Samer Al-Saber

In the United States, research on Arabs and Muslims has been historically conducted by white scholars, primarily social scientists, and communicated by white cultural producers, artists, playwrights, and screenwriters in popular performance, all to increasing Islamophobic racism, widely accepted anti-Arab hatred, and ethnic discrimination. From the point of departure that cultural productions are scholarly treatises in performance, “A Disregarded Ethnicity In Theatre Production” partially funds anti-racist full-length plays. This “proof of concept” artistic and scholarly project implements a collaborative funding model for non-commercial and anti-racist theatrical performance in partnership with professional theatres, and in the process asks: how does the dissemination of scholarship in performance differ through the key variables of geography, language, and cultural context? While disseminating original scholarly research on race and ethnicity in performance through mediums of popular culture, these theatrical productions function as required data to answer crucial research questions. Once the efficacy of the performance is measured through participant feedback, surveys, and critical media responses, it is compared between two geographical and temporal sites. The constants are the playwright, production concept, and the activist play-text. The variables are the site (the Middle East and the continental USA), language (Arabic and English), and cultural context (Arab vs Arab-American and American). Methodologically, this project serves two academic functions: 1; Disseminating research in the form of public scholarship through performance. 2; Comparative fieldwork on race and ethnicity in two unique geographical regions.