Theatricality in Philip Roth's Sabbath's Theater

Abstract:In Sabbath's Theater (1995), Philip Roth returns to his themes of predilection, namely art, sexuality, identity, and American society, but reexamines them through the mediation of theatricality, a concept used to illuminate a wide range of cultural phenomena and communicative processes. This article investigates the cultural, sexual, and identity politics that the narrative considers while constructing a monumental character, Mickey Sabbath, a theater man par excellence, who accumulates a wide range of theatrical positions to severely critique American culture and the narrowness of the American mind.