Description:
The first English-language anthology of Aristide Tarnagda's theatre, this book brings together six of the acclaimed West African playwright's recent French-language plays.
Winner of ADELF's 2017 Grand prix littéraire d'Afrique noire (Best African Literary Work), Tarnagda blends poetic and colloquial registers to create powerful characters that resonate with the universal themes of longing, the need to be heard, and the realities of everyday life. This debut anthology now invites the anglophone world to encounter Tarnagda's theatre alongside voices of West African scholars and theatre artists whose short forwards and afterword contextualise each of the translated plays and his impactful theatre career. The plays include: And If I Killed Them All, Ma'am? (2013)Tears from the August Sky (2013)
Sank, or the Patience of the Dead (2016)
Ways of Loving (2017)
Red Earth (2017)
Musika (2019) Along with an introduction by Heather Jeanne Denyer and completed by images of these productions, The Plays of Aristide Tarnagda is a fantastic introduction to not only this acclaimed and beloved playwright, but also to the themes and joys of francophone African theatre.
Brief description: Heather Jeanne Denyer is Associate Professor at California State University, Fullerton, USA. She is editor of The Plays of Aristide Tarnagda (Methuen Drama, 2025) and author of chapters on African theatre, women, and puppetry in journals and edited volumes. She translates African plays from French to English, including Musika, published in PAJ, 2019; others included in PEN Women's Voices in Translation Festival and PEN's World Voices Festival.