Performing Islam - Volume 11, Issue 1, 2022

Despite their deep-seated presence in Britain, Muslims have been mostly excluded from theatre and popular entertainment. Sociopolitical restrictions have had an impact on the development of Muslim playwriting and it has taken longer than expected for Muslims to find their place within British theatre. Due to the expanding presence of Muslims in British and especially London theatres, the early twenty-first century has become a watershed for British Muslims. This article aims to show how British Muslims describe and represent their cultural, social and religious identities in theatrical works in twenty-first century Britain. Through Guleraana Mir’s play Coconut (2018) – an example of British Muslim playwriting and representation – the representation of the relationship between Islam and Britishness will be examined. This article falls in the wider context of Islamic performances and theatre practices of the twenty-first-century Britain.

King Saud University was founded in 1957 as the first university in Saudi Arabia. It was the leading university in presenting theatrical activities and its theatre movement has influenced the landscape of Saudi theatre since 1974–75. The history of theatre in this university has not been explored and investigated very well. This study, therefore, attempts to provide a reading on the history of the theatrical movement at King Saud University, seeking to shed light on various aspects of the characteristics of the university’s theatrical movement and its organizational style. Due to the scarcity of research sources on the subject, the study was based mainly on reports that were written about theatrical activity and kept in the archives of the university. The scope of this study was limited to the university theatre course in only a quarter of a century from 1975 to 2000.