African theatre and performance

L’article étudie la relation de Peter Brook avec l’Afrique : ses voyages, ses spectacles et sa longue collaboration avec des acteurs africains. Après une première approche issue d’une fascination étrange et d’un désir de régénération, Brook se détache progressivement de l’Afrique imaginaire qui nourrit une certaine création artistique et il se lie d’amitié avec de nombreux artistes africains : dramaturges, scénographes, écrivains, conteurs, musiciens et comédiens. Avec ces artistes, Brook établit une relation de collaboration réciproque, en encourageant le développement d’une nouvelle conscience artistique africaine.

ction begins in the dark, thick darkness. Several voices Aare heard on and off stage. From the clustered voices on
stage can be heard, “We agree”. “No not now”, “We do
not agree at all”, “It can never be”, “It will come to pass”, “Let
us give it a trial”, “No”. “Yes”, “No”, “Yes” repeatedly. In the
midst of this uncertainty, voice disagreement graduates to
hurried and staccato shufing of feet signifying physical
combat. Voices either encouraging or discouraging the
strugglers litter the entire atmosphere. For a couple of moments,
the agitation, struggle and ght continue. Then, there is a big
bang. Hurried footsteps. More bangs. Multiple hurried
footsteps. A very loud bang and everywhere begins to experience
reduced noise. More reduction of noise. Limited noise.
Countable disruption of tranquility. Sudden serenity and
absolute silence. From the stage to every part of the audience is
heard piercing music and song in solemn rendition.

The deconstruction of the spatio-temporal configuration of the stage and the auditorium which necessitates interactive and communal performativity in most regions of sub-Saharan Africa is a signature imprint of both the pre-colonial and post-colonial dramatic traditions. This paper takes a critical appraisal of the participatory nature of African performance and argues that it is a cul-tural and theatrical enunciation of the ontology of African communalism and philosophy of 'Ubuntu': “I am, because we are, and since we are; therefore I am”. This paper therefore contends that communalism is the epistemic infrastructure that undergirds African performance, philosophical systems, metaphysics and political ideologies. While not projecting an essentialist discourse of African performance identity, it is the submission of this article that the mechanics of the audience in African performance embodies unquestionable homologic patterns. Using the Igbo masquerade theatre in the South-east of Nigeria, and the anansesem story-telling theatre of the Akan-speaking people of Ghana, as well as the post-colonial adaptations of these indigenous performance paradigms, this paper privileges the semiological sense in which communal performance is the cultural version of African religious, philosophical and ideological imperatives.

A family full of secrets.
Kwame is a young teenage boy and he has been expelled from Catholic school. He arrives home to find his mother Lucia kissing a stranger, Dominic. Kwame attacks and kills the intruder who happens to be his father.
Sheba, Kwame's sister returns from school with her father Patrice and reveals she is dating a boy called David, who happens to be Dominic's son.
Patrice reveals to Lucia that he wants to marry a second wife and Lucia attacks him and accidentally kills her husband.
A must-read must-watch play from African writer Ngigi Muya.

Theatre has been used as an instrument all over the world from the very earliest of times – for many different ends, one of them being political. When it comes to instrumentalised theatre Africa has been in the forefront – starting way before colonisation and continuing up to the present day. In South Africa in particular what is called Protest Theatre was practised extensively during the apartheid era and all over Africa various forms of theatre in development have been and are still being practised. Most of this has not been the work of theatre artists. However, two forms have emerged from the theatre and university theatre departments in recent years, namely Forum Theatre and so-called ‘Applied Theatre’. This paper attempts to place Protest Theatre and ‘Applied Theatre’ in the context of instrumentalised theatre in Africa, in particular, Political Theatre and Development Communication. .

Action takes place in the palace of Akpeja, king of Odolu
kingdom. The stage is bare. Voices of his advisers are
heard loud and clear from the background in a rather
rowdy and discordant manner. Countable attempts by
Akpeja to calm them down fall on deaf ears. This continues
for a while as each adviser tries to out-speak the other.
Voices are raised to an uncontrollable level that Akpeja
storms onto the bare stage alone and lonely. He takes
troubled dignified steps up and down the stage in different
discomforting postures as his advisers continue their
disputes unabated. Thinking about what next to do, he
hurriedly goes back to the advisers after which his voice is
heard over and above all others.

‘I want theatre in Kenya to be truly professional. You, as an actor, can be a brand. And make money…The quality of the shows has really gone high because the professionalism of the performers.’ – David Opondoe, Managing Director of Phoenix Theatre, speaking at the Kenya Cultural Centre in August, 2013

This unparalleled analysis of Kenyan theatrical activity and the lessons we can learn from other theatre communities, like Broadway, is invaluable for thespians, art critics, theatre students and  other stakeholders.

The paper examines the evolution of theatre for development in Africa and mutations that have attended its growth. The work also critically examines the interfaces between TFD and development communication with a view to prospecting on the future directions of development communication in Africa

Femi Ososfisan is one of the foremost playwrights in Africa. His Marxism, married to the aesthetics of the folktale and oral poetry, contributes significantly to the grammar of his theatre. Whilst the script betrays the usual stage puns and devices of Femi Osofisan, Esu in performance is a grandiose tableaux of dramatic episodes knitted together by the theme of cruelty versus compassion, survival versus social extinction.

This paper examined the representation of supernatural forces in Ola Rotimi's The Gods Are Not To Blame. The play is an adaptation of Sophocles' famous Greek classic tragedy 'Oedipus Rex' but with an African traditional background. Its artistic framework including the plot preoccupation, style, characters, and setting of the play is particularly rooted in the African-Yoruba traditional worldview. The Deconstruction theory was adopted as the theoretical framework for the study. The work presents an objective text-based analysis of supernatural forces in the play with the knowledge of the Yoruba societal worldview and belief system. Findings of the study revealed that the thematic notion of destiny and fate embodies the manifestation of supernatural forces in the text. The Ifa priest, Ogun priest, and others like them are portrayed in the text as mouthpieces of the gods. Their role in representing these supernatural forces is limited to speaking or reporting for the gods. Also, deified supernatural forces such as Ogun, Obatala, and Orunmila, among others, are also represented in the text and ascribed different roles in the dramatic universe of Ola Rotimi's play. The study concluded that the representation of supernatural forces in Rotimi's play is a testimony to Rotimi's immense knowledge of African culture, his skillful and unique transmogrification of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex into a completely well-woven African drama with a deeply rooted Yoruba traditional worldview. It also acknowledges the superiority and inevitability of fighting against these supernatural forces and their indomitable significance in traditional African society. It was recommended among others, that an understanding of the roles and significance of supernatural forces in the play can help people generally to understand that it is good to seek guidance, hide warnings, and most importantly, teach young people of nowadays that every action has a consequence and thus it is important to exercise patience and think things through in every situation before taking any step(s).

Preface
We are particularly fascinated and glad to edit this festschrift in honour of Professor
John Sani Illah. Needless to say, this festschrift has been long in coming to fruition.
In fact, it has been incubating for some time now. Ab initio, the idea was to put
together an episteme from a collection of scholarly articles that dwell on Nigeria's
theatre and drama, not excluding, of course, discourses from the parlance of film and
the arts generally. Evidentially, these articles evolved from theoretical as well as
practical knowledge and engagement of the respective contributors in the various
field. Thus what we have come up with is a theatre, film and art discourse from the
literary to the performative as we honour one the greatest scholar of our time-
Professor John Sani Illah.
Further to this, what we have here in this festschrift now turns out to be much more
than we bargained for. Having received many articles, we had to painfully struggle
to de-select some because we did not want a voluminous book and partly because we
did not want just any kind of article. So those whose articles have made it should
count themselves fortunate and we are indeed grateful for all who showed interest to
be a part of this project. Indeed we also applaud the extreme patience and support of
all the contributors.
Michael Etherton has made the point that drama has a dual existence because it
configures as both literature and performance. However, we know that there is no
one-to-one correspondence between the dramatic text and the performance.
Nevertheless, the fact that theatre and drama occur within and between audience and
communities is a twist to the mix.
Along this line of reasoning, it is worth noting the fact that the landscape of Nigeria's
theatre and drama is vast and varied. It is a melting point; a vaudeville; a pot-pourri
of literature and performance in all ramifications. Every chapter in this festschrift
seeks to deepen knowledge as it engages the reader in a thought provoking
intellectual intercourse. Given these qualities there is no doubt that the book can and
will add value to the reader's resources and depth of knowledge, understanding and
appreciation of theatre and drama.
Tor J. Iorapuu and Festus O. Idoko,
Department of Theatre and Film Arts,
Faculty of Arts,
University of Jos
Nigeria.
2019

This brief study of Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman stems from my conception of Nigeria’s literary drama as a conjunction of dramatic literature and performance. I am interested in a method of criticism which will be adequate to the textual basis of this drama and provide an analysis of those key social referents which underscore dramatic action and character. Do you think this paper is on the right track? Is ti contributing something new and significant? Many thanks for your feedback.

"In Africa, tutto è invisibile" è il sibillino aforisma che Peter Brook ripete spesso. Ed è forse la formula che sintetizza meglio le motivazioni che stanno all'origine del suo interesse per il continente. Nella lunghissima carriera di Brook, l'Africa emerge come una presenza costante che si articola in varie forme: il regista instaura con il continente un rapporto privilegiato fatto di viaggi, di collaborazioni con attori africani, e soprattutto di una serie di spettacoli che disegnano un percorso coerente all'interno del suo variegato repertorio. Le prime timide tracce di questa predilezione si possono scorgere già agli inizi della sua carriera di quando, nel 1947, mette in scena a Londra The Respectable Prostitute con Orlando Martins. La pièce è il presagio di un'affinità elettiva che si concretizzerà più tardi in una forma particolarissima di collaborazione con artisti africani.

If I were to single out the great African playwrights, Tsegaye would definitely be among their number. Yet he is comparatively unknown. Unlike Soyinka, Ngugi, Fugard and, increasingly, Gibson Kente, there are few critical commentaries on his work and no books. He does not feature in most discussions of African theatre. While from time to time African writers and critics have bewailed the dominance of the ex-colonial languages in African literature and urged the greater use of Africa’s own, few among the big fish have swum the talk. With the exception of two plays, The Oda Oak Oracle and The Collision of Altars, all Tsegaye’s over thirty theatre scripts have been written in the official language of Ethiopia, Amharic. Tsegaye’s fate is an object demonstration of what an African writer must sacrifice if he writes in his native tongue – fame and love among his people but insignificance in the Anglophone or Francophone international mainstream. Almost all Africa’s best-known writers write in a European language. Having known Tsegaye when I was helping to develop the Theatre Arts Department at the University of Zimbabwe, having seen one or two of his plays and have acted in one of them, I have experienced something of the power of his Amharic work. But until his work is translated Tsegaye’s deserved place in the African Theatre Hall of Fame will be denied him.

Suite aux années de recherches sur le théâtre francophone africain, nous avons remarqué  un renouvellement radical des formes dramatiques  surtout dans les pièces de théâtre publiées dans les dix dernières années par les jeunes dramaturges de l’Afrique francophone. Parmi ces pièces du renouvellement sont : La Concession de Kossi Effoui, Bintou, Fama, Brasserie de Koffi Kwahulé, et Tout bas…si bas de Kously Lamko pour ne mentionner que quelques-unes. La nouveauté dans cette dramaturgie se fait évidente au niveau du style ainsi qu’au niveau des thèmes traités. Cette communication vise à interroger et à analyser la nouvelle esthétique de la dramaturgie africaine contemporaine en la juxtaposant avec les conventions ultérieures du théâtre africain. En analysant la forme de cette nouvelle dramaturgie, la thématique des pièces choisies sera aussi mise en exergue. Les théories de  l’hétérolinguisme et du formalisme nous fourniront la base méthodologique pour analyser les pièces. Nous espérons qu’à la fin, nous saurons identifier et montrer certains éléments de la contemporanéité dans le théâtre de Koffi Kwahulé ; l’hybridité de ses formes que nous jugeons trace une nouvelle orientation dans l’esthétique de la dramaturgie du théâtre en Afrique francophone.

Soyinka makes a successful attempt in presenting the African world, in a critical and richer perception. Debunking the European notion that literature, in the African context, does not exist. His argument and expositions, draw similitudes with the relativist school of thought which displayed a counter revolt against the evolutionists’ argument that the African world is void of literature, and indeed drama. Soyinka punctures these themes with works of literature (African); history; ritual and Myth, with tentacles on ritual and drama.

Ce  sixième numéro, coédité par les Presses universitaires de Bordeaux et le Centre international des études du spectacle (Maroc), fait suite à la 10e édition du festival international de Tanger dont le thème a été consacré aux « Dramaturgies alternatives ».
Il rassemble les interventions d’une pléiade de chercheurs de renommée mondiale (Patrice Pavis, Stephen Barber, Christel Weiler…) spécialistes des études théâtrales et spectaculaires (performance studies) ainsi que des praticiens issus des quatre coins du monde.

Pourquoi les nouvelles dramaturgies ?
Parce que le terme même de dramaturgie, de sa première acception en tant qu’écriture dramatique jusqu’à ses dernières manifestations modernes et contemporaines en tant qu’écriture et préparation effectuées par le conseiller littéraire ou artistique du metteur en scène, a connu plusieurs évolutions et mutations.

Dans un monde en pleine mutation, soumis à des changements aussi brutaux qu’inattendus, les arts du spectacle ne peuvent qu’être affectés par de tels soubresauts. De nouvelles dramaturgies émergent pour exprimer et traduire sur scène ou dans les lieux publics de nouvelles manières d’être et de représenter le monde. Elles peuvent résulter d’événements politiques, tels les Printemps arabes. Elles peuvent aussi être la conséquence de l’instauration, surtout dans les pays occidentaux, de nouvelles pratiques muséales ou de nouveaux modes de diffusion artistique, comme être tout simplement le fruit d’une nouvelle réflexion sur la nature des arts spectaculaires au XXIe siècle ou de questionnements liés à la pratique théâtrale et spectaculaire.

En s’appuyant sur des expériences spectaculaires considérées comme neuves ou novatrices, chacun des contributeurs donne son point de vue en essayant de délimiter les contours de ce qui peut être une « nouvelle dramaturgie ».
Pour donner à voir les différentes manifestations de ces nouvelles dramaturgies, et suivant la ligne éditoriale de la revue ouverte sur toutes les expériences spectaculaires à travers le monde, ce volume comporte des textes aussi bien en français, en anglais qu’en arabe.

This paper is a chapter in Syncretic Arenas
Essays on Postcolonial African Drama
and Theatre for Esiaba Irobi Edited by Isidore Diala, Amsterdam - New York, NY: Rodopi, 2014. The paper aims at tracing the influence of Esiaba Irobi theatre through Wole Soyinka, J. P. Clark , to the ontology of Igbo performative worldview.

In agreement with Frederick Jameson’s “Form itself is but the working out of content in the realm of the superstructure,” this initial paper is concerned with a critical assessment of the confluence of art and revolution in Kole Omotoso’s two published plays The Curse and Shadows in the Horizon; concerned with the artistic mediation of the revolutionary will, its expression in specific theatrical experiments, or, merely, its adjuncts in the verb and the visual within or outside the mainstream aesthetics and social vision of the “committed” dramatist.

Abstract
This thesis aims on one level to discuss masculinity intersecting with the way the male black body is presented on stage in recent theatre/dance performances and on another, it researches performance practices in West Africa for their portrayal of gender roles. Looking a number of recent productions on the topic in Holland, Belgium, France-Ivory Coast and B nin, a panorama of masculinities is painted in the first chapters. Further chapters aim to compare this phenomenon with local performance practices in (mainly Francophone) West Africa within the framework of the very lively masked ceremonies and ritual manifestations, both religious as well as profane, that are still part and parcel of society in West Africa. Perhaps surprisingly, I set out to demonstrate that a more fluid perception of gender roles is to be detected in that society through these local performance practices, and that this might compare to the work of diasporic artists who explore masculinities in their contemporary productions, thus creating new, alternative types of masculinity.
The first half of the paper examines recent contemporary dance/theatre productions where Afro descendant and diasporic theatre artists have engaged with masculinity at the intersection with "race". Through interviews with the creators, a possible interface is created between European and West African performance practices concerning their views of masculinity.
Halfway through, a birds' eye view of recent developments in (mainly, but not exclusively diasporic) visual arts and design, where very similar tendencies in the portrayal of masculinity can be detected, is presented under the heading "Centrefold".
The second half focuses on performance practices in West Africa, including one example from the south-west; they seem to point to a concept of masculinity, different from what has been defined as hegemonic masculinity in Europe. Examples from this practice are discussed that point to a complementary concept of gender instead of a conflicting binary: instead of two oppositional irreconcilable and fixed poles directly identifiable through their sex, as the gender binary is conceptualised in the global north, in the global south we're dealing with a continuum where the male and the female are conceived in terms of roles and functions in society, where they're not oppositional but complementary.
The paper concludes that the theatre offers the perfect intercultural and transnational playground for these ambitions and points to further developments that have been set in motion in contemporary theatre practice. The black male body is reviewed as a site for alternative masculinities both in the context of societies that form part of the global majority as well as those belonging to the global north.
Thus, besides discussing the possibility of contributing philosophies that are related to local West African performance practices to contemporary dance/theatre, the article also intends to help filling a gap in research on masculinity and the performing arts in a marginalised region which is francophone West Africa. This will in the future lead to an ongoing research, where gender fluidity will be mapped as it is expressed through cross-dressing and gender identity switching in masked as well as trance ceremonies, celebrations, and liturgies in a wide range of local performance practices. Theoretically, I hope to uncover a non-colonial gender-fluid philosophy in that part of the continent, that has survived and has been imbricated with imported religious and ideological dimensions accompanying Arabic and European slave-trade and subsequent colonisation. Through this process, a sub-Saharan Africa has been created as a colonial construct that has stripped the local gender fluid approaches on the continent of its dynamic accoutrements, reducing it to the poverty of
oppositional binary thinking and its ideology, but in spite of this ongoing process, pockets of the non-oppositional complementary approach have survived and are still functioning.

"Du chiffonnier à l'anthropologue : statut du texte et positionnement du chercheur sur son terrain littéraire et théâtral", Continents-Manuscrits, Génétique du texte littéraire, dossier "Théâtres d'Afrique : des traces aux archives", coord. Aurore Desgranges, n°13, décembre 2019 : https://journals.openedition.org/coma/4101
Prenant appui sur une expérience d’observation participante de longue durée en Afrique des Grands Lacs dans le cadre d’une recherche sur les formes littéraires et théâtrales, comme sur des travaux analogues de chercheurs qui y font écho, cet article interroge le statut des textes étudiés, leur textualité particulière en tant que matière essentiellement orale et partiellement improvisée. Il réfléchit aussi à la manière dont l’implication physique du chercheur sur son terrain, ses interactions et les effets qu’elles peuvent avoir sur le déroulement du processus théâtral, doivent être pris en compte dans l’analyse des spectacles étudiés.
Drawing on a longstanding participant observation in Africa’s Great Lakes researching on literary and theatrical forms, as well as on similar works by researchers, this article questions the status of texts, their particular textuality as being essentially oral and partially improvised. It also reflects on how the researcher's physical involvement in his or her field, his or her interactions and the effects they can have on the development of the theatrical process, must be taken into account in the analysis of the performances.

The key text in this highly entertaining piece is the man-woman crisis so familiar in rich homes that can afford the luxury of any house help. If it is a male, the story quickly makes it round that he is giving the “madam” all the works, or it is a female and it is oga who is having all the fun. Ekiye does not go so far as to present a real crisis in this direction; what his comedy thrives on is the suspicion and narrow-mindedness that creeps in to undermine the shaky morality and actual hypocrisy of rich families.

The articles on African theatre I have been writing of late are not the result of reading and research or the result of consultation of the works of famous people or world experts. None of these are cited. Instead these articles are a response – a reaction perhaps – to the invasive theory and practice of non-African theatre models and the need to provide alternative theoretical frameworks based on African theatre practice. The theoretical suggestions I am making are derived from long experience in theatre – not only my own theatre but also that of many other practitioners in Africa whose work has as yet not been been given theoretical expression.
In the case of this particular article – on playwriting and playmaking in Africa theatre – I am expressing thoughts which were suggested by a recent experience. I was asked to be external marker in an African university playwriting examination. A well-known book on playwriting by a Usonian author had been prescribed.  This gave me food for thought and resulted in the following exploration of playwriting/playmaking in the context of African theatre.

In a competitive post-modern society, traditional theatre genres such as satire, plays, orchestras, contemporary ballet and dance, opera, and musicals, battle to attract audiences. More often than not, this is due to a myriad of more modern entertainment and leisure activities that are available. Notwithstanding the latter, it appears that cabarets in the form of drag entertainment are growing in popularity, with several entertainment venues across South Africa (and elsewhere) competing for this niche audience. Drag productions have only become an accepted part of mainstream arts and culture during the last decade, which could explain why the appeal of these performances, among audiences, has thus far been empirically overlooked. To this end, this study aims to narrow the gap in arts, hospitality and leisure literature by providing insights into the dynamics of human and social behaviour in a post-modern society by determining the motives of attending cabaret/drag productions. Particularly the holistic appeal of this increasingly popular theatre genre, including differences in motives for attending, was investigated through a web-based electronic survey, as completed by 670 drag theatre audience members at three Beefcakes Cabaret Theatres located in three South African cities: Cape Town, Johannesburg and Pretoria. The findings suggest that audience members do not attend drag productions for the same reasons, giving rise to the development of a customised marketing approach to attract customers in the foreseeable future.

As in Pidjiguiti in Guiné-Bissau or Baixa de Cassanje in Angola, the massacre that occurred in the northern Mozambican town of Mueda on 16 June 1960 has been inscribed in the nationalist narrative as the breaking point of anti-colonial unrest and the trigger of the armed liberation struggle. In the past 20 years several scholars have questioned the central tenets of the nationalist interpretation, especially the idea that the aim of the demonstration was political independence – a claim considered too lofty to be articulated by a mass of illiterate peasants guided by leaders enmeshed in ethnic organisations. Caught between the rhetorics of resistance and revisionism, the colonial archive and oral testimony, the event itself has been rendered illegible. To rescue 16 June from such deadlock, this article turns towards a different kind of historical material: song. Proceeding archaeologically, it moves from songs that reproduce the official version; through more ancient songs, which express some direct experience of the event, however layered and reformulated; to songs that were sung at the time of the massacre. These songs and the echoes they elicit from other sources pave the way to a re-interpretation of the event: from the point zero of a vanguardist history of national consciousness, to a utopian moment in which independence appeared as a possibility, however unclearly understood, the political imagination expanding beyond any consideration of objective constraint.

This paper examines an inter-cultural and transnational theatre experiment between world-renowned Handspring Puppet Company and the celebrated Coulibaly Puppet Company of Mali. It considers diplomatic relations between France and Egypt in the early nineteenth century and the transaction of Nature as Culture. It was a contribution to the Palgrave MacMillan "Performing Migrancy and Mobility in Africa" edited by Mark Fleishman

At his 1994 inauguration, South African president Nelson Mandela announced the “Rainbow Nation, at peace with itself and the world.” This national rainbow notably extended beyond the bounds of racial coexistence and reconciliation to include “sexual orientation” as a protected category in the Bill of Rights. Yet despite the promise of equality and dignity, the new government’s alliance with neoliberal interests and the devastation of the AIDS epidemic left South Africa an increasingly unequal society.

Prismatic Performances focuses on the queer embodiments that both reveal and animate the gaps between South Africa’s self-image and its lived realities. It argues that performance has become a key location where contradictions inherent to South Africa’s post-apartheid identity are negotiated. The book spans 30 years of cultural production and numerous social locations and includes: a team of black lesbian soccer players who reveal and redefine the gendered and sexed limitations of racialized “Africanness;” white gay performers who use drag and gender subversion to work through questions of racial and societal transformation; black artists across the arts who have developed aesthetics that place on display their audiences’ complicity in the problem of sexual violence; and a primarily heterosexual panAfrican online soap opera fandom community who, by combining new virtual spaces with old melodramatic tropes allow for extended deliberation and new paradigms through which African same-sex relationships are acceptable.

Prismatic Performances contends that when explicitly queer bodies emerge onto public stages, audiences are made intimately aware of their own bodies’ identifications and desires. As the sheen of the New South Africa began to fade, these performances revealed the inadequacy and, indeed, the violence, of the Rainbow Nation as an aspirational metaphor. Simultaneously they created space for imagining new radical configurations of belonging.

https://www.press.umich.edu/10192303/prismatic_performances
30% Discount with the code UMRAINBOW

I recently devised and directed a play on the African National Congress's military wing, Umkhonto weSizwe, at the University of the Witwatersrand. The making of it raised interesting issues in relation to drama syllabi in South African universities and the need to argue more strongly for alternative African theatre forms. African Non-Realism is simply a term for what was the dominant artistic practice on the continent for centuries before the coming of colonialism and in particular the overwhelming dominance of globalised performance culture. No longer theoretically hegemonic,  non-realist theatre forms in practice are still widely used both in the formal and informal theatre in Africa. This paper describes the process of making and staging a play that utilises African Non-Realist techniques.

Yabbing and Wording: The artistry of Nigerian stand-up comedy is a long-overdue academic interrogation of the novel stand-up practice in Nigeria as performance. ‘Yabbing’ comes from the Nigerian Pidgin English verb, ‘yab’, which means a satirical jibe thrown at individuals, groups or institutions. Nigeria’s Fela Anikulapo-Kuti used this effectively in his recorded and live music performances against successive military regimes. ‘Wording’ derives from the English term ‘word’ and refers to a game in which parties exchange insults. It is a modern-day coinage for traditional forms of joking that existed across Nigeria and elsewhere in precolonial times.

In this book, Nwankwọ identifies ‘yabbing’ and ‘wording’ as outstanding indigenous elements within contemporary stand-up practice in Nigeria. On the one hand, these local joking patterns inform how comedians fashion their narratives. On the other, they mitigate offence and how the audience responds to ridicule in joke performance venues. The book’s strength is its academic perspective and the inclusion of as many examples of stand-up and comedians as possible, to give a panoramic view of the practice. It also traces the historical path of the development of professional stand-up comedy in Nigeria. Its closing chapters detail the global outreach of Nigerian stand-up while also anticipating its future developments.

The paper focuses on the most remarkable personality was and is seen in the dramas and plays on stages around the world, "The Jokers". They had played a vital role, connecting the characters in a play and the audience with the play. Though they were portrayed differently in different traditions around the world, their sole purpose was to break the fourth wall in the theatre. Are they 'witty fools or foolish wits'? is the question debated in the paper. Whatever they are called, they were inevitable as the purpose is to bring entertainment combined with wisdom. Knowledge and humour were their strong power they inherited which was making them special, hence some cultures worshiped them and feared too. Right from ancient period until now histories mark them as intelligent beings in courts and theatrical plays. Were they interpreted rightly or understood correctly? Becomes a question unanswered. Their presence in the courts was a boon for some kings keeping them sane at certain situations, relieving their stress. The exploration here is were they doing the same in these plays or much more. Are the fools or jokers seen in the plays necessary? , comic relief they provide is a must or can be ignored to save time are the explorations made in this paper. The talents they possessed is also scrutinized in the paper to show what made them special in plays and courts and how they lived through periods in the minds of people.

Le fort retentissement de « L’affaire Zongo » peut se mesurer, au Burkina Faso, à l’aune du phénomène intense de relecture de sa production intellectuelle et de sacralisation de sa parole. Via une dissémination ordinaire (conversations quotidiennes, consommation de produits dérivés) comme artistique (œuvres-hommages, organisation d’événements culturels), une « matière » s’est formée autour de ses écrits, de ses interventions orales et de son combat politique, et se réécrit de manière collective notamment par le biais du support dramatique.

The new readings of Norbert Zongo’s intellectual production and the way his speech has been « sacralized » in Burkina Faso can easily explain why the « Zongo case » has drawn so much attention. The heritage of Zongo’s writings, speeches and political engagement has spread through ordinary channels (daily discussions, by-products) and artistic works (works made as a tribute, organization of cultural events). Today’s dramatic production, among others, is contributing to the collective re-writing of his life’s work.

Ce DVD comprend :

- un documentaire de 10min réalisé par Céline Ferlita "Parlez-vous peul?" en ligne sur Canal U :
http://www.canal-u.tv/video/cnrs_ups2259/parlez_vous_peul.17265

- un film de 15 min (avec sous-titres en français et pulaar) réalisé par Franck Guillemain "En route vers Podor"