This second volume of A History of East African Theatre focuses on
central East Africa; on Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. The
first chapter is concerned with francophone theatres, comparatively
studying work coming out of Burundi and Rwanda alongside a focus on
French language theatre in Djibouti. The chapter is particularly
concerned to explore how French and Belgian cultural policies impacted
theatre during the colonial period and how the French ideas of
Francafrique and promotion of elite, French language art have
continued to resonate in the post-colonial present. Chapters Two and
Three look comparatively at the rich theatre histories of Kenya,
Tanzania and Uganda, and are divided between a study of British East
African colonial impact and an analysis of the post-colonial period
illustrating how divergent political thought and societal make-up led to
exponential differentiation in national theatres. The final chapter, on
Theatre for Development and related social action theatre, covers the
whole East African region, offering the first ever historicised analysis
of this mode of theatre making which, since the 1980s, has come to
dominate funding and opportunity in performance arts.