The Screens

The work has no narrative structure, but comprises a series of 17 individual scenes depicting insurrection (in an unspecified Arab land) against a mindless and blundering colonial power.

[4] The "screens" of the title are metaphors: in one sense, for example, they stand for on-screen television news reports filtering out the ugly realities of war, both political and physical.

[12] In 1964 in London, Peter Brook staged two-thirds of the play (its first twelve scenes, in a performance that lasted for two-and-a-half hours) at the Donmar Rehearsal Rooms as part of his experimental "Theatre of Cruelty" season with the Royal Shakespeare Company; he abandoned plans to stage the complete text, partly due to dissatisfaction with Bernard Frechtman's translation.

There were no public performances: the rehearsal space was fitted out with seating to form an improvised theatre and the audience for the fully staged and costumed final version was by invitation only.

[13] An abridgement by Howard Brenton, with a running time of three hours, was mounted by Walter Donohue, the RSC literary editor, at the Bristol Old Vic studio in 1973.

[22] In 1989 Joanne Akalaitis directed Paul Schmidt's translation at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, with Jesse Borrego as Said, and music by Philip Glass and Foday Musa Suso.