Music is often cited as a central artistic mode in African theatre and
performance practices. However, little attention has been paid to music
theatre on the continent in general, and to opera in particular, with
the exceptions of a few noted genres, such as Concert Party or the Yorb
"folk opera" of the 1960s, and the emerging research on opera culture in
South Africa.
This volume of African Theatre highlights the diversity across the
continent from a variety of perspectives - including those of genre,
media, and historiography. Above all, it raises questions and encourages
debate: What does "opera" mean in African and African diasporic
contexts? What are its practices and legacies - colonial, postcolonial
and decolonial; what is its relation to the intersectionalities of race
and class? How do opera and music theatre reflect, change or obscure
social, political and economic realities? How are they connected to
educational and cultural institutions, and non-profit organisations? And
why is opera contradictorily, at various times, perceived as both
"grand" and "elitist, "folk" and "quotidian", "Eurocentric" and
"indigenous"?
Contributors also address aesthetic transformation processes, the
porousness of genre boundaries and the role of space and place, with
examples ranging from Egypt to South Africa, from Uganda to West Africa
and the USA.
The playscript in this volume is We Take Care of Our Own by Zainabu
Jallo
GUEST EDITORS: Christine Matzke, Lena van der Hoven, Christopher
Odhiambo & Hilde Roos
Series Editors: Yvette Hutchison, Reader, Department of Theatre &
Performance Studies, University of Warwick; Chukwuma Okoye, Reader in
African Theatre & Performance University of Ibadan; Jane Plastow,
Professor of African Theatre, University of Leeds.
