A History of Theatre in Africa, and: Playing for Life: Performance in Africa in the Age of AIDS, and: Theatre and Empowerment: Community Drama on the World Stage (review)

While several regional studies of theatre in Africa have appeared recently, A History of Theatre in Africa is the first to assemble essays on theatre across the continent, from South Africa at the tip to Egypt and the Maghreb in the north, from the Cape Verde Islands in the west through Nigeria and Kenya to Madagascar in the east. Since most of these essays conclude in the 1990s, this book can be complemented by Playing for Life, which documents performance dealing with the topical problem of AIDS, and by Theatre for Empowerment, which includes essays both on Africa and the African diaspora.

A History of Theatre in Africa offers a commendable range of views documenting relatively understudied theatre in, for instance, Lusophone Africa (Luís Mitras) or the Indian Ocean islands of Réunion and Mauritius (Roshni Mooneeram), alongside better-known performance cultures in Ghana (James Gibbs), Tanzania (Amandina Lihamba), Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Botswana, and Namibia (David Kerr), Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, and other francophone countries (John Conteh-Morgan). These articles stand out because they combine comprehensive historical coverage and critical analysis of the translation of seemingly disparate cultural practices as theatre, whether identified as traditional (ngoma) or modern (concert or concert party) or, more likely, syncretic (ingoma ebusuku: music at night, or urban performance); they also challenge the clichés of academic discourse. Kerr highlights as the chief "conceptual boulder" the difficulty of recovering the history of "indigenous performing arts" (265) and their ongoing influence on repertoires disseminated by spoken or bodily rather than written transmission. These articles rise to the challenge, broadening the scope of "theatre" to include indigenous and syncretic forms as well as imported literary drama, while also tracking the ways in which this syncresis has been contested. Kamal Salhi's account of performance in the Maghreb countries of Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria disputes the received idea that Islam always suppressed human representation, including that of actors in performance. Gibbs traces the evolution of the practices associated with the term "concert party" in Ghana and Lihamba, showing how a range of performance forms from dance, beni, lelemama, beni ngoma, and music, such as taarab, marked the multiethnic dimensions (Swahili, Luo, also Arab and Gujurati) of Tanzania. By contrast, Conteh-Morgan shows how the contested nature of "francophonie" has, on the one hand, produced a transnational "school drama" published, taught, and staged from Senegal through Côte d'Ivoire to Cameroon and shown at festivals like the Marché des arts du spectacle africain (87), but on the other hand, has obscured the diversity of local forms whether "recreational" or "devotional" (89).

Other contributions provide useful chronicles, but do not engage critically with their own assumptions. Nigeria's prominence and the contentious diversity of its Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruban regions might have prompted a more probing article than the one offered by Dapo Adelugba and Olu Obafemi, who focus mostly on Yoruba traveling theatre. While these troupes may have dominated the field as well as academic research, the work of Karin Barber and others suggests not only more regional diversity but also key intersections between theatre and new media, as more traveling theatre troupes turn to video production. This shift is important not only because it comes out of a longer, if uneven, association with other media, but also because this association is likely to affect future styles of performance as well as live and recorded production. The articles on Tanzania, Ghana, and Southern Africa already acknowledge this cross-fertilization; other likely cases for the mutual influence of theatre...