AFRICAN THEATRE 10

Call for Papers. Media and Performance

African Theatre is seeking articles, reviews or reports for AT10. These should be in the field of performance and media. The editors interpret this topic in a broad sense. It could thus cover drama and performance embedded in the media, such as radio drama, TV drama/performance, documentaries, Reality TV, or cinema and video drama/performance. Alternatively, it could involve the incorporation of mixed media techniques (such as slides, video clips or “canned” music) into “live” performance. The editors would be particularly interested in the use of New Media, such as cellphone technology or the internet (e.g. through UTube, performance clips in blogs or group emails, or drama downloads to cell-phones). Photographs are very welcome.

Articles may cover aesthetic issues such as adaptations of literature or stage theatre/performance to media, issues of camera work, form, musical sound-tracks, animation, special effects, editing, characterization (stars!), mixed media, computerized choreography, intertextuality, genre, indigenizing African critical terminology/categories.

Production issues are welcomed, such as the economics of production (sponsorship, private versus public versus NGO funding), gate-keeping/censorship/regulation, piracy, trade-offs between production values and cost-effectiveness/popularity, mapping production processes.

Another subject could be Reception issues, such as media effects, audiences (formal and informal), audience surveys and monitoring, mass and niche audiences, fans and sub-cultures, fanzines, internet fan chat-rooms and blogs, on-line community audiences, criticism (formal and informal) and moral panics.

Theoretical/thematic issues are also acceptable, such as representation (gender, ethnicity, class, nationhood, religion, xenophobia, homophobia), globalization/glocalisation, Dissonance and cognitive theories, hybridity v authenticity, “Uses and Gratification” v Media Imperialism, African Performance Media histories.

Initially proposals for articles should be sent to Professor David Kerr (Guest Editor for AT10) at both addresses: kerrdavid42@yahoo.co.uk and kerr@mopipi.ub.bw