Man’s Politics Towards God: A Study in American and Iraqi Theatre Represented by Tony Kushner’s Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes; Perestroika and Ali Abdul Nabi Azzaidi’s Ya Rab/Oh!God

Abstract

Contemporary Theater is greatly influenced by the changes happening politically and socially all over the world. Man no longer looks for being part of a society or defining himself according to certain standards of tradition; he/she no longer search for their identity or feel suffocated by the new technology, his main concern in contemporary age is to redefine the identity away from politics and the judgmental eye of the society he is living in. Man is calling for resurrections of the god he admitted killing during the past millennium. A new perception of that god has been defined and this seems to be interesting in a world ruled by fighting sectors of extremists who are classified into two categories those who are against the rule of that god and those who are with. This paper examines the perception of that god in two different societies by two authors through studying their plays to explain how this theme is pictured by the two. The first is the American controversial playwright Tony Kushner who’s Angels In America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes; Perestroika raised epic questions in this matter, the other playwright is the Iraqi dramatist Ali Abdul Nabi Azzaidi who’s play Ya Rab/Oh!God introduced a new trend in the Iraqi theater. The paper adopts a socio-political school of criticism to achieve its goals.