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.

Now available in paperback for the first time this edition of the World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre series examines theatrical developments in Africa since 1945. Entries on thirty-two African countries are featured in this volume, preceded by specialist introductory essays on Anglophone Africa, Francophone Africa, History and Culture, Cosmology, Music, Dance, Theatre for Young Audiences and Puppetry. There are also special introductory general essays on African theatre written by Nobel Prize Laureate Wole Soyinka and the outstanding Congolese playwright, Sony Labou Tansi, before his untimely death in 1995. More up-to-date and more wide-ranging than any other publication, this is undoubtedly a major ground-breaking survey of contemporary African theatre.

Post-Colonial Drama is the first full-length study to address the ways in which performance has been instrumental in resisting the continuing effects of imperialism. It brings to bear the latest theoretical approaches from post-colonial and performance studies to a range of plays from Australia, Africa, Canada, New Zealand, the Caribbean and other former colonial regions. Some of the major topics discussed in Post-Colonial Drama include: * the interactions of post-colonial and performance theories * the post-colonial re-stagings of language and history * the specific enactments of ritual and carnival * the theatrical citations of the post-colonial body Post-Colonial Drama combines a rich intersection of theoretical approaches with close attention to a wide range of performance texts.

A poetic ‘voice’ scans the rhythm of academic research, telling of the encounter with odún; then the voice falls silent. What is then raised is the dust of a forgotten academic debate on the nature of theatre and drama, and the following divergent standpoints of critical discourses bent on empowering their own vision, and defining themselves, rather, as counterdiscourses. This, the first part of the book: a metacritical discourse, on the geopolitics (the inherent power imbalances) of academic writing and its effects on odún, the performances dedicated to the gods, ancestors, and heroes of Yorùbá history. But odún: where is it? and what is it? And the ‘voice’? The many critical discourses have not really answered these questions. In effect, odún is many things. To enable the reader to see these, the study proceeds with an ‘intermezzo’: a frame of reference that sets odún, the festival, in its own historico-cultural ecoenvironment, identifying the strategies that inform the performance and constitute its aesthetic. It is a ‘classical’ yet, for odún, an innovative procedure. This interdisciplinary background equips the reader with the knowledge necessary to watch the performance, to witness its beauty, and to understand the ‘half words’ odún utters. And now the performance can begin. The ‘voice’ emerges one last time, to introduce the second section, which presents two case studies. The reader is led, day by day, through the celebrations –odún edì, Morèmi’s story, and its realization in performance; then confrontation by the masks of the ancestors duing odún egúngún (particularly as held in Ibadan). The meaning of odún becomes clearer and clearer. Odún is poetry, dances, masks, food, prayer. It is play (eré) and belief (ìgbàgbó). It is interaction between the players (both performers and spectators). It is also politics and power. It contains secrets and sacrifices. It is a reality with its own dimension and, above all, as the quintessential site of knowledge, it possesses the power to transform. In short, it is a challenge – a challenge that the present book and its voices take up.

This book provides an overview of the full range of the teaching and practice of Committed Theatre and theatre of commitment in Nigeria for scholars in the arts and cultural studies. It is divided into four sections; Chapter 1: Theatre in Development Discourse, which is comprised of four papers that explore the theories of practice of theatre of commitment. Chapter 2 : Nigerian Theatre in Perspective discusses the trends, ethos of revolution, theatrical elements and communalistic/individualistic tendencies and the taboos theatre, drama and traditional theatre in Nigeria. In Chapter 3, the social, cultural and historical implications of Nigeria theatre, is examined in papers that focus on politics, theatre, and echoes of separatism in Nigeria and including an analysis of Aesthetagement of the Calabar Carnival in Nigeria. Chapter 4 performs a critical analysis of committed theatre practices from a global perspective. Interviews were conducted with committed artistes from Nigeria, Canada, Ethiopia, and Indonesia. Committed Theatre Perspectives in Teaching and Practice in Nigeria has the potential to impact the philosophy, teaching, and practice of theatre. The ideas contained in the book provide an excellent framework for understanding the importance and more importantly, the impact of theatre on society.