Description
Book SynopsisA 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
Table of ContentsPreface - 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
