Performing Migrancy and Mobility in Africa

Performing Migrancy and Mobility in Africa focuses on a body of performance work, the work of Magnet Theatre in particular but also work by other artists in Cape Town and other parts of the continent or the world, that engages with the Cape as a real or imagined node in a complex system of migration and mobility. Located at the foot of the African continent, lodged between two oceans at the intersection of many of the earth's major shipping lanes, Cape Town is a stage for a powerful mixing of cultures and peoples and has been an important node in a network of flows, circuits of movement and exchange. The performance works studied here attempt to get to grips with what it feels like to be on the move and in the spaces in-between that characterises the lives, now and for centuries before, of multiple peoples who move around and pass through places like the Cape. The contributors are a broad range of mostly African authors from various parts of the continent and as such the book offers an insight into new thinking and new approaches from an emerging and important location.

“This book is a thought-provoking resource for academics, scholars and educators of the humanities and will resonate especially with practitioners and academics in the performing arts. Most of all I recommend this book to those who contemplate and participate in the increasingly crucial global discussions relating to migrancy … .” (Estelle Olivier, South African Theatre Journal, Vol. 29, 2017)

Hazel Barnes, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa Miki Flockemann, University of the Western Cape, South Africa Shannon Elizabeth Hughes, University of Cape Town, South Africa Amy Jephta, Independent Playwright, South Africa Mwenya B. Kabwe, Independent Theatre Maker, South Africa Pedzisai Maedza, University of Cape Town, South Africa Sara Matchett, University of Cape Town, South Africa Sanjin Mufti?, University of Cape Town, South Africa Awino Okech University of Cape Town, South Africa Samuel Ravengai Wits University, South Africa Jane Taylor, University of Leeds, UK