NOW Africa Playwrights Festival

NOW AFRICA: Playwrights Festival, organized to illuminate dramatic African literature, will be held in New York in September 2015. Artists such as, Wole Soyinka, Ngugi wa Thiong’o and other contemporary African artists, will be featured in multiple events to engage both NYU and the greater NYC theater community. This inaugural event is hosted by the Center for Art & Public Policy and the Institute of Performing Arts at NYU Tisch School of the Arts and Anna Deavere Smith’s Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue.

DAY 1 of the festival, Saturday, September 26, 2015, will be located located at 20 Cooper Square, 5th Floor, Room 503, New York, NY 10003. This day will feature a performative reading of Binyavanga Wainaina’s incendiary and satirical piece, “How to Write About Africa.” Afterwards there will be facilitated discussion on the implication of Wainaina’s piece and the radical movements currently occurring within contemporary African dramatic arts. A showcase of excerpts from African playwrights will close this day. 

DAY 2 of the festival, Sunday, September 27 will be located is located in the black-box theatre of the Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program on 715 Broadway, NY, NY [2nd floor]. This evening will include a reading of African playwright, Mfoniso Udofia’s, full length play, runboyrun and a talk back. 

DAY 3, the final day of the festival Monday, September 28, 2015, will be located in the Reise Lounge at the Tisch School of the Arts on 721 Broadway, NY, NY. Excerpts of plays [precolonial-postcolonial] will be juxtaposed with their contemporary counterparts in order to assess/contemplate how African narratives are changing over time.