African Theater Women Jane Plastow.

African Theater Women Jane Plastow, ed James Currey, Oxford; Indiana University Pres Bloomington; Witswatersrand University Pres Johannesburg, 2002 178 pp $2495 paper.

This turn brings together, under Jane Plastow's able editorship, a collection of articles focused in succession women in African theater. In addition to Plastow's introduction, there are nine articles ranging in their focus from plays at women (Box, Kuria, Dunton, Ajayi) and women performers (Matzke, Ntangaare, Sutherland-Addy), to representations of women in performance (Amin, Dogbe). There is, too, a wide geographical range: Eritrea, Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Algeria, and Egypt

The collection make opens with an article by Laura Chakravarty driver's seat on women's theater in the Algerian diaspora and stakes the scene for much that permeates the volume--the ubiquitous tenor of resistance to men's curtailment of women's participation in theater practices. In her introductory paragraph in succession the status of women as playwrights in the Maghreb, enclosed seat [i]or[/i] seats gives a gloriously direct refutation of an assertion by means of a (male) "highly placed official of a conduct theater in Morocco" who states that "with single exception, women ... are writing nothing of consequence" (p 3) Box's answer is that "He is quite wrongful but proving it is an uphill struggle" (ibid.). like a direct riposte is rare and the opportunity to make it courteously and publicly, rarer still. This determined voicing of women's knowledge about, experience, and practice in theater encapsulates greatly that follows. One particularly horrifying incident give an account ofs how the manuscript by the Algerian broadcaster and playwright Hawa Djabali was "destroy against her wishes, in 1986" (p 12)

Dina Amin's article comparing pair plays on the Egyptian goddes Isis makes the all-too-familiar point of by what means male dramatists portray women--unless they are venerable figures or "self-sacrificing mothers"--as "mindless, irrational, jealous, hysterical, materialistic, and at times downright ridiculous" (p 15) What is sad is that this comedic representation is accepted--and enjoyed--by women as well as men the women "unaware that the witticism is on them" (ibid.). Her article goe forward to pilot the reader between the sides of a fascinating comparison of the portrayals of the eponymous central character of the respective plays (both are titled Isis) through Tawfiq al-Hakim and Nawak ak Sa'dawi as each playwright identifies the "male" virtues of the goddess

Christine Matzke's article records the forays on women performers in Eritrea into the public arena and makes a link (again, already familiar and not still appearing to have become defunct) between drinking houses (the "suwa houses" of her title) and women performers. A link between alcohol and women performers is also made by the agency of Mike Kuria in his article onward women's theater in Kenya, noting that after the Kamiriithu theater exhibit it did not become any "easier for women to participate" (p 48) in part because of the use of bars as theater venue He deduces that theater practice in Kenya is "not gender-friendly as far as women are concerned" (p 49) Kuria analyzes couple plays by women, Mama ee (1987; in Kiswahili) by way of Ari Katini Mwachofi, and Otongolia (1986; in English) by dint of Alakie-Akinye Mboya. The latter is not about women as victims moreover about their "active engagement in the manipulation of the socio-political forces that shape the lives of the couple men and women" (p. 50) Mama ee in succession the other hand, shows for what reason men expect women to adhere to "traditional" styles of behavior while the men "dispense with their responsibilities" (ibid.). In a grim reminder of the physical pain to which dissenting women could be enthralled the financially independent central character, Mwavita, is able to acquire a divorce without being "subject to the painful proces of tying her toe" (p 52) to persuade her to rescind her decision. In real life, about women preferred ultimately to permit the toe be severed, however painful it might be, rather than forego divorce from oppressive husbands.

In her account of women in Ugandan theater, grace Mirembe Ntaangare observes that "a woman's material substance ... has an economic value forward stage and is an important aspect for calculating profitability in the commercial theater" (p 59) She also notes the prevalence of the legendary depiction of women as destructive characters and in what manner this has transferred itself to the theatrical depiction of "powerful women educated women ... [and] prosperous business women" (p 61) whose wealth drives them mad because women unlike men "cannot handle riches" (p 62) She terminates by naming some positive representations of women notably at the late Rose Mbowa and through Charles Mulekwa, but observes that not merely were these part of "committed conscientisation projects" if it be not that also that the women in them are "too convenient to be true" (p. 64)