The Plays of Aristide Tarnagda

The first English-language anthology of the major contemporary francophone West African playwright Aristide Tarnagda, bringing together six of his six acclaimed French-language plays. 2013: And If I Killed Them All, Maam? (2013), Tears from the August Sky (2013), Sank, or the Patience of the Dead (2016), Ways of Loving (2017), Red Earth (2017), and Musika (2019). The debut anthology invites the anglophone world to encounter Tarnagdas plays alongside voices of West African scholars and theatre practitioners. The English-language translation of each play is preceded by a short foreword by a contemporary African Tarnagda scholar or member of the Burkinab artistic team who collaborated with Tarnagda on the staging of the plays. Contextualised thusly, anglophone audiences will not only discover Tarnagdas theatre itself but also hear from those who understand it most intimately. Tarnagda blends poetic and colloquial registers to create powerful characters that resonate with universal themes such as longing and a need to be heard and yet are anchored in the realities of Africa. A playwright, director, and actor, Tarnagdas plays have been performed in Africa, North America, and Europe, including at the famed Avignon Theatre Festival in France. Since 2016, Tarnagda has also served as the director of the highly-regarded biennial Rcrtrales, one of the largest Pan-African performance festivals to have ever existed and in 2018, he was the recipient of ADELFs Grand prix littraire d'Afrique noire (Best African Literary Work, awarded by the French-Language Writers' Association) for his pair of plays Ways of Loving and Red Earth.