Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Clifford, John

Titel

New Readings in Theatre History. By Jacky Bratton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. xii + 238. £16.99 Pb; REVIEWS; REVIEWS

Ist Teil von

• Theatre Research International, 2005, Vol.30 (1), p.89

Ort / Verlag

Oxford: Cambridge University Press

Erscheinungsjahr

2005

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Literature Online (LION)

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Reviewed by Frances Harding, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London This book seeks to identify similarities of resistance and alternative political reidentication through drama and its practice in society across two countries, Nigeria and England (not Britain). [...]Amkpas quest to provide a theoretical perspective enabling readers to view them through a common prism is an adventurous one. Acknowledging that some social or ethno-liguistic groups of people within Nigeria are subjected to the same kind of hegemonic discrimination as Amkpa abhors in the English colonizer, in his excellent chapter on Theatre, democracy and community development, he ably addresses this, bringing fresh and stimulating material to his argument. reviews 97 His is a well-worn choice, however, of Nigerian playwrights and playtexts familiar lines, tensions, narratives and protagonists-but Amkpa brings his own anger, frustration and memories as stimulus to his analytical skills to draw out fresh meanings. While Leeney and McMullans collection on Marina Carr invites contributors to share their experiences as scholars, dramaturges, performers, directors, and designers, offering a vivid picture of the plays in performance, Astons discussion of a decade of work by women playwrights in England connects it thematically, embedding her analysis in a consideration of the national context in which these plays were conceived and received. Drawing on archival research and indigenous community knowledge (p. xviii), she examines, in a series of case studies, the historical movement from recuperative efforts to claim space for indigenous voice and presence in the era of assimilation, to the development of activist indigenous-controlled producing organization through which indigenous artists have bid for professional legitimation.