Overview

This volume brings together fifteen scholars from Africa, Europe and the United States to explore how Africa is represented in and through the performing arts and cinema. Essays include discussions of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, American influences on Nollywood, Nigerian video films, the representation of women in cinema, African dance in the diaspora, children's music, and media portrayals of savagery from pop cinema through news reports of Ferguson, Missouri.Using a variety of methodologies and approaches, the contributors consider how African societies and cultures have been represented to themselves, to the continent at large, and in the diaspora. The volume represents an extended dialogue between African scholars and artists about the challenges of representing themselves and their respective societies within and without Africa. Many of the contributors are scholar-practitioners, offering practical guides on how to approach these performance and media forms as artists. As such, this book will serve as both model and building block for the next generation of representors, students, and audiences.

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9781527506428

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Reviews

This is a long-awaited volume that reveals how theatre, drama and performance, and the cinema are represented in various spaces of engagement. The essays in this volume have been carefully selected to reflect the current research practice and discourse by scholars of African theatre and performance studies. The essays on the Nigerian videofilm phenomenon, Nollywood, are particularly insightful in exploring nuanced representations of Africa within the continent and in the diaspora, through electronic media that explore key issues within Africa and the Diaspora, not always encountered in other contexts. The book assumes the responsibility of bringing to light scholarship on African performance cultures. It is a necessary guide to the emerging conversations in African theatre, drama, dance and film in Africa and the diaspora. Dr Sola AdeyemiGoldsmiths University of London, UK

Author Information

Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr. is Professor and Chair of Theatre Arts at Loyola Marymount University, USA. He is the author and editor of a number of books, including Athenian Sun in an African Sky: Modern African Adaptations of Classical Greek Tragedy, Black Medea: Adaptation in Modern Plays, Suzan-Lori Parks: A Casebook, and Portrayals of Americans on the World Stage: Critical Essays. His work on African theatre and cinema has appeared in such anthologies and journals as Performative Inter-Actions in African Theatre Volume 2, Dramatic Revisions of Myths, Fairy Tales, and Legends: Essays on Recent Plays, and African Performance Review, among others. He has also directed productions of Nigerian and South African plays in the United States and works as an actor, director and stage combat choreographer.

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