ABSTRACT
The idea of Africa as a whole is a modern one, but from its earliest known history Africans traded with one another across great distances. There is a curious tension between this desire to conceive of Africa as an interconnected whole and the various ethnic tensions that have led to so much violence on the continent. Current archeological evidence suggests that human civilization existed in Africa before it existed anywhere else in the world. Unlike many parts of Asian literary theory, which trace their intellectual roots back for millennia, African literary and theatrical theory tends to focus on contemporary issues and the connection of these issues to Africa's cultural past. In many African countries, theatre and literature often are connected to popular culture in ways that defy contemporary European conceptions of theatre and literature as high culture. Some of the earliest theatrical endeavors in Nigeria were a form of travelling popular theatre.
