Situating Dramaturgical Discourse in Africa

Taiwo Afolabi presented Decolonizing Dramaturgy: Situating Dramaturgical Discourse in Africa livestreaming on the global, commons-based, peer-produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv on Wednesday 20 October 2021 at 9 a.m. PDT (San Francisco, UTC -7) / 12 p.m. EDT (New York, UTC -4) / 5 p.m. WAT (Lagos, UTC +1) / 17:00 BST (London, UTC +1) / 18:00 SAST (Johannesburg, UTC +2) / 18:00 CEST (Berlin, UTC +2) / 19:00 EAT (Nairobi, UTC +3).

This introductory episode will be a conversation between Dr. Taiwo Afolabi and Dr. ‘Funmi Adewole. We will set the background for the series by asking questions about dramaturgy and dramaturgical processes. We will offer our perspectives on questions such as what is dramaturgy? What historical context exists for dramaturgy specifically from Africa? What are dramaturgical skills and how can dramaturges locate themselves in their work? How do dramaturges work with other creatives—director and playwright?

About the Series
A five-episode series featuring award-winning playwrights, dramaturges, and directors from Africa on conversations around dramaturgical processes. The series engages theatremakers on questions about what it means to be in process with each other. The series will unsettle centers of powers and capture unconventional narratives, experiences, and realities. The ultimate goal is to disrupt the single-story narrative of Africa theatre practice as substandard and constantly borrowing from the West. Each episode invites a playwright, dramaturge, and director to speak on a specific topic related to their creative and dramaturgical processes. For accessibility, French language translation is available for some series and American Sign Language interpretation for all series.

Guests
‘Funmi Adewole, (UK/Nigeria)
‘Funmi Adewole is a senior lecturer in Dance at De Montfort University, Leicester. She started out as a media practitioner in Nigeria but went into performance on moving to England in 1994. For several years she toured with physical theatre and African dance drama companies before studying for an MA in postcolonial studies and a PhD in dance studies. She began to work as a dramaturge in 2013, mainly with professional performers, mainly choreographers working with the dance forms of Africa and the diaspora or interdisciplinary theatremakers.

Taiwo Afolabi, (Canada/Nigeria)
Taiwo is an applied theatre practitioner with a decade of experience working across a variety of creative and community contexts in over a dozen countries across four continents. His practice and research interests include applied theatre, research ethics, theatre and education, theatre, policing and justice, decolonization, dramaturgy, African cinema, and arts leadership. Recent work investigates the intersection of performance, policing and immigration. He is the founding artistic director of Theatre Emissary International (Nigeria), a research associate at the University of Johannesburg (South Africa), serves on the board of the International Federation Theatre Research (IFTR), and he is the representative for the ITI/UNESCO Network for Higher Education in the Performing Arts. He is co-editing a volume on decolonizing dramaturgy.