Full Description
A collection of playscripts and texts that give an English-reading audience access to key plays as well as less well-known and previously untranslated works - a superb resource for scholars and theatre practitioners.
This volume makes available some of the most influential, imaginative and exciting plays to come out of East and West Africa from the 1970s to the present day. Deliberately excluding playscripts by the regions' two best known playwrights, Wole Soyinka and Ngugi wa Thiong'o, whose work was profiled in African Theatre 13 the editors have selected plays, some well-known and some less widely available, that represent the diversity and richness of thesetwo very different African regions. The playscripts include a new translation from Amharic, as well as the English version of a play originally written in French, making more theatre from some of Africa's multitude of languages accessible to an English-reading audience. Each script is accompanied by an essay from an expert on the work, the playwright, and the context in which the play was produced, so that the volume will be of maximum use to both researchers and students of African theatre.
Volume Editors: MARTIN BANHAM & JANE PLASTOW
Series Editors: Martin Banham, Emeritus Professor of Drama & Theatre Studies, University of Leeds; James Gibbs, Senior Visiting Research Fellow, University of the West of England; Femi Osofisan, Professor of Drama, University of Ibadan; Jane Plastow, Professor of African Theatre, University of Leeds; Yvette Hutchison, Associate Professor, Department of Theatre & Performance Studies, University of Warwick
Contents
Preface - Jane Plastow and Martin Banham
THREE PLAYS FROM EAST AFRICA
The Translation & Transcription of Mother Uganda & Her Children [Patience Nitumwesiga & team]
The Context & Making of Rose Mbowa's Mother Uganda & Her Children - Patrick Mangeni and Jane Plastow
Majangwa: A Promise of Rains (1974) by Robert Serumaga
Notions of Indigeneity: Uganda's Robert Serumaga - Don Rubin
The Guest (2016) by Manyazewal Endeshaw
An Absurdist in Addis Ababa: Manyazewal Endeshaw's Engida - Jane Plastow and Zerihun Birehanu
THREE PLAYS FROM WEST AFRICA
If: A Tragedy of the Ruled (1983) by Ola Rotimi
Ola Rotimi: Creating Theatrical Spaces - Martin Banham
Morountodun (1983) by Femi Osofisan
Morountodun: A Retrospective Commentary - Biodun Jeyifo
The Legend of Wagadu as Seen by Sia Yatabere (1988) by Moussa Diagana
Moussa Diagana & The Legend of Wagadu as Seen by Sia Yatabere: Advocating Anarchy in Mauritania? - Jane Plastow
Book Reviews
