Global Theatre Anthologies: Ancient, Indigenous, and Modern Plays from Africa and the Diaspora

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The power of theatrical performance is universal, but the style and concerns of theatre are specific to individual cultures. This volume in the Global Theatre Perspectives series presents a reconstructed ancient performance text, four one-act indigenous African plays and five modern dramas from various regions of Africa and the Caribbean Diaspora. Because these plays span centuries and are the work of artists from diverse cultures, readers can see elements that occur across time and space. Physicalized ritual, direct interaction with spectators, improvisation, music, drumming, and metaphorical animal characters help create the theatrical forms in multiple plays. Recurring themes include the establishment or challenging of political authority, the oppression or corruption of government, societal expectations based on gender, the complex and transformational nature of identity, and the power of dreams. Though each play is its own unique entity, reading them together allows readers to explore what theatrical elements and cultural concerns are perhaps essentially African. The Caribbean plays add further perspective to the questions of what values, theatrical and societal, are part of African drama, how these have influenced the Caribbean aesthetic, and what the relationships are between the old and new world. Among the creators of the pieces are two Nobel Laureates, those who have been exiled or jailed for the political nature of their work, and the author of his countrys first constitution. The volume can serve as the primary text for an intensive semester-long investigation of African drama and culture. But it is also possible to use this volume along with others in the series as texts for a single course on drama from around the world. The global perspectives approach, letting works from ancient, indigenous, and modern times resonate with each other, encourages thinking across boundaries and connective human understanding.

Author Bio

Simon Gikandi is the Robert Schirmer Professor and Chair of English at Princeton University, USA where he is also affiliated with the Departments of Comparative Literature and African American Studies and the Program in African Studies R. N. Sandberg is a lecturer at the Lewis Center for the Arts and Department of English, Princeton University (1995-2021). Though retired in 2021, Sandberg has continued to be affiliated with the Program in Theater, advising and directing student theses Wole Soyinka is a playwright, novelist, poet, and essayist born in Abeokuta, Nigeria in 1934. Soyinka won the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature with his debut novel, The Interpreters, becoming the first-ever African laureate and has since won many other prizes such as the Academy of Achievement Golden Plate Award in 2009 and the Anisfield-Wolf book Award, Lifetime Achievement in 2012. A prominent political activist, Soyinka was imprisoned for nearly two years during the Nigerian Civil War and was later exiled. He continues to fight against government corruption and oppression worldwide. Professor Ama Ata Aidoo (b. 1943) was a Ghanaian author and playwright. Having grown up in a Fante royal household, she attended Wesley Girls' High School in Cape Coast. Her first play, The Dilemma of a Ghost was produced in 1964, and published the following year, making her the first female African dramatist to be published. She is currently long term Visiting Professor and writer in residence of Africana Studies and Creative Writing at Brown University, Rhode Island. Ama Ata Aidoo died in 2023.