[Book review]: Senegalese Stagecraft: Decolonizing Theater-Making in Francophone Africa. Brian Valente-Quinn. Performance Works.
 Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2021. 
208 pp.

In this fascinating, ambitious book, Brian Valente-Quinn draws on different critical approaches — integrating textual analysis and fieldwork practices ('which take the trouble to meet theater and performance on its own ground', p. 10) — to produce compelling readings of key moments from almost a century of Senegalese theatre. Francophone studies has largely focused on printed texts of plays while anthropology and African cultural studies have examined other forms of 'theatrical' performance, with very little dialogue across these two traditions: 'The diversity of post-independence stage sites […] is often lost as the study of performance practices is parsed out among academic disciplines' (p. 6). Valente-Quinn's book brilliantly draws together these separate strands of the Senegalese performance tradition. The six chapters are organized chronologically. The opening three chapters span the period from the theatre productions of the students at the École William Ponty, the renowned educational establishment for the future African...