In the late 1960s, triggered by the Arab defeat of the
1967 war with
Israel, political Arabic theater was born. The defeat resulted in the creation of a new level of awareness among artists and intellectuals, particularly toward the government-controlled mass media and its infiltration of
popular culture. In 1969, joined by a group of playwrights, Wannous called for an Arab Festival for Theater Arts to be hosted in
Damascus, later realized and attended by
dramatists from all over the
Arab world. In this festival, he introduced his new project: A "theater of politicization" to replace the traditional "political theater." He intended theater to play a more active role in the process of social and political change. His plays include
Elephant, the King of All Times (1969),
The King is the King (1977) and ''Hanthala's Journey from Slumber to Consciousness
(1978). His 1968 play entitled Haflat samar min ajl 5 Huzayrān
(An Evening Party for the Fifth of June'') was noted as among the best Arabic responses to the 1967 war. In the late 1970s, Wannous helped establish and later taught at the
Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts in Damascus. He also started the magazine
Theater Life (
Hayyat al-masrahiya), of which he was
editor-in-chief for years. In 1982, in the aftermath of the Israeli siege and invasion of
Beirut, he lived through a period of shock and ceased to write for a decade. Back to writing in the early 1990s, Wannous delivered to
Arabic theater a series of plays no less political than his earlier ones, starting with
The Rape (1990), a play about the
Arab-Israeli conflict. Afterwards, he wrote
Fragments from History (1994),
Rituals of Signs and Transformations (1994),
Miserable Dreams (1995),
A Day of Our Time (1995), and finally
Mirage Epic (1996). In 1996, he was invited by
UNESCO and the
International Institute of Theater to present that year's address to the world theater community during its celebration of
International Theater Day on March 27. This was the first invitation for an Arab writer since the organization started this tradition in 1963. In 2014, his plays
Rituals of Signs and Transformations, An Evening Party for the Fifth of June, The Adventure of the Head of Mamluk Jaber, and
The Drunken Days were published in English by the
Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. Another English edition of these plays with speeches, essays and interviews with the author was published by
Yale University Press as ''Sentence to Hope: A Sa'dallah Wannous Reader'' in 2019. ==Personal life==