In the summer of 2007 the annual conference of the International Federation of Theatre Research (IFTR/FIRT) met for the first time in Africa. Hosted by Stellenbosch University in South Africa, it was probably the first international theatre conference of its kind on the continent, enabling scholars and practitioners from all over the world as well as from many African countries to present their work on the conference theme: ‘Theatre in Africa – Africa in the Theatre’. This issue of TRI opens with two articles which reflect the deep interest among non-African scholars in the latest developments on African stages as well as the challenge of depicting its complex state of affairs from within. Both contributions examine strategies of subversion mobilized by theatre to create continuity and identity through different readings of the historical past.

Let me explain right from the outset that I have chosen the term ‘after the generals’ only as a convenient shorthand. In fact what I mean is something like ‘after the notorious dictatorships of the later half of the last century in Africa south of the Sahara’. Some of these, as you know, were military regimes, like those of Eyadema, Bokassa, Mobutu or Abacha (graphically satirized in Soyinka's A Play of Giants), but quite a number were also civilian governments, such as Arap Moi's Kenya or Boigny's Ivory Coast, always depending, of course, on how you choose to classify them.

This article examines what is at stake when performers and playwright critically transfigure oral histories when staging them theatrically. Representations of race and colonial history are integral to a nation's conception of its own cultural identity. These issues are at the forefront of many theatre productions in Cape Verde, an intensely creolized West African nation whose islands bear traces of the Europeans and Africans who have commingled there for centuries. The article examines two performances rooted in Cape Verdean history that challenge existing theoretical paradigms for the mimetic relationship between actors and the historical personae they portray onstage. Proposing the concept of the ‘historical imagination’, it explores how theatre artists self-consciously alter the local history they circulate to an international theatre festival stage and, concomitantly, how the theatre festival context and media coverage profoundly impact how national history is told within a global performance arena.

In his first play, Une Manière d'Antigone (1975), Patrick Chamoiseau brings together Greek mythology and the history of Martinique. This article compares this version with the Sophoclean version, considering the transformations made by the Martinican playwright in terms of time and space, plot, characters and language so as to determine how different or similar the Caribbean Antigone is from her Greek sister. By adapting a famous Greek myth on the Antillean stage, Chamoiseau realizes a literary transposition while reaffirming his strong political opposition towards France. This play inscribes itself in the vast movement of subversion and contestation of the classic literary tradition by postcolonial writers who create their own literature based on the adaptation of Western classics. Chamoiseau's rewriting of the Antigone myth allows for a reappropriation and a revalorization of a forgotten history. Additionally, it presents an assertion of resistance and a plea for emancipation from both literary and political domination.

This paper is an exploration of the 2004 Arabic adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, which premiered in Casino du Liban in Beirut. The Last Day was created by Oussama al-Rahbani, who also composed the musical scores. The play shows how local Shakespeares resonate with the wider global field of study, which in turn echo East–West cultural interactions. The Last Day challenges our perception of the Other in Arabic drama as it questions intraculturalism within the conflict-ravaged Middle East. It prompts us to ask how we should address local Shakespeares in a global context, and how local knowledge illuminates our understanding of Shakespeare's reception. This paper emphasizes the fluidity of the field of Shakespearean studies and the instability of East–West cultural divides.

The controversial theory of intercultural performance covers a wide range of theatrical practices, which intend to adapt subject matter and situations from one culture to another. This intention mainly involves a transportation and translation of elements and perspectives across cultures. The translator, the audience or reader, and the director fill in the gaps that are formed during this transportation and translation with their own interpretations, in accordance with the culture they inhabit. However, intercultural performance requires conscious attempts to merge two different cultures. Such attempts should not be done solely for the ‘target’ culture's audience but should also regard the perceptions of the ‘source’ culture as much as possible. In light of this, Turkish State Theatre's director Ferdi Merter's production of A Streetcar Named Desire is analysed in order to locate the distinct changes the Turkish interpretation of the play has incorporated.

This article examines a particular aesthetic experience that is brought about by a destabilization, even a collapsing, of the dichotomous pair of concepts the ‘real’ and the ‘fictional’. While a tension between the two, even in differing degrees, proves characteristic of all kinds of theatre, recent developments on European stages emphasize this tension. In the paper it is examined with respect to 1) the actors' bodies and 2) the theatrical spaces. In each case, the point of departure is two examples which are analysed with regard to the particular function that the tension between the real and the fictional might serve. It is argued that what in everyday life is neatly separated into two different worlds to be fully grasped by the dichotomous pair of concepts becomes blurred in the performances discussed here. The particular aesthetic experience coming into being in such performances is an experience of ‘betwixt and between’ (Turner) – a liminal experience. This way, they stimulate a new discussion of the concept of aesthetic experience, so central to all forms of art in the Western world since 1800.