African Theatre 5: Soyinka. Blackout, Blowout and Beyond
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Publishes for the first time Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka's early revue sketches on which his later plays draw strongly for characters and situations.
This special issue, guest edited by Judith Greenwood and Chuck Mike, is devoted to early revue sketches by Wole Soyinka that had never been published outside Nigeria before. Soyinka's most recent plays - The Beatification of Area Boy and King Baabu, draw strongly on characters and incidents first created in Soyinka's revues and satirical songs, such as Before the Blackout and Unlimited Liability Company.
Before the Blackout staged in the late 1960s, was published in Nigeria by Orisun Acting Editions, but is now a rarity. Unlimited Liability Company exists as a long-playing record - again rare. Other material, including the Unife Theatre Guerilla Unit's Before the Blowout exist only in manuscript. Very few younger students of Soyinka's work are aware of this material or have access to it. This volume brings these brilliant satirical works of Soyinka's back into life, and offers contextualising commentaries from Martin Banham, Femi Osofisan and colleagues of Soyinka's associated with this early, but fundamentally formative, work.
Guest edited by MARTIN BANHAM with JUDITH GREEENWOOD & CHUCK MIKE
Series editors: Martin Banham, James Gibbs, Femi Osofisan
North America: Africa World Press
This special issue, guest edited by Judith Greenwood and Chuck Mike, is devoted to early revue sketches by Wole Soyinka that had never been published outside Nigeria before. Soyinka's most recent plays - The Beatification of Area Boy and King Baabu, draw strongly on characters and incidents first created in Soyinka's revues and satirical songs, such as Before the Blackout and Unlimited Liability Company.
Before the Blackout staged in the late 1960s, was published in Nigeria by Orisun Acting Editions, but is now a rarity. Unlimited Liability Company exists as a long-playing record - again rare. Other material, including the Unife Theatre Guerilla Unit's Before the Blowout exist only in manuscript. Very few younger students of Soyinka's work are aware of this material or have access to it. This volume brings these brilliant satirical works of Soyinka's back into life, and offers contextualising commentaries from Martin Banham, Femi Osofisan and colleagues of Soyinka's associated with this early, but fundamentally formative, work.
Guest edited by MARTIN BANHAM with JUDITH GREEENWOOD & CHUCK MIKE
Series editors: Martin Banham, James Gibbs, Femi Osofisan
North America: Africa World Press
"[A] seminal contribution in the African Theatre Series. A compendium that will serve the interests of students, researchers and even the general reader with a bias for African drama and theatre. It constitutes a milestone in the development of the canons of African literature and the editors of the African theatre series deserve accolades for yet another attempt at celebrating the eminent playwright and director." AFRICAN RESEARCH & DOCUMENTATION
"Since the early 1960s, Soyinka has backed up his onslaught on rotten governance with a succession of satirical revues. 'The achievement of the present volume (published in the annual African Theatre series) is to bring this work out into the open, to allow us to appreciate the ballast that supports so many of Soyinka's full-length plays. 'In many of these sketches Soyinka is at his most acerbic, and there are instances of sheer brilliance. 'Blackout, Blowout & Beyond is a gift to African theatre scholars, but its appeal goes way beyond this. Here is Soyinka at his most accessible, his funniest and most daring. -" Chris Dunton, SUNDAY INDEPENDENT, Sunday Culture supplement
"...the series addresses scholars and students within the widening field of African Studies and all those who support, either through public practice or private industry, the necessary internationalism of modern approaches to performance...a volume that does us a precious service by making available the not-really-ephemeral work of a remarkable playwright...to see Soyinka whole, we need to take account of these angry short farces. -" Peter Thomson, STUDIES IN THEATRE & PERFORMANCE
Paperback
9780852555958
October 2005
$29.95 / £19.99
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