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REVIEW:
'Since the early 1960s, Soyinka has backed up his onslaught on rotten governance with a succession of satirical revues. 'The achievement of the present volume (published in the annual African Theatre series) is to bring this work out into the open, to allow us to appreciate the ballast that supports so many of Soyinka's full-length plays. 'In many of these sketches Soyinka is at his most acerbic, and there are instances of sheer brilliance. 'Blackout, Blowout & Beyond is a gift to African theatre scholars, but its appeal goes way beyond this. Here is Soyinka at his most accessible, his funniest and most daring.' - Chris Dunton in Sunday Independent, Sunday Culture '...the series addresses scholars and students within the widening field of African Studies and all those who support, either through public practice or private industry, the necessary internationalism of modern approaches to performance. '...a volume that does us a precious service by making available the not-really-ephemeral work of a remarkable playwright. '...to see Soyinka whole, we need to take account of these angry short farces.' Peter Thomson in Studies in Theatre and Performance '...In the preface to the current volume Banham describes how at a 2001 Soyinka conference in Toronto he realised that a whole generation of younger scholars - Nigerian and international - had no knowledge of this work in detail, only tantalisingly knowing of its presence' (viii). ' a wealth of semi-neglected, semi-forgotten Soyinka material from his early guerrilla theatre days... 'What emerges is a picture of highly resourceful teamwork - Soyinka providing creative input and encouraging critical thinking and creative talent, the company members developing their individual skills, improvising scenes and ad-libbing dialogues, often running with an idea rather than a full-fledged script. '... Banham et al have not calcified these texts in this reprint. Instead, they have provided us with a sense of their adaptability, fluidity and essential playfulness...' 'This issue of African Theatre has indeed something to offer to everyone: to the collector of textual treasures and the scholar critically engaged with Soyinka's dramatic oeuvre; to the social and theatrical activist in search for inspiration; and to those who like me count themselves as neither of the two but are great lovers of Soyinka's books, especially his theatrical works which - as is in the nature of things - are best in performance.' Christine Matzke in the Leeds African Studies Bullettin.
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