Based on events that took place in Oyo, an ancient Yoruba city of Nigeria, in 1946, Wole Soyinka's powerful play concerns the intertwined lives of Elesin Oba, the king's chief horseman; his son, Olunde, now studying medicine in England; and Simon Pilkings, the colonial district officer. The king has died and Elesin, his chief horseman, is expected by law and custom to commit suicide and accompany his ruler to heaven. The stage is set for a dramatic climax when Pilkings learns of the ritual and decides to intervene and Elesin's son arrives home.

This collection of ten short stories offers a glimpse into African folktales filled with magic, bravery, hopefulness, and life lessons. These stories highlight the importance of community building, connecting with the environment, and defying the odds while offering inspirational messages that leave the reader energized and hopeful. The author's captivating writing style and thought-provoking storytelling make these stories an entertaining and educational read for all ages. Each story is entertaining and rich in wisdom and values, offering great insight into African culture and traditions, particularly from the author's own Ugandan heritage. These stories and their impressive characters, such as the Gods Mawiko and Kaga and the magical Talking Wind, will make a lasting impact, leaving the reader full of hope and in search of more folklore.

Singh's plays reflect, in different ways, on the complexities and contradictions of life in post-Apartheid South Africa.

Set in South Africa's third largest and most diverse city, focussing on people of Indian origin and their relationship with other South African communities, these five plays, undres[s] Durban, as they take us away from the neon lights and 'candy floss' to the reality of the underbelly of post-Apartheid urban and suburban existence. Professor Betty Govinden

Singh is a three-time national award winner for playwriting via the PANSA Playreading Festival (South Africa's foremost playwriting contest).

Durban Dialogues, Indian Voice is an anthology of five engaging and eclectic South African plays by award-winning playwright Ashwin Singh. The plays selected, namely To House, Duped, Spice 'n Stuff, Reoca Light and Beyond the Big Bangs represent the complete array of Singh's storytelling skills in drama as well as satire.

Each play reflects, in different ways, on the complexities and contradictions of life in post-Apartheid South Africa, and focuses particularly on people of Indian origin and their relationship with other South African communities.

The plays present a moving portrait of a unique array of characters and are also punctuated by Singh's trademark humour. Each one is set in Durban, South Africa's third largest and most diverse city, and they are described by renowned academic and critic Betty Govinden as undressing Durban, as they take us away from the neon lights and 'candy floss' to the reality of the underbelly of post-Apartheid urban and suburban existence.

This contemporary play collection from award-winning playwright is ideal for schools, colleges and theatre companies unafraid of gritty drama.

Based on the Oresteia by Aeschylus

In this reworking of Aeschylus' Oresteia, Klytemnestra and Elektra face one another in a dramatic confrontation. Attempts to come to terms with their violent past echo testimonies delivered in Apartheid's wake throughout South Africa during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Aeschylus' chorus is replaced by Xhosa tribeswomen, who bring grace and humanity through their ancient art of split tone singing. Molora (the Sesotho word for 'ash') is an examination of vengeance, and the breaking of its cycles by the everyman.

Molora - Based on The Oresteia by Aeschylus

In this reworking of Aeschylus' Oresteia, Klytemnestra and Elektra face one another in a dramatic confrontation. Attempts to come to terms with their violent past echo testimonies delivered in Apartheid's wake throughout South Africa during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

RAM: The Abduction of Sita into Darkness - Based on The Ramayana by Valmiki

Farber's potent revisioning of this age-old text is a raw and probing contemporary work which places the loss of the Feminine Divine, and thus our lack of spiritual and moral equilibrium, at its visceral core. This is a Ramayana for a new world.

Mies Julie - Based on Miss Julie by August Strindberg

Transposed to a post-apartheid kitchen - a single night, both brutal and tender, unfolds between a black farm-labourer, the daughter of his master and the woman who has raised them both. The visceral struggles of contemporary South Africa are laid bare, as John and Mies Julie spiral in a deadly battle over power, sexuality, mothers and memory.

'The Missing Face' is Beholding...In this meticulously paced play, Ida...a true optimist about love, family and her culture, takes a great leap in rearing her son, Amaechi...until she decides to leave the masculine formation of her young man-child to his father, who is domiciled in Africa...'The Missing Face' offers a rich illustration of music...ritual and tradition that is noble in looking back and seizing the moment.- ?Laura Andrews, Amsterdam News, New York The Missing Face has many interesting characters and proactive ideas...The conflict between Ida and Odozi is refreshing and funny; it's fascinating to see and hear an African-American lecture an African about... his] own culture, and then to hear his bemused response...Odozi's colorful language, full of jokes and elaborate metaphors, is intriguing...There are many fine moments in the play concerning African culture and the relationship that modern African-Americans and Africans have with it.?- Nrooke Pierce, Theater Mania, New York Show In all her work, Onwueme has shown daring in her exploration of ideas, even when they lead to subjects and themes which may seem taboo. She has a way of using images to express very crucial ideas. For example, in Legacies or The Missing Face] where lkenga is split into two halves-she explores important pan-African themes and sums up the historical tragedy of the first major division of Africa into continental and diasporan entities. Wholeness will come when the two halves come together.- ?Ngugi wa Thiong'o, foreword to Onwueme's Tell It To Women

The first English-language anthology of Aristide Tarnagda's theatre, this book brings together six of the acclaimed West African playwright's recent French-language plays.

Winner of ADELF's 2017 Grand prix littéraire d'Afrique noire(Best African Literary Work), Tarnagda blends poetic and colloquial registers to create powerful characters that resonate with the universal themes of longing, the need to be heard, and the realities of everyday life. This debut anthology now invites the anglophone world to encounter Tarnagda's theatre alongside voices of West African scholars and theatre artists whose short forwards and afterword contextualise each of the translated plays and his impactful theatre career.

The plays include:

And If I Killed Them All, Ma'am?(2013)
Tears from the August Sky(2013)
Sank, or the Patience of the Dead(2016)
Ways of Loving(2017)
Red Earth(2017)
Musika(2019)

Along with an introduction by Heather Jeanne Denyer and completed by images of these productions, The Plays of Aristide Tarnagda is a fantastic introduction to not only this acclaimed and beloved playwright, but also to the themes and joys of francophone African theatre.

Themes of identity, tradition, and belonging blend together in this collection of five plays celebrating South Africa's vibrancy and diversity.

Delving into African mythology to uncover a rich tapestry of history, spirit, and ancestry, Staging Black, Queer South Africa: Plays for the Gods!offers profound insights into the contemporary Black queer experience, shedding light on the complex interplay between identity and tradition in modern South Africa.

Drawing on long-held parables, such as Camus' Absurd Hero, this collection bridges the gap between Ritual Theatre and Theatre of the Absurd to fully evoke the paradox of being Black and queer in South Africa, with the collection coining the 'Absurd Ritual' genre. Touching on ideas of Ubungoma, IsiZulu Shamanism, and the legacy of queer individuals in African communities, the plays challenge long-held assumptions on whether queerness 'belongs' in traditional beliefs.

Along with a contextualizing introduction by Dr. Princess Sibanda, University of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, and a personal preface by the playwright, Staging Black, Queer South Africais a refreshing and often shocking look at the intersection of Blackness, queerness, and spirituality, and how this intersection is far from being a paradox.

The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives is a scandalous, engrossing tale of sexual politics and family strife in modern-day Nigeria. Lola Shoneyin's bestselling novel bursts on to the stage in a vivid adaptat---ion by Caine Award-winning playwright Rotimi Babatunde.

Men are like yam, you cut them how you like.

Baba Segi has three wives, seven children, and a mansion filled with riches. But now he has his eyes on Bolanle, a young university graduate wise to life's misfortunes. When Bolanle responds to Baba Segi's advances, she unwittingly uncovers a secret which threatens to rock his patriarchal household to the core.

In Regina's book, I Fell in Love with Another Woman's Man, she gives you love, drama, and even the sexy. This is her life story and she gives you the truth, no chaser. Ladies get ready to sip some tea and whatever you do, make sure you're sitting down for this one. Regina gives you a glimpse of her life from the boyfriend to the baby momma drama. Her inspiration to write this book comes from her best friend, who encouraged her to tell her story so that it may help young women today and be an example of what not to do in a relationship. For those of you who are reading this and can identify with her story, take note. This is no reality show script, this is Regina's story--the good, the bad, and the messy. So now please prepare yourselves to step into her world.

William H. Cooper III describes the years of racial profiling in law enforcement that had significantly affected his life, family, and friends. Readers will understand the life experiences of how Mr. Cooper paid the consequences emotionally, mentally, and financially because of wrongful law enforcement.

Today despite having to endure, Mr. Cooper has overcome the injustices he faced, and he wrote this book to share his life experiences for readers to have another perspective and understanding as cautionary lessons of what it is to be racially profiled for this generation and future generations (Maria M. Malave, Associate in Elementary Education, Camden County College, Blackwood, New Jersey).

I have really enjoyed reading Just Another Pretty Face. I am a visual person, and each short story had me visualizing each scene. In a few of the stories, there is comedic timing that draws you in and makes the story personable. Thankfully, each story ended with no real arrest. This book is a good read (Virginia D. Melton, Associate in Criminal Justice, Prince George Community College, Maryland).

The greatest book ever written, the Bible, depicts troubles the Nubians lived with. Since then, thousands of more books describe the terrorized horrors African American men endured and still endure. Now in 2021, my father writes his testament of the stories that took place in his life. The injustices that take place while breathing and being black must end! Shame the devil! Tell the truth! Hate must not win! If you ever get pulled over, it is your duty, to save your life! (Lisa A. Vargas-Long, Bachelor of Science in Business, Rutgers University, Camden, New Jersey).

Speaking Our Selves brings together eight remarkable plays by women writers from the under-represented African countries of Tanzania, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Mali, Burundi, Benin, and Sudan, plus a play by award-winning Ugandan playwright and volume coeditor Asiimwe Kawe. Four of the plays are translated into English from Kiswahili, French, or Kirundi and French, while most of the plays preserve African indigenous languages, including Runyankore, Lusoga, Mina, Fon, Bambara, Luganda, Kiswahili, and Kirundi. Although the plays are united in presenting women as central figures who own their voices, they also represent a rich diversity of story-telling. Each unique dramaturgy is rooted in African forms of story-telling that occasionally merge with recognizable Western forms to create hybrid, dramatic forms. These hybrid methods emphasize the striking ways in which African women writers continue to experiment with form, moving beyond Western-influenced dramaturgy if and when it jeopardizes their authentic ways of artistic expression and creation through language, movement, and music, centered in African Cosmology.

The plays within Speaking Our Selves confront a range of ideas and issues, including women embracing the potential of agency in often contested subject positions; confronting their historical object positions in worlds of devastating patriarchal authority; resisting toxic masculinity and persistent, oppressive binaries of gender roles; finding power in communities of women; increasing their acumen in financial, business, and economic spheres; facing tensions between traditional religious tenets and efforts toward secularization; living with perpetual acts of violence toward their bodies; and the rising mental health issues among girls and women across the continent. Readers and audiences are challenged by these plays not to be passive witnesses by observing from safe vantage points, but rather to be active participants in the stories being told.

Bringing together in English translation eleven Francophone African plays dating from 1970 to 2021, this essential collection includes satirical portraits of colonizers and their collaborators (Bernard Dadié's Béatrice du Congo; Sony Labou Tansi's I, Undersigned, Cardiac Case; Sénouvo Agbota Zinsou's We're Just Playing) alongside contemporary works questioning diasporic identity and cultural connections (Koffi Kwahulé's SAMO: A Tribute to Basquiat and Penda Diouf's Tracks, Trails, and Traces...). The anthology memorializes the Rwandan genocide (Yolande Mukagasana's testimony from Rwanda 94), questions the status of women in entrenched patriarchy (Werewere Liking's Singuè Mura: Given That a Woman...), and follows the life of Elizabeth Nietzsche, who perverted her brother's thought to colonize Paraguay (José Pliya's The Sister of Zarathustra). Gustave Akakpo's The True Story of Little Red Riding Hood and Kossi Efoui's The Conference of the Dogs offer parables about what makes life livable, while Kangni Alem's The Landing shows the dangers of believing in a better life, through migration, outside of Africa.

Themes of identity, tradition, and belonging blend together in this collection of five plays celebrating South Africa's vibrancy and diversity.

Delving into African mythology to uncover a rich tapestry of history, spirit, and ancestry, Staging Black, Queer South Africa: Plays for the Gods! offers profound insights into the contemporary Black queer experience, shedding light on the complex interplay between identity and tradition in modern South Africa.

Drawing on long-held parables, such as Camus' Absurd Hero, this collection bridges the gap between Ritual Theatre and Theatre of the Absurd to fully evoke the paradox of being Black and queer in South Africa, with the collection coining the 'Absurd Ritual' genre. Touching on ideas of Ubungoma, IsiZulu Shamanism, and the legacy of queer individuals in African communities, the plays challenge long-held assumptions on whether queerness 'belongs' in traditional beliefs.

Along with a contextualizing introduction by Dr. Princess Sibanda, University of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, and a personal preface by the playwright, Staging Black, Queer South Africa is a refreshing and often shocking look at the intersection of Blackness, queerness, and spirituality, and how this intersection is far from being a paradox.

Fun Fun Fun A fun and festive autumn coloring books for toddlers This jumbo coloring book will be beautiful to the eye of any child Our Thanksgiving Coloring Book for Kids has a beautiful collection of Thanksgiving

Developed in workshops with award-winning actors, these are the works in Fugard's canon that most directly confront the dehumanizing brutality of apartheid. Includes: Sizwe Bansi is Dead, The Island, and Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act.

The first English-language anthology of Aristide Tarnagda's theatre, this book brings together six of the acclaimed West African playwright's recent French-language plays.

Winner of ADELF's 2017 Grand prix littéraire d'Afrique noire (Best African Literary Work), Tarnagda blends poetic and colloquial registers to create powerful characters that resonate with the universal themes of longing, the need to be heard, and the realities of everyday life. This debut anthology now invites the anglophone world to encounter Tarnagda's theatre alongside voices of West African scholars and theatre artists whose short forwards and afterword contextualise each of the translated plays and his impactful theatre career.

The plays include:

And If I Killed Them All, Ma'am? (2013)
Tears from the August Sky (2013)
Sank, or the Patience of the Dead (2016)
Ways of Loving (2017)
Red Earth (2017)
Musika (2019)

Along with an introduction by Heather Jeanne Denyer and completed by images of these productions, The Plays of Aristide Tarnagda is a fantastic introduction to not only this acclaimed and beloved playwright, but also to the themes and joys of francophone African theatre.

The power of theatrical performance is universal, but the style and concerns of theatre are specific to individual cultures. This volume in the Global Theatre Perspectives series presents a reconstructed ancient performance text, four one-act indigenous African plays and five modern dramas from various regions of Africa and the Caribbean Diaspora.

Because these plays span centuries and are the work of artists from diverse cultures, readers can see elements that occur across time and space. Physicalized ritual, direct interaction with spectators, improvisation, music, drumming, and metaphorical animal characters help create the theatrical forms in multiple plays. Recurring themes include the establishment or challenging of political authority, the oppression or corruption of government, societal expectations based on gender, the complex and transformational nature of identity, and the power of dreams.

Though each play is its own unique entity, reading them together allows readers to explore what theatrical elements and cultural concerns are perhaps essentially African. The Caribbean plays add further perspective to the questions of what values, theatrical and societal, are part of African drama, how these have influenced the Caribbean aesthetic, and what the relationships are between the old and new world.

Among the creators of the pieces are two Nobel Laureates, those who have been exiled or jailed for the political nature of their work, and the author of his country's first constitution. The volume can serve as the primary text for an intensive semester-long investigation of African drama and culture. But it is also possible to use this volume along with others in the series as texts for a single course on drama from around the world. The global perspectives approach, letting works from ancient, indigenous, and modern times resonate with each other, encourages thinking across boundaries and connective human understanding.

James Harris takes you on a roller-coaster ride through his life from From the Fields to the Feds. Starting as early as the age of seven years old, all odds were stacked against James. Born and raised in East St. Louis, not many people make it out. Due to his quick and critical thinking, James was able to succeed on and off the field to a certain extent. With various obstacles and everything under the sun, you will enjoy this ride with James and examine how a man could live multiple lives while achieving the impossible.

The book is a compilation of poems, short stories and plays. The twenty poems display different types of poetry including lyric, narrative, dramatic, satirical, dirge and free verse. Out of the six plays, one is a radio play to give readers a feel of what radio drama is like. There are six short stories using various types of narrative techniques and other characteristics such as dilemma, intrigue and suspense. The themes and topics are varied including human trafficking, drug and substance abuse, infidelity, health related issues among others.