End of The World Theatre, Egypt. Image ©Kaupo Kikkas

Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal does not seek to be exclusive nor to promote any nationalist or religion-based agenda. In strictly geographical and political terms, the journal will be devoted to theatre and performance material from the member states of the League of Arab States, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, but also diasporic literature from around the globe created by former residents of those states or their descendants.  Moreover, both the operative adjectives Arab and Islamic should be understood here to demarcate, primarily, a general cultural area of scholarly exploration and negotiation. Investigations of material from the many non-Arab and non-Muslim communities located within the Arab/Muslim world are welcomed by the journal.

Subjects can be drawn from all areas of theatre activity as well as from performance work that lies outside the traditional European concept of theatre. The journal will welcome essays of a scholarly nature, which will be submitted to peer review, also reports on current productions, interviews, and translations of plays and theoretical statements, and reports, notices and announcements of current and future productions and festivals or other matters of potential general interest to the readership. The journal will appear twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research.