 11, 2019 |
Publicly Available Date | Apr 28, 2021 |
Journal | Studies in Theatre and Performance |
Print ISSN | 1468-2761 |
Electronic ISSN | 2040-0616 |
Publisher | Taylor and Francis Group |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 41 |
Issue | 2 |
Pages | 197-211 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1080/14682761.2019.1683348 |
Public URL | https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1288451 |
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Copyright Statement
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Studies in theatre and performance on 28 October 2019 available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/14682761.2019.1683348
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