Rituel Pour Une Métamorphose, by Sa’dallah Wannous.
Photo: Cosimo Mirco Magliocca, Comédie Francaise, Paris 2013.

Manuscripts should normally fall between 1500 and 5000 words, the shorter contributions normally reporting on a single production and the longer several related productions or festival reports. All submissions must concern themselves with recent or contemporary work in Arab theatre and performances created and presented in Arab countries first. In some cases also Arab theatre productions at US venues without extensive reviews will be considered. Strong preferences will be given to contributions reporting from Arab countries. Historical studies and literary analyses are not acceptable, although some such material may of course be incorporated into reviews when relevant. The reviews should be primarily descriptive, not judgmental, although reviewers may of course include their opinions of the work. In addition to reports on current productions or groups of productions, we welcome interviews with prominent Arab theatre figures – actors, directors, designers, and dramatists.

Proposals or articles may be submitted to our editors at arabstages@gc.cuny.edu. Please include the author’s full name, institutional affiliation (if relevant), telephone number, and Email address. Contributors are also asked to include a) a short biographical note (no longer than 250 words); b) relevant images for publication c) a document detailing each image’s caption and credit.

Miscellaneous Style & Formatting Rules

Primary guides:

• For style and punctuation, The Chicago Manual of Style
• For spelling, Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary.

A or An
a historical (not an)

Act
should be lowercase.  “act 3” not “Act 3”

Acronyms
All capitals, no periods: UN, US, WHO

Adjectives:

• Use hyphens in compound adjectives: self-reliant, twentieth-century play
• But: African American, Asian American, etc.
• Adverbs ending in “ly” are not followed by hyphens
• Most commonly used prefixes form closed compounds: e.g., antebellum; antihero; coauthor; coeditor; metatheatre; reexamine. Exceptions include homographs (re-create) and potentially difficult forms: anti-utopian; co-edition.

Adverbial transitions
Always precede any of the following words with a semicolon and follow with a comma when the word is used transitionally between clauses of a compound sentence: then, however, thus, hence, indeed, accordingly, besides, and therefore.

Biographies
Contributor Bios should be no longer than 200 words and should be updated regularly.

Captions
As simple as possible. In first reference, playwright’s name, play title, director’s name, and photo credit. In subsequent captions, drop author’s first name and director’s name. Example: Jean-Paul Satrte’s Dirty Hands, directed by Andreas Kriegenburg. Photo: Arno Declair. Or: Le Theatre du Solei’s Les Ephemeres. Photo: courtesy Avignon Festival. Centered in box, Times 8 pt. font.

Commas
Use serial commas: thus, thus, and thus.

Dates:

• Use day month year: 1 November 1954
• Spell out months in full.
• Spell out centuries in full: twentieth, not 20th
• Write decades in full: 1960s; not 1960’s, 60s, ’60s, or sixties.
• “The 1993–94 season” or “from 1993 to 1994” or “between 1993 and 1994”
• Note: use an En dash, not a hyphen, for “1993–94 season.”

Ellipses
No spaces between periods.  (“…” not “. . .”)

Footnotes:

• Chicago Manual of Style should be used: Julie Scott Meisami and Paul Starkey, Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature (New York: Routledge, 1998), 65.
• Convert all endnotes to footnotes
• Numerical widgets as ⁷ not roman numerals (I, ii, …) or dots (•)

Foreign Titles
NO Arabic diacritics.

Italics

• Do use for: titles of books, periodicals, and plays;
• foreign words and phrases should be italicized on first usage only (subsequent notes/translations are encouraged, especially for titles)
• [sic] (Note that sic is not followed by a period.)
• Don’t use for: scholarly abbreviations: e.g., et. al., ibid., i.e.; foreign-derived words or phrases entered without italics in the dictionary, such as: cliché; mise en scène; vis à vis.

Numbers and Number Ranges:

• In general, spell out numbers one to ninety-nine; use digits for 100 and above.
• But: use Arabic numerals for verse plays: 1.1.111–12.
• Otherwise, use lowercase and Arabic: act 3; scene 3; scene 3.3; part 3.
• With times, lower case and periods on a.m. and p.m.

Onstage and Offstage
These are both one word, not two.

Photos
Each contributor should submit one picture along with their article (with the proper caption, see above captions guideline.) Photos should be 300dpi, JPEG, preferably in color, ideally 6×9 inches (six inches wide, 9 inches high; 300dpi for the full size image.) It is the responsibility of the contributor to secure the copyright and permission for the use of the images for AS (Arab Stages). The photo credit has to be included in the JPEG file name and needs to be listed at the end of the manuscript. The photo credit and JPEG image file should be listed in the following format:

Rituel Pour Une Métamorphose, by Sa’dallah Wannous. Photo: Cosimo Mirco Magliocca, Comédie Francaise, Paris 2013.

Possessives
‘s after a proper name ending in “s” (Williams’s), except for old Greeks (Socrates’).  Or any name ending in an “-es” sound (Laertes’)

Punctuation
Comma and period inside quotation marks and parenthesis; colon and semicolon outside.

Quotes
Use Straight Quotes (” “) and not Smart Quotes (“ ”) when editing in a Word program.

References to Previous Editions
Should include Volume/Number and Date enclosed in brackets.  Ex: [AS 1.1, Fall 2014].

Scene
Should be lowercase.  “scene 3” not “Scene 3”

Spaces
One space after periods that end a sentence. In fact, one space after all punctuation (colons, etc.). No space before or after dashes.

Spellings:

• Theatre, except in proper nouns using “Theater.”
• Employ American spelling and usage: e.g., analyze; center; color; gray; labor; while (not whilst), toward (not towards)
• City University of New York Graduate Center (on first reference, then CUNY Graduate Center)
• Use the following particular spellings:

aesthetic
acknowledgement
actor-director (not actor / director)
agit-prop
avant-garde
Chekhov
co-opt
debut, debuted
judgment
metatheatre
premiere (as of a play)
postmodern
repartee
stageworthy