Abstract
Ali Ahmad Bakatheer (1910-1969) wrote a number of plays which dealt with some of the nation's pressing issues. One of these issues is colonialism. He believed that the theatre can be used to address these issues, enlighten the masses to the dire consequences of colonialism, and awaken within them the call for liberation and anti-colonialism. Two of these plays serve to show the theme of anti-coloniality in his plays and are written in two different styles showing his originality and versatility. Those two plays, Mismar Juha and Imberatoriyya fil Mazad (An Empire in Auction), address the issues of colonialism and awakening people to take an anti-colonialist stand. Mismar Juha addresses, in a comic matrix, the pretext the colonizer uses to enter, and then occupy a country, which is in this case, the Suez Canal, the nail they used to take over the whole country. While in Imberatoriyya fil Mazad, Bakatheer envisions the fall of the British Empire after the imagined 'Delhi Conference', which actually took place as the Bandung Conference (1955) three years after the play was written. While Mismar Juha calls the Egyptians to realize the pretext the British use to justify their colonization of Egypt using a historical anecdote to comment on a contemporary issue, Imberatoriyya fil Mazad imagines the rise of the Afro-Asiatic nations to take an anti-colonial stand and free themselves of the yoke of colonialism.
Author Information
Raad Kareem Abd-Aun, University of Babylon, Iraq
Paper Information
Conference: IICAHDubai2016
Stream: Humanities - Literature/Literary Studies*
This paper is part of the IICAHDubai2016 Conference Proceedings (View)
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