African Theatre 9: Histories 1850-1950

African performers and playwrights have long outpaced the people who record them, and historians of the continent's stage often have little more than scattered archives to work from. This ninth volume in the African Theatre series, edited by Yvette Hutchison, goes looking for what survives from the century between 1850 and 1950, a period of contact, conflict, compromise and creativity.

The essays range widely: Kobina Sekyi's The Blinkards of 1916, Christian martyr plays and urban theatre in colonial Rhodesia, oral narrative and popular performance in Uganda, Khoisan characters in early Dutch-Afrikaans drama, archives and memory in Eritrean theatre, and images of Africa on the British stage. Jane Plastow writes on Tekle Hawariat's Fabula, which she presents as the first African play, and the script itself appears here in English translation from the Amharic. Students and scholars of African performance will find it valuable groundwork for understanding the theatre of today.