New Directions in African Theatre and Performance

Annual International Conference, 2009
University of Northampton, Northampton, United Kingdom

Friday 30 July - Sunday 2 August 2009

The African Theatre Association (AfTA) in collaboration with JAWI Theatre Collective, and the School of the Arts University of Northampton announces its Annual International Conference for 2009.

African Theatre Association is an international organization of practitioners and scholars of African performance and theatre in Africa and the Diaspora. It provides a regular forum for the practical and critical exploration of African performances and scholarship.

Call for Papers, Workshops, Performances, and Exhibitions

Contributions are invited from academics, practitioners, policy makers, funders, and research students in Theatre, Performance, and related arts and media to participate in the second annual international conference: ‘New Directions in African Theatre and Performance’.

The conference offers different platforms to contributors to engage in a long overdue interrogation of new and emerging practices, critical approaches, pedagogies, and discourses on African theatre, performance, and related arts and media. Through a wide range of papers on every aspect of African performances, workshops, performances, exhibitions, plenaries, installations, and screenings, contributors will participate in defining new directions in African theatre and performance practices and scholarship.

Accepted conference papers will be published in a special edition of African Performance Review.

Sub-themes

• Critical Theory and Discourse
• Re-thinking / Re-positioning the Canon in African Theatre and Performance
• Contesting Postcolonial Drift
• African Theatre and Performance in the Diaspora
• African Theatre and  Performance and Globalisation
• African Theatre and Performance and the Nation State
• African Theatre and New Media Technologies
• Performance Arts Enterprise in Africa
• Theatre and Social Change
• Collaborations / New Partnerships
• New Writings, emerging practitioners, forms and practices
• Professionalisation and professional Theatres
• The future of the Performance Arts in Africa: challenges and opportunities

In addition to those listed above the organisers will consider other relevant sub-themes from contributors.

We invite proposals and abstracts of approximately 250 words to be forwarded by email to the conference conveners:

            Dr Jumai Ewu: Jumai.Ewu@Northampton.ac.uk
            Dr Victor Ukaegbu: Victor.Ukaegbu@Northampton.ac.uk

The deadline for submission of Abstract/Proposal is Friday 27 February 2009.