Ancient Songs Set Ablaze constitutes the first systematic study of the plays of Femi Osofisan, winner in 1983 of the first Assciation of Nigerian Authors prize for drama. Osofisan is one of the most respected and prolific African writers. He uses a postcolonial history of poverty political unrest, and social corruption to create theatre pieces that range from social protest dramas, to murder mysteries, to farces. His style encompasses such African performance practices as story-telling, dance dramas, and dilemma tales. As his work gains in popularity in the United States, Osofisan has begun to obtain commissions and productions on American college campuses and regional theatres nationwide.

This collection of contemporary postcolonial plays demonstrates the extraordinary vitality of a body of work that is currently influencing the shape of contemporary world theatre. This anthology encompasses both internationally admired 'classics' and previously unpublished texts, all dealing with imperialism and its aftermath. It includes work from Canada, the Carribean, South and West Africa, Southeast Asia, India, New Zealand and Australia. A general introduction outlines major themes in postcolonial plays. Introductions to individual plays include information on authors as well as overviews of cultural contexts, major ideas and performance history. Dramaturgical techniques in the plays draw on Western theatre as well as local performance traditions and include agit-prop dialogue, musical routines, storytelling, ritual incantation, epic narration, dance, multimedia presentation and puppetry. The plays dramatize diverse issues, such as: *globalization * political corruption * race and class relations *slavery *gender and sexuality *media representation *nationalism

Classical material was traditionally used to express colonial authority, but it was also appropriated by imperial subjects to become first a means of challenging colonialism and then a rich field for creating cultural identities that blend the old and the new. Nobel prize-winners such as Derek Walcott and Seamus Heaney have rewritten classical material in their own cultural idioms while public sculpture in southern Africa draws on Greek and Roman motifs to represent histories of African resistance and liberation. These developments are explored in this collection of essays by international scholars, who debate the relationship between the culture of Greece and Rome and the changes that have followed the end of colonial empires.

Portrayals of Masculinity in Nigerian Plays explores Nigerian people's notions of masculinity as portrayed in twelve Nigerian plays, written by three generations of Nigerian playwrights. This book identifies different thoughts of masculinity within the Nigerian space in which hegemonic masculinity is the predominant.

An anthology of critical writings that explores the intersections of race, theater, and performance in America.

The collection of essays Worlds in Words: Storytelling in Contemporary Theatre takes up the currently widely debated issue of the revival of various techniques of storytelling in contemporary theatre practice and playwriting. This topic is set in a larger context of the crisis of traditional theatrical and dramatic representation in the 20th century and sets the discussion of new storytelling techniques within the framework of cultural and post-colonial studies, as well as the recent theories of performativity. These new performative modes of theatre practice in the recent decades have exerted a strong impact on the mainstream staging techniques as well as on the form and use of texts written for the theatre today. By focusing on the basic relationship between the text, the stage and the audience, the papers collected in this volume trace these fundamental changes taking place nowadays, which testify to the major shifts in the understanding of the very concept of theatre, its place among other arts and media, as well as in culture, especially in the marginalized cultures and diasporas. The authors of the papers collected here undertake a comprehensive analysis of the phenomenon of storytelling and adopt an interdisciplinary approach which will makes it possible to give account of the diverse cultural and socio-political grounding of the contemporary theatrical and dramatic techniques.

This new edition provides an expanded, comprehensive history of African American theatre, from the early nineteenth century to the present day. Including discussions of slave rebellions on the national stage, African Americans on Broadway, the Harlem Renaissance, African American women dramatists, and the New Negro and Black Arts movements, the Companion also features fresh chapters on significant contemporary developments, such as the influence of the Black Lives Matter movement, the mainstream successes of Black Queer Drama and the evolution of African American Dance Theatre. Leading scholars spotlight the producers, directors, playwrights, and actors who have fashioned a more accurate appearance of Black life on stage, revealing the impact of African American theatre both within the United States and around the world. Addressing recent theatre productions in the context of political and cultural change, it invites readers to reflect on where African American theatre is heading in the twenty-first century.

This comprehensive volume reviews women's contributions to theatre history and examines how theatre has represented women over the centuries.

In retracing some of the routes followed by West African literature in English over the course of the last three decades, this book employs an original multidimensional approach whereby the three main genres - narrative, poetry and drama - are considered in the light of their intricate web of fecund rapport and mutual influence. Authors such as Tutuola, Armah, Aidoo and Awoonor translated the fluid structures of orality into written prose, and consequently infused their works with poetic and dramatic resonance, thereby challenging the canonical dominance of social realism and paving the way for the birth of West African magical realism in Laing, Okri and Cheney-Coker. Starting in the 1970s, poetry on stage has become a mainstream genre in Ghana, thanks to performances by Okai, Anyidoho and Acquah. Boundaries between literary theatre and other genres have undergone a similar dissolution in the affirmation of the concept of 'total art' from Efua Sutherland to ben Abdallah, Osofisan and others. Fertile Crossings offers a study of these topics from various viewpoints, blending in-depth textual analysis with reflections on the political import of the works in question within the context of the present state of African societies, all supported by interviews with most of the authors.

This collection is dedicated to a distinguished scholar and writer who for a quarter of a century wrote consistently on African literature and the arts and was a major voice in Nigerian literary circles. Ezenwa-Ohaeto made a mark in contemporary Nigerian poetry by committing pidgin to written form and, by so doing, introducing different creative patterns. He also saw himself as a 'minstrel', as someone who wanted to read, express and enact his work before an audience. First and foremost, however, Ezenwa-Ohaeto was someone who 'un-masked' ideas and meanings hidden in the folds of literary works and made them available to an international academic public. With his outstanding work on Chinua Achebe, he influenced the reception of African literary biography. His networks and connections were extensive and wide-ranging, and they are partly reflected in the essays, creative writing and personal notes assembled in this volume. In their various modes and expressions, the contributions included here constitute a tribute to Ezenwa-Ohaeto's many talents and achievements. As an extension of Ezenwa-Ohaeto's legacy, they expand on various aspects of minstrelsy and the un/masking of texts in a Nigerian and broader African context. The book is divided into six sections. "In Memoriam" contains personal tributes by long-standing colleagues, mentors and friends. "Poetry and Fiction" collects the voices of three generations of Nigerian writing from the 1960s to the present day, followed by poetic and pictorial insights into the domestic and social life of the scholar and family man. Section Four comprises two interviews, while Sections Five and Six are devoted to critical evaluations of Ezenwa-Ohaeto's work and to contemporary perspectives on Nigerian literature respectively.