This new anthology brings together eleven Francophone African plays dating from 1970 to 2021, including satirical portraits of colonizers and their collaborators (Bernard Dadié’s Béatrice du Congo; Sony Labou Tansi’s I, Undersigned, Cardiac Case; Sénouvo Agbota Zinsou’s We’re Just Playing) alongside contemporary works questioning diasporic identity and cultural connections (Koffi Kwahulé’s SAMO: A Tribute to Basquiat and Penda Diouf’s Tracks, Trails, and Traces…). The anthology memorializes the Rwandan genocide (Yolande Mukagasana’s testimony from Rwanda 94), questions the status of women in entrenched patriarchy (Werewere Liking’s Singuè Mura: Given That a Woman…), and follows the life of Elizabeth Nietzsche, who perverted her brother’s thought to colonize Paraguay (José Pliya’s The Sister of Zarathustra). Gustave Akakpo’s The True Story of Little Red Riding Hood and Kossi Efoui’s The Conference of the Dogs offer parables about what makes life livable, while Kangni Alem’s The Landing shows the dangers of believing in a better life, through migration, outside of Africa. The collection is an essential pedagogical tool, designed to make many important African authors and works accessible to classrooms outside of the Francophone world for the first time.
Table of contents:
Preface
Introduction
by Sylvie Chalaye and Judith G. Miller
1. Béatrice of the Congo by Bernard Dadié
2. I, The Undersigned, Cardiac Case by Sony Labou Tansi
3. Itsembabwoko: “Yolande’s Monologue” by Yolande Mukagasana from Groupow’s Rwanda 94
4. We’re Just Playing by Sénouvo Agbota Zinsou
5. Singuè Mura: Given That a Woman… by Werewere Liking
6. The Sister of Zarathustra by José Pliya
7. The Landing by Kangni Alem
8. The Conference of the Dogs by Kossi Efoui
9. The True Story of Little Red Riding Hood by Gustave Akakpo
10. SAMO: A Tribute to Basquiat by Koffi Kwahulé
11. Tracks, Trails, and Traces… by Penda Diouf
Bibliography
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Judith G. Miller is an emerita professor of French at New York University. She has published over thirty translations of plays, essays, and novels, most recently The Théâtre du Soleil, the First Fifty-Five Years by Béatrice Picon-Vallin and And the Whole World Quakes: Chronicle of a Slaughter Foretold, a play by Haitian author Guy Régis Jr., in New Plays from the Caribbean, ed. Stéphanie Bérard.
Sylvie Chalaye is a professor of theater at the University Sorbonne Nouvelle–Paris III. A specialist of theater history and the anthropology of artistic representations of Africa and the Black world, she has published many books and articles on contemporary Francophone African and Carribbean dramaturgy, most recently Race et Théâtre: Un impensé politique and Scènes et détours d'Afrique: Les Aventuriers de la coopération théâtrale. She is a founding editor of Africultures and directs the international research seminar SeFiA.
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Praise
“Judith Miller, the foremost scholar in the field, has curated an indispensable and invaluable transhistorical and transnational anthology. Contemporary Francophone African Plays offers unprecedented insights into the work of some of the most experimental, innovative, and groundbreaking dramatists of the past five decades.” ~Dominic Thomas, coauthor of New Francophone African and Caribbean Theatres“This anthology is a treasure trove of works representing the innovativeness and vibrancy of Francophone African theater past and present. Miller expertly reframes critical discussions while providing eloquent translations that are screaming to be not just read but performed!” ~Brian Valente-Quinn, author of Senegalese Stagecraft: Decolonizing Theater-Making in Francophone Africa.
“This invigorating anthology offers timely engagement with the collective promise of African theater, in an era of growing calls to collaboratively re-engage lived experiences of Black communities worldwide. Judith G. Miller responds in that spirit, bringing together captivating translations by guest contributors and herself, of pivotal works by theater makers daring to shape modes of thought and imagination. Miller also assures the collaborative project provides contexts for the works’ staged and written productions, and critical reflection on their interdisciplinary reception. Contemporary Francophone African Plays will remain a vital resource for artists and scholars—especially the non-Francophone, long awaiting the opportunity to engage and learn from the work housed within.” ~Christian Flaugh, coeditor of Marie Vieux Chauvet’s Theatres: Thought, Form, and Performance of Revolt.
“The world might not know yet, but it has been waiting for this book. Any actor, director, teacher, student or broadly speaking, thinker, interested in theater, in Africa, in the French-speaking world, or quite simply in the most pressing issues of our time—marginalization, exile, trauma, transcultural exchange, resistance to racial, social, and gender oppression, or pre- and postcolonial indigenous histories and cultures—will find startling new revelations, creative inspiration, and boisterous optimism in this collection of English-translated plays from across Sub-Saharan Francophone Africa and its diaspora. Spanning from Africa’s struggle for decolonization to the present, and containing informative, succinct introductions to historical periods, dramatic tendencies, and the eleven playwrights and plays, which feature styles varying between period drama and hip hop, this landmark collection holds out a much needed and long-awaited hand to the Francophone world, opening Anglophone readerships and audiences to some of the most mordant, important, and above all, exuberantly imaginative artists.” ~Clare Finburgh-Delijani, coeditor of Contemporary French Theatre and Performance.