Orientalist tendency in contemporary Western theatre

Orientalism, in the most general sense of the term, is an approach in which the West makes itself the center and defines the others only to situate itself. This approach does not denote a geographical distinction through an academic accumulation only; it also includes a cultural, political, and economic differentiation. In this sense, the main urge that consolidates orientalism is for Europe, which indicates "the West" in the new economic and cultural order it established with the Renaissance, to see "the East" as a colony as well as a market. As the basis and main paradigm of this new economic and cultural order, orientalism begins to attract more attention in both academic environments and cultural politics. Especially after the second half of the twentieth century, with regards to identity politics regarding the issues of "the Other," concepts of "I and the Other" and "Us and Them" become matters of the East and the West. Edward W. Said approaches orientalism through Foucault's discourse of knowledge-power and unravels that in addition to the othering imposed on the East by the West, orientalism is the self-othering of the East, too. This issue remains a persistent topic in fine arts, literature, cinema, and especially theater, as it gains widespread recognition over time with the momentum of cultural hegemony. In this regard, this research investigates how orientalism functions on the modern Western stage by paying attention to language that determines the hegemonic structure. Based on the relationship between culture and theatre, it explores the orientalist traces that impact the plays aesthetically. For that reason, it heavily focuses on matters of being Eastern in addition to concepts of the East and the West in the plays at hand. This study demonstrates that the playwrights of the plays in question reinforce orientalist perception through the characters in the plays.