Staging Trauma MESA proposal 2015 From the second half of the twentieth century, theater has played an important role in Syrian political life. From masrah al-tasyis in the 1970s to post-Cold War drama, playwrights connected to the people’s awareness of injustice. In the 1990s, some courageous intellectuals had articulated in code the need to fight the dictatorial Asad regime, yet they had seemed suicidally utopian at the time. “You shall not escape us even while you sleep,” wrote Mamduh Adwan in his 1995 play The Ghoul, “Your victims' vengeance will pursue you for blood... Even if you muzzle their complaints they will haunt you even as ghosts... You have poisoned the life of the people, wounded their souls.” Their predictions came true in the extraordinary outburst of popular anger in 2011. Even after the revolution devolved into civil war and hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been killed and millions have been displaced, theater is again serving the people even in exile. In this paper, I will examine two plays involving Syrian refugees that were staged in 2014: King Lear in Jordan’s Zaatari camp and Antigone in Beirut. The director of King Lear, Syrian actor Nawwar Bulbul, worked with Syrian refugee children for months, preparing them for this one moment of happiness in the desolation of the crowded camp. Even if only for a short while, theater brought dignity and a measure of agency to Syrians who had lost everything. In December 2014, Syrian refugee women reimagined Sophocles’ Antigone about civil war in Thebes to render their own experiences. Under the direction of Omar Abu Saada, Hiba Sahly intertwines her struggle to bury her brother killed somewhere in Syria with that of the classical Greek heroine. This paper will analyze the contemporary adaptations of Shakespeare and Sophocles in order to understand how these classical plays provided the frame narrative for today’s Syrian refugees to articulate their despair but also their demand for justice.