In this paper, I explore the nuances of ‘modernity’, ‘national progress’ and ‘consciousness’ by focusing on theatre as envisioned by two Nahda intellectuals in fin de siècle Egypt – Ali Mubarak and Abdallah al-Nadim. I argue that they pursued their projects in an organic manner, a la Gramsci, but while Mubarak espoused a top down approach, Nadim’s was more variegated and unusually subaltern for the Nahda discourse of modernity. However, Mubarak and Nadim still shared mutual ground pertaining to the formation of a national project of modernization. Both sought total social transformation that went beyond small and secluded intellectual initiatives. They also attributed social change to an entity larger than individual self-motivation. For Mubarak, this entity was the central state, while for Nadim it was a collective national consciousness leading to national independence. In a way, the institution of theatre is emblematic of their intellectual divergence and anxiety over a perceived ‘public’ and its education. The paper’s analysis is hinged upon two sites of investigation apparent in Mubarak and Nadim’s writings: the discourses that gave theatre its shape and content; and the social agents allowed to partake in the theatrical modernity. Mubarak supported the state institutions’ intervention in educating the populace in order to achieve ‘national progress’ modelled on European/Colonial modernity. However, the modernity he envisioned was cloaked in an Islamic discourse that invoked linear history. As he put it, “modernity is a step towards historical progress that demystifies the true and rational elements of Islam”. According to this discourse, theatre is no more than a modern expression of Sharia law, that would propagate the Islamic legal formula of “promoting virtue and preventing vice” through art. Accordingly, the social agents involved in the theatrical project should come only from the state and its modern institutions, making them act as the modern Caliph. Nadim, on the other hand, regarded theatre as a site for cultivating ‘national consciousness’, through a dialectical process of unravelling social injustices via art. He built upon nostalgic discourses of ‘eastern glory’ that street performers typified. Accordingly, he wrote, the social agents that would best befit this unravelling are workers and students of eastern literature since their social context is ripe with resistance of colonial allure.