Adebayo,M.: Transnational Theatre Writings

This seminar series will provide a practical introduction to creative writing for the stage. Students will be provided with creative writing exercises that enable them to write new short dramatic texts for performance (scenes, stories, plays, performance poems and so on) that raise socio-political questions that are pertinent to the students’ lives and transnational experiences. We will simultaneously examine pre-existing Anglophone play texts from the African continent and the Diaspora that are considered ‘modern classics’ and ask why and how these plays in particular, have contributed to ideas of a modern British and American theatre. We will investigate the political role of post-colonial theatre in building the independent nation state as well as the state of the individual, in healing from national and personal trauma, in raising debate around social issues in communities such as gender, race and economic in/equality and in developing cultural city spaces. We will consider theatre as a means of transnational cultural transfer. There will be space to write, read work aloud, reflect, debate and receive feedback from peers and the seminar tutor.