African Theatre Association (AfTA) Annual International Conference, 2009

New Directions in African Theatre and Performance
University of Northampton, Northampton, United Kingdom

Thursday 30 July – Sunday 2nd August 2009

Extension of Deadline for Submission of Abstracts

Following requests from would-be delegates the African Theatre Association (AfTA) in collaboration with JAWI Theatre Collective, and the School of the Arts University of Northampton has extended the deadline for the Submission of Abstracts to: Thursday 30 April, 2009.

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, 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 Thursday 30 April 2009.