This volume in the African Theatre series celebrates the African theatrical diaspora from Brazil to Tasmania, and Canada to Cuba, and also includes the playscript Messing with the Mind by Egyptian writer and director Khaled El-Sawy. Diasporas', as used in the title of this volume, refers to a multitude of groups and communities with widely differing histories, identities and current locations. This book brings together essays on theatre by people of Africandescent in North America, Cuba, Italy, the UK, Israel and Tasmania. Several chapters present overviews of particular national contexts, others offer insights into play texts or specific performances. Offering a mix of academic andpractitioner's points of views, Volume 8 in the African Theatre series analyses and celebrates various aspects of African diasporic theatre worldwide. Guest Editors: CHRISTINE MATZKE, Lecturer in African Literatures and Cultures, Humboldt-University, Berlin; and OSITA OKAGBUE, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Drama, Goldsmiths, University of London. Series Editors: Martin Banham, Emeritus Professor of Drama & Theatre Studies,University of Leeds; James Gibbs, Senior Visiting Research Fellow, University of the West of England; Femi Osofisan, Professor of Drama at the University of Ibadan; Jane Plastow, Professor of African Theatre, University of Leeds;Yvette Hutchison, Associate Professor, Department of Theatre & Performance Studies, University of Warwick

Critical Approaches to African Cinema Discourse utilizes an interdisciplinary approach to lay bare the diversity and essence of African cinema discourse. It is an anthology of historical reflections, critical essays, and interviews by film critics, historians, theorists, and filmmakers that signifies a dialogue and engagement apropos the ideology and cultural politics of film production in Africa. The contributors are extremely concerned, not only with the history of African cinema, but with its future and its potential. This book, then, is not limited to the expansion of the discourse on African cinema, but tries to approach the definition of the critical canon within the exigencies and manifestations of art and African sociopolitical practices. The authors view these practices as an investment in a cultural imperative stemming from the quest to delineate how critical methodologies are derived from and shape contemporary historical and cultural practices. Hence, the contributions are less about the usual constrictive method of analysis and more about illustrating manifestations of an interrogative critical methodology that is certainly an offspring of an indigenous African critical cum cinematic culture and paradigms.