National Identity

This chapter aims at presenting the complex correlations between nationalism and modern theater with a special focus on performative construction of national identity. Whether seen as primordial essence or as a social construction national identity is grounded on public rituals and artistic practices (rather than rational ideological systems) which makes theatrical stage, along with print, museums, other media, central to understanding how imagined communities come into being and continue their existence into the global contemporary society. The chapter addresses the question of how the theatrical apparatus of bourgeois theater and staged representations in national theaters function in forming theatrical nationhood as well as concepts (postcolonialism), strategies (theatrical public sphere), artists (Jean Genet), and practices (interweaving performance cultures) that contest the dominant modes of performing national identity.