African Drama and Performance

African Drama and Performance is a collection of innovative and wide-ranging essays that bring conceptually fresh perspectives, from both renowned and emerging voices, to the study of drama, theatre, and performance in Africa. Topics range from studies of major dramatic authors and formal literary dramas to improvisational theatre and popular video films. South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commissions are analyzed as a kind of social performance, and aspects of African performance in the diaspora are also considered. This dynamic volume underscores theatre's role in postcolonial society and politics and reexamines performance as a form of high art and everyday social ritual.

Contributors are Akin Adesokan, Daniel Avorgbedor, Karin Barber, Nicholas Brown, Catherine Cole, John Conteh-Morgan, Johannes Fabian, Joachim Fiebach, Marie-José Hourantier, Loren Kruger, Pius Ngandu Nkashama, Isidore Okpewho, Tejumola Olaniyan, Ato Quayson, Sandra L. Richards, Wole Soyinka, Dominic Thomas, and Bob W. White.

African Drama and Performance is a collection of innovative andwide-ranging essays that bring conceptually fresh perspectives, from both renownedand emerging voices, to the study of drama, theatre, and performance in Africa.Topics range from studies of major dramatic authors and formal literary dramas toimprovisational theatre and popular video films. South Africa's Truth andReconciliation Commissions are analyzed as a kind of social performance, and aspectsof African performance in the diaspora are also considered. This dynamic volumeunderscores theatre's role in postcolonial society and politics and reexaminesperformance as a form of high art and everyday socialritual.

Contributors are Akin Adesokan, Daniel Avorgbedor, KarinBarber, Nicholas Brown, Catherine Cole, John Conteh-Morgan, Johannes Fabian, JoachimFiebach, Marie-Jos? Hourantier, Loren Kruger, Pius Ngandu Nkashama, Isidore Okpewho, Tejumola Olaniyan, Ato Quayson, Sandra L. Richards, Wole Soyinka, Dominic Thomas, and Bob W. White.

John Conteh-Morgan is Associate Professor of French and African American and African Studies at The Ohio State University. He is author of Theatre and Drama in Francophone Africa and editor of Research in African Literatures.

Tejumola Olaniyan is Professor of English and African Languages and

Literatures at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is author of Scars of Conquest/Masks of Resistance.

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Tejumola Olaniyan and John Conteh-Morgan

Part 1. General Contexts

1. TBA

Wole Soyinka

2. Dimensions of Theatricality in Africa

Joachim Fiebach

3. Theater and Anthropology, Theatricality and Culture

Johannes Fabian

4. Pre-Texts and Intermedia: African Theater and the Question of History

Ato Quayson

Part 2. Intercultural Negotiations

5. Soyinka, Euripides, and the Anxiety of Empire

Isidore Okpewho

6. Antigone in the "Land of the Incorruptible": Sylvain Bemba's Noces posthumes pour Santigone (Black Wedding Candles for Blessed- Antigone)

John Conteh-Morgan

7. Gestural Interpretation of the Occult in the Bin Kadi-So Adaptation of Macbeth

Marie-José Hourantier

8. Yoruba Gods on the American Stage: August Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone

Sandra L. Richards

Part 3. Radical Politics and Aesthetics

9. Femi Osofisan: The Form of Uncommon Sense

Tejumola Olaniyan

10. Revolution and Recidivism: The Problem of Kenyan History in the Plays of Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Nicholas Brown

11. The Politics and Theater of Sony Labou Tansi

Dominic Thomas

Part 4. Popular Expressive Genres and the Performance of Culture

12. Theater for Development and TV Nation: Notes on Educational Soap Opera in South Africa

Loren Kruger

13. Literacy, Improvisation, and the Virtual Script in Yoruba Popular Theater

Karin Barber

14. Modernity's Trickster: "Dipping" and "Throwing" in Congolese Popular Dance Music

Bob W. White

15. How They See It: The Politics and Aesthetics of Nigeria Video Films

Akin Adesokan

Part 5. The Social as Drama

16. The Turner-Schechner Model of Performance as Social Drama: A Re-examination in Light of Anlo-Ewe Haló

Daniel Avorgbedor

17. Theaters of Truth, Acts of Reconciliation: The TRC in South Africa

Catherine Cole

18. Theatricality and Social Mimodrama

Pius Ngandu Nkashama

Bibliography

Contributors

Index