Drama
Explore Drama works from across the pan-African world
A play based on events in Oyo, Nigeria in 1946, exploring the clash between Yoruba tradition and British colonial interference when the king dies and his horseman is expected to commit ritual suicide.
Play about Makak, a charcoal burner who dreams of becoming an African king, exploring colonialism and identity.
The Younger family in Chicago's South Side dreams of moving to white neighborhood with insurance money.
One-act play about violent confrontation between Black intellectual and white woman on subway.
Play set in 1927 Chicago recording studio exploring tensions between blues musicians and white management.
Play about Troy Maxson, former Negro League player, and his strained family relationships in 1950s Pittsburgh.
Play set in 1911 Pittsburgh boarding house where former slave searches for his wife.
Play about siblings fighting over family piano carved with their ancestry during slavery.
Play set in 1969 Pittsburgh diner during Black Power era, examining community and change.
Play about blues guitarist Floyd Barton's final days in 1948 Pittsburgh.
Play about ex-con trying to rebuild life in 1985 Pittsburgh Hill District.
Play set in 1904 about 285-year-old Aunt Ester and her spiritual cleansing of troubled man.
Final play of Cycle about Black mayoral candidate and gentrification in 1990s Pittsburgh.
Play about unlicensed cab drivers in 1970s Pittsburgh facing urban renewal displacement.
Adaptation of Shakespeare's Tempest from Caliban's perspective as colonized subject.
A historical play about Kinjeketile Ngwale, the spirit medium who led the Maji Maji uprising against German colonial rule in Tanzania (1905-07), blending oral forms with modern drama to examine resistance, leadership, and sacrifice.
A Karoo schoolteacher, a white schoolgirl, and a Black student are caught in late-apartheid violence. The play stages the impossible dilemma of a teacher who believes in non-violent change when the streets demand revolution.
Based on the Ijo oral saga of Ozidi, a posthumous hero raised to avenge his father's murder, this play stages the seven-night ritual performance in literary form, combining violence, prophecy, and spectacle.
Ghana's first published play by an African woman. An African American woman marries a Ghanaian and returns with him to Africa, where she is caught between two worlds, belonging fully to neither.
Based on a Ghanaian legend, the play follows Anowa who defies her parents to marry the man she loves, only to watch him become a slave trader. A bold critique of complicity in the slave trade.
Jointly devised with actors John Kani and Winston Ntshona. A Black South African man takes on a dead man's passbook to work legally — an indictment of the apartheid pass laws through sharp comedy and tragedy.
Two prisoners on Robben Island rehearse Antigone for a prison concert. The performance becomes an act of defiance. Based on real events; Winston Ntshona and John Kani co-devised and originally performed it.
Two brothers in a shack outside Port Elizabeth — one dark-skinned, one light enough to pass for white — enact apartheid's cruelties on each other. Fugard's breakthrough work.
Three plays by Caryl Phillips exploring Black British experience — Strange Fruit (a family's conflict over racial identity), Where There is Darkness, and The Shelter.