Synopses & Reviews
Trickster Theatre traces the changing social significance of national theatre from its rise as an idealistic state project during independence through the revolutionary 1980s to its electronic adaptations in the neoliberal era. Jesse Weaver Shipley presents portraits of many key figures in Ghanaian theatre, describes theatre events and their political and social impact, and looks into the cultural conditions in which the Ghanaian theatre evolved. Tracing how performers, directors, culture workers, and playwrights developed theatre as a new form of critical public knowledge, Shipley shows how Ananse trickster storytelling traditions were repurposed in new contexts as expressions of national identity.
Review
"A rich primary source for urban anthropology in early 21st-century Accra. Effectively shows that theater arts and the National Theatre in particular have been central to Ghana's cultural and political history." --Benjamin Talton, author of Politics of Social Change in Ghana: The Konkomba Struggle for Political Equality Indiana University Press Indiana University Press Indiana University Press Indiana University Press
Review
"Skillfully argues that trickster narratives and aesthetics continue to frame the tensions between a nationalist ideology of the collective good and a neoliberal ideology of individualism." --Debra Klein, Gavilan College Indiana University Press Indiana University Press
Synopsis
Trickster Theatre traces the changing social significance of national theatre in Ghana from its rise as an idealistic state project from the time of independence to its reinvention in recent electronic, market-oriented genres. Jesse Weaver Shipley presents portraits of many key figures in Ghanaian theatre and examines how Akan trickster tales were adapted as the basis of a modern national theatre. This performance style tied Accra's evolving urban identity to rural origins and to Pan-African liberation politics. Contradictions emerge, however, when the ideal Ghanaian citizen is a mythic hustler who stands at the crossroads between personal desires and collective obligations. Shipley examines the interplay between on-stage action and off-stage events to show how trickster theatre shapes an evolving urban world.
Synopsis
Signal and Noise: Media, Infrastructure, and Urban Culture in Nigeria by Brian Larkin (Duke University Press, 2008). ISBN 9780822341086.
About the Author
Jesse Weaver Shipley is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Haverford College. He is author of Living the Hiplife: Celebrity and Entrepreneurship in Ghanaian Popular Music and has produced a documentary film with the same title.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Poetics of Uncertainty
Part I. History and Mediations in Making Theatre
1. Making Culture: Race, History, and a Theory of Performance in the Gold Coast Colony
2. The National Theatre Movement: Urban Art Infrastructures and a Contested National Culture in Independence-Era Accra
3. Revolutionary Storytelling: Pan-African Theatre and Remaking Lost Futures in 1980s Ghana
4. A Man of the People: Mohammed Ben Abdallah as Artist-Politician
Part II. Stagings in Millennial Ghana
5. Total African Theatre: Language, Reflexivity, and Ambiguity in The Witch of Mopti
6. "The Best Tradition Goes On": Audience, Consumption, and the Structural Transformation of Concert Party Popular Theatre
7. Fake Pastors and Real Comedians: Doubling and Parody in Miraculous, Charismatic Performance
8. Copying Independence: Backstage at the Fiftieth-Anniversary Reenactment of Nkrumah's Independence Speech
Conclusion: Unfreedom as Critical Theory
Notes
Bibliography
Index