Wannūs, Saʻd Allāh, 1941-1997

Saadallah Wannous (Arabic: سعد الله ونوس) was a Syrian playwright, writer and editor on Arabic theater. He was born into an Alawite family in the village of Hussein al-Bahr, near Tartous, where he received his early education. He studied journalism in Cairo, Egypt and later served as editor of the art and cultural sections of the Syrian official newspaper Al-Baath and the Lebanese daily As-Safir. For many years, he was also director of the department for music and theater in the Ministry for Culture and National Guidance of Syria. In the late 1960s, he traveled to Paris where he studied theater and encountered various currents, trends, and schools of European theater. His career as a playwright had begun in the early Sixties with several short, one-act plays, characterized by his fundamental theme: the relationship between the individual and society and its authorities.