Metatheatre and the Semiotics of Subjugation: A Reading in Merya'e a Play by Boukathir Douma

Abstract

This study aims to provide a scholarly analysis of Merya'e by the Tunisian playwright Bouthaïr Douma through an examination of the text’s aesthetic and semantic functioning. More specifically, it investigates the dual dramatic structure of the play and explores how the playwright mobilizes the “play within the play” technique (metatheatre) to uncover and critique conditions of oppression and alienation. Methodologically, the study is grounded in a structural-semiotic approach, which serves as an operative analytical framework for examining the paratextual thresholds of the text and the actantial organization of characters and their interrelations within the dramatic system. The analysis shows that the title Merya'e constitutes a condensed semantic center, signifying psychological castration and the deprivation of human will. It also reveals that the interpenetration of the actors’ real identities and their dramatic roles exceeds the level of formal experimentation, functioning instead as a coherent semiotic structure that reflects hierarchies of power and submission and lays bare the erosion of justice and equality in oppressed societies.