On Monday, September 22nd, the NYUAD Institute hosted the panel [“A Celebration of African Theaters | African Theaters Now: A Conversation”] (https://publicprograms.nyuad.nyu.edu/en/the-institute/events/2025/september/a-celebration-of-african-theaters-african-theaters-now-a-conversation.html) as the first of their two-part series on contemporary African theater, in which voices ranging from artists to scholars come together to celebrate recent developments.

Following the opening remarks of Abhishek Majumdar, NYUAD Theater Program Head, the panel began with moderator Robert Vorlicky, Professor at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, presenting current trends in African theater, particularly increased female agency in both arts and daily life, and new experimentations with theater among African playwrights.

According to Vorlicky, social media influences and participation in economic and technological fields have significantly changed how 21st-century African women tackle perpetual violence. As opposed to their silent struggles of the past, victims now seek legal actions, divorce, or retaliation. This changing social landscape has also influenced playwriting, in which women-to-women interactions are increasingly incorporated into plays, and their agency is further insisted.

He also pointed out four trends in African playwrights’ experimentation with structure and form. First, technological incorporation, such as special effects and set designs, were used when available. Second, there has been an increase in numbers of historical dramas alongside plays on contemporary issues. Third, traditional vocals and instrumentals are combined with experimental movements, dances, and chants. Finally, and most notably, plays have become increasingly bilingual, incorporating languages used daily in African regions (Kiswahili, Hausa, Yoruba, etc.) alongside English or French translations as a means of the playwright preserving their original tongue.

Turning to the panelists, Hope Azeda, a Rwandan playwright and director, continued the conversation with her journey curating the Ubumuntu (translated to “being human”) Art Festival. Azeda’s journey of theatrically retelling the events of the Rwandan genocide is intertwined with her story of reconnecting with the historical truths of her Rwandan home after a refugee childhood in Uganda. Being hidden from the realities of the genocide by her mother’s protective instinct throughout her youth has inspired Azeda to confront silence, trauma, and truth-telling using art.

The Ubumuntu Art Festival, taking place five minutes away from the Kigali Genocide Memorial in Rwanda’s capital, was her attempt to represent the silence of human rights violations in a form of art that speaks to the people. Questions about how to tell the truth, silences of a past tragedy, also emerged. “Pain is pain, anger is anger. And we connect to an emotional level, because if you can feel my pain, then you understand my story. What’s your story? And how we can tell the truth?” she said.

Following Azeda, Judith G. Miller, NYU French Literature Professor, sheds light on the history of African Francophone theater texts and her journey bridging the gap between Francophone texts and English readers since the early 1990s.

According to Miller, Francophone theater texts since the 1930s have maintained their critical lens of reflecting society, from “extremely satirical corrosive text” attacking French colonizers and “rallying people to the decolonization movement,” to “contestatory and socially relevant” contemporary theater telling African history through African perspective.

African Francophone theaters have simultaneously embraced African forms of oral storytelling and ritual healing, while introducing avant-garde storytelling techniques into theaters in the Americas, France, and Europe. This transnational exchange has been realized by the emergence of art festivals among African countries, increasing open access to texts, and widening networks of artists and scholars.

However, African playwrights abroad are still challenged by the complex politics of their home country. Financing native African plays is also an emerging difficulty, as the genre has been in competition with technological and industrial fields, or other less costly platforms of storytelling such as film, video, and digitalized forms. Hence, artists themselves have adapted to handling multiple jobs, such as musicians, DJs, or teachers.

Finally, the audience was introduced to the revelations of Wole Soyinka, Nobel Prize laureate in Literature, on the necessity of female African writers’ knowledge and experience. Soyinka encourages theater audiences to engage with texts from the other half of this world, to encounter a different sociology, different from that of men. “And it is only when you are confronted by the text and you are imagining that play yourself, seeing it yourself, that you realize that you are confronting a totally different sociological texture,” he said.

For him, a woman’s experiences of abuse and patriarchy are ultimately hers, irreplicable in the arts created by men. As he puts it, “But here is a human being who undergoes a process of dehumanization. There is no way a man can capture that.” He also points out current gaps in knowledge that societies can only fill in when they allow women's voices to be heard.

The panel is both a reflection and a celebration of the influence, development, and increasing the inclusion of women in African theaters. It is a part of NYUAD’s wide range of events this September and October to celebrate theater arts from Africa. More information can be found on the NYUAD Public Programs website.