Syncretic arenas : : essays on postcolonial African drama and theatre for Esiaba Irobi / / edited by Isidore Diala.

• Superior document: Cross/Cultures. Readings in the Post/Colonial Literatures in English ; 177
• TeilnehmendeR: Diala, Isidore,
• Place / Publishing House: Amsterdam, Netherlands ;, New York : : Rodopi,, 2014.; ©2014
• Year of Publication: 2014
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: Cross/cultures ; 177.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (381 p.)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.
• Other title: Preliminary Material --; Esiaba Irobi: The Tragedy of Exile /; Esiaba Irobi: A Personal Note /; Esiaba Irobi and His Muse /; Remembering Esiaba Irobi: at the International Research Centre ‘Interweaving Performance Cultures’ in Berlin, 2009–2010 /; Esiaba Irobi: Death Does Not Kill a Song /; On My Birthday /; Omonla:* Your Like Will Never Be There Again: 7 Prose Poems/Haikus [For Esiaba Irobi] /; Half a Century Death /; Madding Crowd (For Esiaba Irobi and Kofi Awoonor) /; Seven Stations of the Cross (for Esiaba Irobi) /; Esiaba Irobi’s Legacy: Theory and Practice of Postcolonial Performance --; Between Soyinka and Clark: The Dynamics of Influence on Esiaba Irobi’s Nwokedi /; Eclipsed Visions: Esiaba Irobi Interviewed /; Theatre and Modernization in the First Age of Globalization: The Cairo Opera House /; Autobiography as Counter-Memory in The Orange Earth of Adam Small /; Directing Politics: Soyinkan Parallels in the Works of Uganda’s Robert Serumaga /; Afrika Cultural Centre: Phoenix under Apartheid and Burnt Ember under Democracy? /; The Anxiety of Class in Kenyan Drama: A Reading of Boy’s Benta and Sibi-Okumu’s Role Play /; A Heritage of Violence: Paradoxes of Freedom and Memory in Recent South African Play-Texts /; African Drama and the Construction of an Indigenous Cultural Identity: An Examination of Four Major Nigerian Plays /; The Creative Development, Importance, and Dramaturgy of Duro Ladipo’s Ọba Kò So /; Critical Responses: The Evolution of the Theatre Critic in South Africa /; “I want to dialogue”: Chief Muraina Oyelami Talking Oṣogbo and Beyond /; Notes on Contributors --; Index.
• Bibliography: Includes bibliographical references and index.
• ISBN: 9401211809
• Hierarchical level: Monograph
• Statement of Responsibility: edited by Isidore Diala.

This collection in part examines the legacy of the consummate Nigerian stage artist and scholar, Esiaba Irobi (1960–2010). Poems, tributes, and studies celebrate Irobi’s significance as actor, playwright, director, poet, and theatre theorist. Irobi’s life, temper, times, and career are inextricably linked to the history, development, concerns, and uses of drama and theatre in Africa. The contributions highlight the evolution of autochthonous theatrical practices: the interaction between Western and indigenous African performance traditions; colonial/postcolonial government policies and the mutations of drama and theatre (and critical commentary); the tensions inherent in postcolonial conceptions of history, identity, nationhood, and articulations of alternative aesthetics, pedagogies, and epistemologies for postcolonial African theatre; staging African plays in the West; and the constituencies of the contemporary African playwright and director. The strength of these studies derives primarily from nuanced examinations of the concerns and careers of particular African playwrights; the history, offerings, and fortunes of particular theatrical arenas, and close explorations of specific performances and texts. The foregrounding of correspondences in the dramaturgies and intellectual ferment of the continent critically accentuates equally privileged regional, historical, and other crucial specificities. Situated in time and place while underscoring the political and intellectual intersections of a shared history of colonialism, the contributions to Syncretic Arenas , individually and collectively, reveal the transformations and growing strengths of postcolonialism as an analytical strategy.