Performative Inter-Actions in African Theatre is a book-set with unique subtitles designed to focus and differentiate between the three volumes in the set. The first volume, Diaspora Representations and the Interweaving of Cultures, explores the idea that in and from their various locations around the world, the plays of the African diaspora acknowledge and pay homage to the cultures of home, while simultaneously and vigorously articulating a sense of their Africanness in their various inter-actions with their host cultures. In the second volume, Innovation, Creativity and Social Change, contributions address performativity as a process – particularly in the context of theatre’s engagement with contemporary realities with the hope of instigating social change. The examples explored point to the ingenuity and adaptive capacity of African theatre for engaging indigenous forms in the service of contemporary realities. The final volume is subtitled Making Space, Rethinking Drama and Theatre in Africa, and re-conceptualises notions of drama and theatre in Africa, and therefore redefines our understanding of the practice, role, and place they occupy in a constantly evolving African socio-cultural context.

The contributors’ backgrounds and global spread reflect the international focus of the book-set. The contributions, in their various ways, demonstrate the many advances and ingenious solutions adopted by African theatre practitioners in tackling some of the challenges arising from the adverse colonial experience, as well as the “one-sided” advance of globalisation. The essays attest to the thriving nature of African theatre and performance, which in the face of these challenges, has managed to retain its distinctiveness, while at the same time acknowledging, contesting, and appropriating influences from elsewhere into an aesthetic that is identifiably African. Consequently, the book-set is a comprehensive exploration of the current state of African theatre and performance, both on the continent and in the diaspora.