ABSTRACT
Within the network of relationships, the connection to time and space, and the dislocation of migrations, North African women playwrights choose to address a number of specific issues. First among these is the inequity in the status of women in their respective societies, with particular attention to the questions of sequestration and illiteracy. Of special interest to the beur writers is the changing shape of the family and social structure. Many authors, both in and out of the Maghreb, choose to discuss the problems of bureaucratic paralysis, religious hypocrisy, and governmental corruption and indifference. The most striking discourse I have found, and this cuts across theatre, performance art, and the cinema, is the one that tracks the parallel courses of domestic and national violence and places them in juxtaposition. Plays, performances, and films of this kind make a connection between cycles of violence that occur in the home, and those that are carried out on a national, or even international, scale.
