Description“Performing Modernity” examines the intimate relationship between politics and culture in debates over identity and modernity in Egypt. Tracing changes in theater and performance, from the opening of the Khedivial Opera House and Suez Canal (1869) to a
flourishing Cairene theatrical scene and demands for independence from colonial rule (circa 1919), it argues that modern theater was integral to shaping a uniquely Egyptian modernity. This project takes modernity to be a lived historical experience that affected social and cultural practices in all segments of society, reshaping and framing notions of changing Egyptian identities. New technologies and sites of sociability of the latenineteenth century—theaters, cabarets, the phonograph—alongside the old—streets, places of prayer, coffeehouses—offered myriad spaces for the articulation of that modernity. A focus on the content of performances, discussions surrounding them, and
the physical spaces in which they took place offers a unique window onto the ways in which Egyptians understood themselves, their relationships to one another, and their roles and responsibilities in a modernizing society. Critically, this project contends that
modernity in Egypt was localized; while it incorporated European influences, it shaped them to fit local contexts, histories, and needs. Drawing upon underutilized sources like opera, plays, and musical recordings, it focuses on the Khedivial Opera House, middle class Arabic theater, folk and women’s performances to demonstrate how each
contributed to notions of modernity and “Egyptianness” invoked in post-WWI demands for Egyptian independence.