Cultural Sustainability: A Postdramatic and Intersectional Reading of Hannah Khalil’s Scenes from 73*Years

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Fall 12-2025

Abstract

Cultural sustainability is a newly proposed focus of inquiry within drama studies. Reflecting a philosophy of cultural survival, the concept is inextricably linked to the preservation, continuity, and transmission of cultural meaning, memory, heritage, and identity across generations amid rupture, displacement, and conflict. Inspired by the oral accounts of the Palestinian people, the Irish-Palestinian playwright Hannah Khalil (1977- ) depicts the lived experiences of Palestinians under occupation in her dark comedy Scenes from 73* Years (2022), thereby asserting the sustainability of their cultural heritage. Accordingly, this paper examines how cultural sustainability is dramatised in Scenes from 73* Years, set in the occupied territories of Palestine, through Hans-Thies Lehmann’s notions of postdramatic theatre as a lens for probing form. Moreover, it investigates how cultural sustainability may be impeded by individuals living at the intersection of multiple forms of oppression, using Kimberlé Crenshaw's intersectionality framework as an optic for contextual analysis. The paper concludes that the play’s postdramatic form and depicted intersectional experiences sustain culture even under conditions of cultural erasure and identity dispossession.

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