What connects Africa and the Caribbean is trans-Atlantic slavery which transported numerous sons and daughters of Africa to the plantations of the New World in the service of Western European capitalism. Because of this shared experience of trans-Atlantic slavery and European colonialism, issues of culture and identity are major concerns for African and Caribbean playwrights. Slavery and colonialism had involved systematic acts of cultural denigration, de-humanisation and loss of freedom, which left imprints on the collective psyches of the colonised Africans and enslaved peoples of African descent in the Caribbean. Both experiences brought intense cultural and psychic dislocations which still impact in various ways on the lives of Africans and peoples of African descent around the world. African and Caribbean playwrights try to help their peoples regain their dignities by affirming their cultures, histories and identities. The book focuses on the similarities and differences between Caribbean theatre and the theatre of sub-Saharan Africa, showing how identities and cultures are negotiated and affirmed in each case.

Because of a shared experience of European colonialism and trans-Atlantic slavery, issues of culture and identity are major concerns for African and Caribbean playwrights. Slavery and colonialism had involved systematic acts of cultural denigration, de-humanization and loss of freedom, which left imprints on the collective psyches of the colonized Africans and enslaved peoples of African descent in the Caribbean. Both experiences brought intense cultural and psychic dislocations which still impact in various ways on the lives of Africans and peoples of African descent around the world. African and Caribbean playwrights try to help their peoples regain their dignities by affirming their cultures, histories and identities. The book focuses on the similarities and differences between Caribbean theatre and the theatre of sub-Saharan Africa, showing how identities and cultures are negotiated and affirmed in each case.

Comprehensive alphabetical guide to theatre in Africa and the Caribbean: national essays and entries on countries and performers.

John Conteh-Morgan explores the multiple ways in which African and Caribbean theatres have combined aesthetic, ceremonial, experimental, and avant-garde practices in order to achieve sharp critiques of the nationalist and postnationalist state and to elucidate the concerns of the francophone world. More recent changes have introduced a transnational dimension, replacing concerns with national and ethnic solidarity in favor of irony and self-reflexivity. New Francophone African and Caribbean Theatres places these theatres at the heart of contemporary debates on global cultural and political practices and offers a more finely tuned understanding of performance in diverse diasporic networks.

This book engages with contemporary cultural production in Africa, focusing on theatre in Sierra Leone as main case study. The author provides coverage of, and insights into, such themes as cultural globalisation, commodification, the global creative economy, culture and development, international relations and contemporary cultural production in Sierra Leone within the context of local and global flows of people, media, images, technologies, finance and ideas. Combining the analysis of theatre in Sierra Leone and its aesthetics with its policy, structural and institutional context, this book highlights in much detail and nuance the interconnectedness between the micro- and the macro-levels of cultural production, between the local and the global, and between aesthetics, politics, policy, governance structures and institutions. This book links the particular findings from the author’s fieldwork to larger issues of contemporary local cultural production within the context of globalisation, commodification and decolonisation; adds a postcolonial perspective to existing theories and approaches to cultural production, management and policy, which is still largely missing from the existing discourse; and also contributes to addressing the gap in the knowledge about the context of contemporary cultural productions in diverse African contexts. This book will be particularly useful for both theatre scholars with an interest in the political economy of theatre and, more broadly, those seeking to understand the nuanced challenges and opportunities faced by policymakers, artists and arts managers to embrace the cultural and creative industries in this context. It also offers excellent insights for policymakers who wish to improve their understanding and interventions beyond superficial ‘best practice’ snippets and simplified ‘success stories’.

Trends in Twenty-First Century African Theatre and Performance is a collection of regionally focused articles on African theatre and performance. The volume provides a broad exploration of the current state of African theatre and performance and considers the directions they are taking in the 21st Century. It contains sections on current trends in theatre and performance studies, on applied/community theatre and on playwrights. The chapters have evolved out of a working group process, in which papers were submitted to peer-group scrutiny over a period of four years, at four international conferences. The book will be particularly useful as a key text for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in non-western theatre and performance (where this includes African theatre and performance), and would be a very useful resource for theatre scholars and anyone interested in African performance forms and cultures.

This book is part of a three-volume book-set published under the general title of Performative Inter-Actions in African Theatre. Each of the three books in the set has a unique subtitle that works to better focus its content, and differentiates it from the other two volumes. The contributors’ backgrounds and global spread adequately reflect the international focus of the three books that make up the collection. The contributions, in their various ways, demonstrate the many advances and ingenious solutions adopted by African theatre practitioners in tackling some of the challenges arising from the adverse colonial experience, as well as the “one-sided” advance of globalisation. The contributions attest to the thriving nature of African theatre and performance, which in the face of these challenges, has managed to retain its distinctiveness, while at the same time acknowledging, contesting, and appropriating influences from elsewhere into an aesthetic that is identifiably African. Consequently, the three books are presented as a comprehensive exploration of the current state of African theatre and performance, both on the continent and diaspora. Performative Inter-Actions in African Theatre 1: Diaspora Representations and the Interweaving of Cultures explores the idea that, in and from their various locations around the world, the plays of the African diaspora acknowledge and pay homage to the cultures of home, while simultaneously articulating a sense of their Africanness in their various inter-actions with their host cultures. Contributions in Diaspora Representations and the Interweaving of Cultures equally attest to the notion that the diaspora – as we see it – is not solely located outside of the African continent itself, but can be found in those performances in the continent that engage performatively with the West and other parts of the world in that process of articulating identity.

This volume was first published by Inter-Disciplinary Press in 2013. Play engages us entirely. It may absorb all our attention, experience, knowledge, wisdom, understanding, cunning and wit, as well as physical agility and strength. There definitely are more than two sides to the play story. This book addresses the broad questions of what play consists in, how it is perceived, why it is important, and in what way(s) it influences our life. With contributions from Canada, Great Britain, Poland, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, The United States of America as well as Trinidad and Tobago, this volume provides a comparative intercultural and interdisciplinary perspective on the complexity of the concept of play, traces its origins, patterns, and mechanisms, as well as sheds light on the inter-relationships of different aspects of play as they are present in and shape the human condition.

An authoritative reference covering primarily actors, playwrights, directors, styles and movements, companies and organizations.

This indispensable overview of modern black British drama spans seven decades of distinctive playwriting from the 1950s to the present. Interweaving social and cultural context with close critical analysis of key dramatists' plays, leading scholars explore how these dramatists have created an enduring, transformative and diverse cultural presence.