Routledge Handbook of African Theatre and Performance

The Routledge Handbook of African Theatre and Performance offers welcome insights into established topics and points towards exciting new avenues of research and knowledge production. What I particularly like is its consciously pluralistic scope, and the inclusion of African creatives as part of the scholarly discourse. “African theatre” is constantly remaking itself, and this Handbook is living proof that it will continue to matter. Christine Matzke, University of Bayreuth The impact of colonialism on African theatre is all embracing and overwhelmingly detrimental to the upward surge and growth of theatre in its post-colonial journey. African theatre today would need to put many structures in place for it to enjoy its pride of place in the pantheon of world theatres. All the ‘enabling environments’ that would facilitate the post-colonial life of African theatre are clearly highlighted and superbly discussed in the Routledge Handbook of African Theatre and Performance. I therefore roundly recommend the book to anyone who is irrevocably committed to seeing the new dawn of post-colonial and renascent African performing art experiences. Peter Badejo, OBE In bringing together this eclectic range of essays that cover different areas and traditions of theatre and performance in Africa and its diasporas, Kene Igweonu’s Routledge Handbook of African Theatre and Performance shines an insightful light on both the heritage and the more recent research and scholarship on African theatre traditions and practices. In doing so, the book offers fresh understandings of what constitutes African theatre and performance, the many directions African theatre has taken and continues to take, and the need for these theatres and performances to be studied and understood in their own terms, and never by the frameworks of other traditions. Osita Okagbue, Professor of Theatre and Performance, Goldsmiths, University of London