ABSTRACT
The American expatriate poet Gertrude Stein once said that the problem in dealing with Los Angeles as a geographical entity was that 'there's no there there'. For many brought up on the professionalized Euro-American spoken theatre or even on many formalized Asian sung and/or danced drama forms, the problem in dealing with Africa's dynamic performative traditions, most of which involve music and dance, is - to paraphrase Stein - the theatre there seems to be without theatre there. Which is to say that it is easy not to see the continent's sophisticated and often ancient theatrical traditions if one is looking only for theatre buildings, raised stages, complicated infrastructures, advanced technology, expensive sets and published scripts.
