Experimental theatre in the Arab world emerged in the post-colonial era as a fusion of Western theatrical traditions with local performance cultures such as music and dance.
Throughout the years, experimental theatre in the Arab world has gradually converted into a synonymous of non-mainstream and underground art movements in which artists are always evolving and breaking down conventional markers between actors and spectators.
Many artists, from North Africa to the Middle East, started favouring gatherings of the audience in a circle, a halqa, instead of Western proscenium theatre arrangement.
After independence movements, an increasing number of Arab students who had studied abroad started to adapt Shakespeare and Molière plays within the local context.
[7] Influenced by the role of social media on the Arab uprisings, some artists have even expanded the process of engaging the audience in political activism in response to contemporary issues by introducing interactive means such as Internet and videos in the plays.
[8] Experimental theatre in the Arab world can be divided into three geographical categories: the Middle East, Maghreb and the Persian Gulf states.
This project consists of a mix of professional and amateur actors who go on stage and deliver short personal stories collected in Tahrir Square and through social networks.
[12] More recently, Rabih Mroué and Lina Saleh put on stage "33 rounds and a few seconds" which is a play with many communication tools but without actors.
From the start the theatre was deeply involved in staging productions in its own center, located in East Jerusalem, as well as touring throughout the Occupied Territories, with the goal of developing local theater, encourage and enable greater social cohesion, solidarity and sumud (steadfastness), and provide opportunities for local Palestinian artists more broadly to develop their craft.
In 1991, two prominent Palestinian actors, Edward Muallem and Iman Aoun established the Ashtar Theatre in Jerusalem, and four years later moved to Ramallah.
Allegedly because of its boundary-pushing art and the violation of the conservative mores of the local population it represented, Mer-Khamis was murdered in front of the Theatre in April 2011.
Forum theatre techniques were also deployed that led to “spect-actor” interventions with separate Jewish and Arab students focusing on violence-charged scenarios.
[17] In Morocco, Mohammed Kaghat is seen as one of the best representatives of the Moroccan murtajala, a subversive, comic and ironic improvised representation of theatre practices.
It consists of an online platform that shares recorded performances of young theatre companies from Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates with a global audience.
The featuring companies were chosen in a contest in which the actors and the creative teams of each participating country had only one day to build the set, rehearse and perform.