The Cambridge Guide to African and Caribbean Theatre.

The 1988 Cambridge Guide to Theatre, write the editors of the book under review, "was concerned to redress the bias towards Western theatre evident in many works of reference, and to offer a truly international view of theatre - traditional and contemporary" (vii). This is a lofty goal indeed, to decolonize knowledge and temper the Eurocentric epistemological dominance in world theatre scholarship, if not in practice. This is an important point that I will pick up again later in this review. A single volume could of course not be expected to realize this goal fully, so, with the publication in 1993 of The Cambridge Guide to Asian Theatre, a step was taken to devote a whole volume to a "specific and focused concern for one aspect of world theatre" (vii). With this regionalization is expected a more in-depth and thorough attention to the full range of theatre practices in regions commonly written about in a general and perfunctory manner, if at all, in standard works or reference. This is the laudable context of conception and publication of The Cambridge Guide to African and Caribbean Theatre.

The guide covers theatrical activity in sub-Saharan Africa as well as the English-speaking and Hispanic Caribbean. The French-speaking Caribbean is not entirely overlooked - there is a brief section under that title, in addition to an entry on the Martinican Aime Cesaire which foregrounds his centrality to the entire Caribbean region. The "nation" is the guide's major organizing principle: The entries are arranged alphabetically according to countries, and within these large categories are specific entries on individuals, genres, companies, movements, and events. Thus, in addition to the focus on playwrights and theatre practitioners characteristic of more conventional works of reference, the Guide also has entries on institutional formations such as "masquerades in Africa," the "Yoruba Travelling Theatre" of Nigeria, the "Junction Avenue Theatre Company" of South Africa, "Carifesta," "Jamaica Pantomime," the "Trinidad Carnival," and the "Eastern Caribbean Popular Theatre Organization." There are useful cross-references throughout, as well as short bibliographies after major entries.

The Cambridge Guide to African and Caribbean Theatre is an extremely useful reference work. For its handy 261 pages, the overview of theatre activities it presents is solid; as a quick source of information on dramatists and practices and as a guide to more in-depth research, it is eminently dependable. The regional as well as national introductions are detailed or succinct, but always insightful and readable, and provide illuminating contexts for the discrete entries. This balance and evenness are big achievements, considering that the Guide is the work of twenty-three contributors, including the three editors, all from disparate locations. The guide will appeal not only to students and scholars but also theatre practitioners interested or involved in African and Caribbean theatre. It is a gold mine of information.

In case we are wondering why theatrical practices from two geographically disparate regions have been combined in one volume, the editors advance a cultural and ideological justification; the reason, they write, is to "acknowledg[e] the Caribbean as culturally a dynamic part of the African diaspora." This is a significant claim, though its effect on the entries for the Caribbean is mute, since theatrical activities there are not necessarily written with much attention to their cultural origins, nor indeed is any section devoted to the complexities of the cultural provenance of Caribbean theatre forms.

The foregoing point is related to the claim of the editors in the preface that the aim of the Guide series is to "offer a truly international view of theatre - traditional and contemporary." This is only superficially true, for the emphasis in the national entries is mostly on "theatre" that is easily assimilable to the West - written, secular. This explains the fixation with locating the point of "emergence of modern drama" that mars most of the introductions to the national entries. For instance, after stating that Benin has "a strong heritage in the traditional performing arts . . . theatrical displays," many of which still exist, the Guide nevertheless goes on to lament the "negligible" achievements of Benin in "modern drama" (15).

Practically all African countries could be said to have such a long and living heritage, yet as in the Benin example, "theatre" in Africa is so recognized only when it is "modern," meaning Western, meaning colonially introduced: "The modern Cameroonian theatre goes back to the 1940s" (23); "modern theatre in the Congo started only in 1950" (25); "modern theatrical activity was introduced to Guinea with the advent of colonial rule" (43); "apart from the traditional drama forms of the pre-colonial society, indigenous Kenyah drama first developed within the colonial education system" (45); and so on. For a guide that aims to offer a "truly international view of theatre" (that is, a non-Eurocentric view), this willful surrender to Western epistemological dominance - with little regard to contemporary competing epistemologies, which are shunted aside as "traditional" - is nothing less than the conservation of Eurocentrism from the back door. This reminds me of Ruth Finnegan, who in her influential book Oral Literature in Africa (1970), refuses to grant that Africa has "drama" because what she sees in Africa does not look like European drama; it does not present her with "analogies to the familiar European forms."

Theatre, more than any other art form, is deeply dependent on its cultural matrix. The distinguished scholar Errol Hill, one of the editors, wrestles at length with a similar matter in his book The Trinidad Carnival: Mandate for a National Theatre (1972). The Guide takes for granted the unproblematic translatability of "drama" or "theatre" across cultures. But this assumption is hardly warranted, for there is now a sizeable body of criticism devoted to challenging that assumption. Wole Soyinka, the leading African playwright and Nobel Laureate, is a representative example here. Against the colonialist denial of lack of "drama" in Africa and the blind dismissal of African festivals as the "'spontaneous' inartistic expression" of primitive tribes, Soyinka insists, in Art, Dialogue & Outrage, that the festivals be seen as constituting "in themselves pure theatre at its most prodigal and resourceful . . . the most stirring expressions of man's instinct and need for drama at its most comprehensive and community-involving." In one sweeping move, Soyinka turns a Eurocentric canon on its head: "Instead of considering festivals from one point of view only - that of providing, in a primitive form, the ingredients of drama - we may even begin examining the opposite point of view: that contemporary drama, as we experience it today, is a contraction of drama, necessitated by the productive order of society in other directions."

This is a relevant issue the Guide knows it ought to have addressed - and fully, too. What constitutes "drama" or "theatre" as we cross cultural borders? It is the attempt to escape or merely skim the surface of the question that leads to the obsession with the "traditional"/"modern" distinction, in the hope that the question is thereby solved. But that distinction is a truly obsolete crutch - and not in the least because it cannot address the coevalness of both the "traditional" and the "modern" - and oftentimes prejudiced in application. A reference work that vaunts its unconventional and inclusive coverage should aim to be equally so in informing vision.