Theatre Matters

This book focuses on how theatre can make and has made positive political and social interventions.

This book focuses on how theatre can make, and indeed has made, positive political and social interventions in a range of developing cultures. Essays examine particular plays, projects or movements from areas such as South America, Africa, the Caribbean and India. Contributors include Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka.Theatre, in a variety of forms and contexts, can make, and indeed has made, positive political and social interventions in a range of developing cultures across the world. In this book a distinguished team of theatre historians and dramatists explores how theatre has a dynamic and often difficult relationship with societies and states, arguing positively that theatrical activity can make a difference. The collection begins with a foreword by Wole Soyinka and, through the volume, specially chosen plays, projects and movements are examined, embracing a variety of theatrical forms from conventional text to on-site developmental work. The communities addressed range from the national to the local, from middle-class elites to the economically dispossessed in countries such as Brazil and Argentina, Nigeria, Eritrea and South Africa, and India and the Caribbean countries.