Introduction

Against the background of the contentions and debate on the nation, national identity and national culture Van der Poll and Van der Zalm frame the concept of national plays by considering the characteristics of a national play and its different notions. As is shown in this chapter, the term is related to, but not identical to terms such as national theatre, ‘classic’ plays, and ‘state-of-the-nation’ plays—as defined in Nadine Holdsworth’s Theatre and Nation. Van der Poll and Van der Zalm demonstrate that, whereas the canonization of classic plays is part of a broader Western cultural process, the canonization of national plays is part of a particular national cultural discourse. A national play, and the stagings of that play, function on both representational and constructional levels, representing and constructing or deconstructing the nation and ideas about national identity. It is a discursive construct as well as what Bhabha defined as a performative narrative strategy, which circulates through society and by being repeatedly re-interpreted on stage can criticize, redefine or even create (new) national patterns of self-identification.