A History of Theatre in Africa. Edited by Martin Banham. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. xvii + 478; $140 cloth.

Extract

One of the greatest challenges to teaching world theatre history in the United States is that the vast majority of survey history books spend two dozen chapters on the theatre of the West, giving the theatres of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East a single chapter each at best. In addition, there have to date been no comprehensive histories of African theatre covering the entire continent, Africa north of the Sahara being linked for cultural reasons with the Middle East instead of geographically with the rest of the continent. A History of Theatre in Africa, edited by the pioneer of African-theatre scholarship, Martin Banham, is an excellent, if uneven, redressing of those imbalances.