Some examples of theatre as a political instrument

Theatre and politics have always been closely linked, and their overlap continues to have an impact on contemporary society. Serving as a means of expression, critique and mobilization, theatre has always provided a space for debate and reflection on crucial political issues, in addition to exerting an influence on public opinion.

The Nâtya-shâstra (from Sanskrit: nâtya, “drama,” and, shâstra, “treatise”), an ancient Hindu encyclopaedic work describing the foundations of Indian theatre (the volume is also regarded as the foundational text of the fine arts in India) postulates that dramatic theatre resulted from the conflicts that emerged in society at the end of the harmonious golden age (Kŗta Yuga)¹ and that consequently, a play would always represent a conflict and its denouement.

In ancient Greece, the staged tragedies took on an allegorical meaning echoing the city’s contemporary political context. For some historians, the birth of Athenian democracy is inseparable from the rise of Greek tragedy. After watching the performances, the audience was encouraged to take part in more in-depth discussions on the state of the city, making the theatre a means of preparing citizens for the incipient stages of a still limited democracy. This period was marked by cultural ferment, although only “citizens”² participated in both the theatre and the political sphere. Greek theatre thus became the engine of a large-scale acculturation.

Theatre and colonization

During the 18th and 19th centuries, European imperialist powers used theatre as an instrument of colonization. These empires frequently exploited the theatrical genre to promote their own vision and justify their domination over colonized territories. Plays, operas and other forms of representation conveyed stereotypes, clichés and narratives that legitimized the colonial enterprise.

Theatre was also an instrument for promoting colonial nations’ sense of cultural and political supremacy. Shows featured representations of Europe as an advanced civilization, while colonized peoples were portrayed as primitive, savage or exotic. This art form was a means of controlling public opinion in the colonies by influencing the perception people had of their own situation and of colonial domination. Theatrical ceremonies and festivals were often used to celebrate the grandeur of colonial power and remind colonized populations of the superiority of the empire and its centre.

Nevertheless, while theatre was a tool of cultural and political propaganda that served imperialist interests during periods of colonization, it was also this art form that was taken up again by peoples seeking independence. It has played a significant role as a tool of decolonization. By seizing and subverting the medium that had served as a means of repression for their oppressors, these communities used theatre to express their own cultural identity, denouncing the enslavement, abuses and injustices inflicted on them by colonial forces. Theatre thus made it possible to explore alternative histories and paint a picture of possible futures, encouraging people to imagine a tomorrow beyond colonial domination and servitude.

Theatre, space and time

The works chosen for this exhibition refer in varying degrees to theatre, its history, its modes and strategies in the context of a white cube set-up. The artists revisit the theatrical stage in order to ensure the unfolding of the performative action. The stage, which contains the body and its movement, takes us back in time to breathe new life into this theatre of resistance. The theatrical stage is re-transcribed in a different setting, presented to a different audience. The time of the performance—initially ephemeral—is also altered, since it does not take place at a precise moment, but is repeated throughout the exhibition, hour after hour and day after day, in a loop, thus stretching out the time of these furtive actions that took place on stage.

The alternative archive and the rewriting history

The works presented in this exhibition address the present by referring to theatrical practices or movements of the past. They draw on archives of theatrical works, revisit the context of their emergence and adopt their forms to reflect on today’s social and cultural issues.

To fill the gaps in these unofficial or institutional archives, some artists use their imagination to reactivate memory. These blanks in official history are filled by a reformulation based on alternative memories and narratives: the memory of the body, remembrance, the stories told and the passed-down narratives.

¹In Hinduism, the Satya Yuga (or Krita Yuga) is the first and best of the four yugas (world ages). Satya Yuga lasts 1,728,000 years (4,800 divine years). It is known as the age of truth, when humanity is governed by the gods, every manifestation or work is close to the purest ideal, and humanity allows intrinsic goodness to reign supreme. This is sometimes referred to as the “Golden Age”.

²In ancient Greece, citizenship was restricted to a small minority. In Athens, only 10% of the population were citizens. All of them were free men. Women, slaves and “metics,” i.e. foreigners, were excluded.

The People Staged

Julia Eilers Smith

This text accompanies the exhibition

A Stage for Rebellion

Curated by Julia Eilers Smith

With the participation of Wingston González, Clara Ianni, Onyeka Igwe, Bouchra Khalili, Amol K Patil, Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, The Living and the Dead Ensemble and Ashes Withyman

Montreal: Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery (2023-2024)

November 18^th, 2023—January 27^th, 2024

“I thought there was a message to convey and that this message could be conveyed more broadly and accessibly through theatre than poetry. Poetry is a bit like man alone with himself, while theatre offers exposure and understanding. It seemed to me the form best adapted to the new situation that I was living through, this tremendous event of the 1960s that is decolonization […]”

—Aimé Césaire[1]

“The function of the theatre is to explode fears by bringing them out into the light of day.”

—Sylvia Wynter[2]

The second half of the twentieth century is frequently described as a period marked by the disruption and erosion of colonial empires under the pressure of struggles for independence and the aspirations for freedom by colonized peoples. A number of artists, intellectuals, and militants engaged in these emancipation movements turned to community and radical theatre to reclaim their histories and help forge a political alternative to the dominant colonial narrative. With their immediate audience in mind, these works broke, for the most part, with theatrical conventions of the time, and directly addressed the preoccupations and local histories that affected their public.

The artists assembled in the exhibition A Stage for Rebellion look back on these twentieth-century theatre traditions that served revolutionary struggles. By echoing their political demands and revisiting plays and actions that have faded from history, they draw into the present the emancipatory project of these theatre movements, examining it in light of the political issues of our time.

[…]

The complete essay can be viewed on the exhibition’s page and downloaded in the Texts and Documents section. A printed version is also available at the Gallery.

[1] « J’ai pensé qu’il y avait un message à transmettre et que ce message pouvait être transmis de manière plus large et plus accessible par le théâtre que par la poésie. La poésie, c’est un petit peu l’homme seul avec lui-même, et le théâtre, c’est un donner à voir, un donner à comprendre. Cela m’a paru la forme la plus adaptée à la nouvelle situation que je vivais, cet événement formidable qu’est la décolonisation des années 1960 […] » From Aimé Césaire: A Voice for History. III: The Strength to Face Tomorrow,” directed by Euzhan Palcy (California Newsreel, 1994) 52 min (our translation).

[2] From Sylvia Wynter, “An introductory essay to an adaptation of Federico García Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba and an extract from the adapted play The House and Land of Mrs. Alba,” in We Must Learn to Sit Down Together and Talk About a Little Culture: Decolonising Essays, 1967-1984 (Leeds: Peepal Tree, 2021) 75.

Julia Eilers Smith is the Max Stern Curator of Research at the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Concordia University, since 2019. She holds a master’s degree from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College and a bachelor’s degree in art history from Université du Québec à Montréal. Prior to her current position, she worked at the ICA London, the Hessel Museum of Art in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, and the SBC Gallery in Montreal. She has curated exhibitions and events at Ramapo College Art Galleries and the Berrie Center for Performing and Visual Arts in Mahwah, New Jersey, as well as at Galería Liberia in Bogotá and at 80WSE Gallery in New York. Her writings have been published on platforms such as e-flux and the art magazine Espace, art actuel.

AMOL K PATIL lives and works in Mumbai and Amsterdam. He works with performance, installation, sculpture and painting. Coming from a family of artists, with his grandfather being a poet and his father an avant-garde playwright, he has been working with drawings, objects, video, and performance using his own family archives. Patil’s work questions the current conditions of workers and casteism, seeking to connect the past, present, and future. He is interested in the reality of the community he is from and collaborates with the urban and human environment that surrounds him. Recent exhibitions include the Kochi-Muziris Biennale and London’s Hayward Gallery in 2023, documenta fifteen in 2022 and the Yokohama Triennale in 2020. Amol K Patil is the recipient of the inaugural Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation/Kochi-Muziris Biennale (DBF-KMB) Award.

ASHES WITHYMAN, who currently lives on Denman Island, BC, engages with systems of research that enable experiential encounters in the world. His work gleans from the jettisoned and discarded and repurposes these materials into assemblages, environments, actions and sonic performances that often reside at the periphery of institutional space. Solo exhibitions include: Fridericianum, Kassel (2024); La Loge, Brussels (2015); Glasgow Sculpture Studios (2014); Vancouver Art Gallery (2014); Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam (2008). His work has been presented in numerous group exhibitions including dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel (2012).

THE LIVING AND THE DEAD ENSEMBLE is a group of artists, performers and poets from Haiti, France and the United Kingdom. They initially came together in Haiti in 2017 to produce the Haitian Creole translation and performance of the play Monsieur Toussaint by Édouard Glissant. Initiated from an original idea by Louis Henderson and Olivier Marboeuf, who have been collaborating as a director/producer partnership since 2014, the Ensemble’s first film OUVERTURES premiered at Berlinale 2020. The Ensemble’s work explores different possible methods of telling the history and the present from a Caribbean perspective. Producing texts, performances, films and installations, the Ensemble has presented works at the 35th Bienal de São Paulo, the Sharjah Biennial 15 (UAE), and the Badischer Kunstverein (Karlsruhe, Germany), after a residency at the institution. The members are: Mackenson Bijou, Rossi Jacques Casimir, Dieuvela Cherestal, James Desiris, Louis Henderson, Léonard Jean Baptiste, Cynthia Maignan, Sophonie Maignan, Olivier Marboeuf, Mimétik Nèg (James Peter Etienne), Sachernka Anacassis.

ONYEKA IGWE is an artist and researcher working between cinema and installation, born and based in London, UK. Through her work, Onyeka is animated by the question — how do we live together? — with particular interest in the ways the sensorial, spatial and non-canonical ways of knowing can provide answers to this question. She uses embodiment, archives, narration and text to create structural ‘figure-of-eights’, a form that exposes a multiplicity of narratives. Her works have been shown in the UK and internationally at film festivals and galleries. She had a solo show at MoMA PS1 in Spring 2023. Onyeka was awarded the New Cinema Award at Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival 2019, 2020 Arts Foundation Fellowship Award for Experimental Film, 2021 Foundwork Artist Prize and has been nominated for the 2022 Jarman Award and Max Mara Artis Prize for Women.

NAUFUS RAMÍREZ-FIGUEROA (b. 1978, Guatemala) lives and works in Guatemala City. He holds a BFA from Emily Carr University, Vancouver, an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and was a research fellow at Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht in 2013. Using performance, sound, drawing and sculpture, Ramírez-Figueroa’s work conjures live and sculptural representations that explore themes of loss, displacement and cultural resistance. The Guatemalan Civil War (1960–1996) is a recurring subject in his work, which although often softened by an absurd and humorous approach, fails to conceal the force of history that precedes it.

CLARA IANNI is an artist and filmmaker born in São Paulo in 1987. Her practice deals with the relation between politics and history in the context of Brazil’s late capitalism, through installations, video, actions, sculpture, drawings and texts. It suggests critical approaches to dominant historical narratives, power structures, and institutional frameworks (including those in the art field), seeking to inspire new forms of life. Her work often develops strategies based on research, institutional negotiations, detours and imagination, and seeks to construct situations. Over the past years, she has been working on the idea of modernization in Brazil and its dialects with the broader geopolitical scape. Her research focused on how modernity is related to the reproduction of power structures, permeating everyday actions, social space and cultural institutions, and imagining how it could be otherwise.

WINGSTON GONZÁLEZ (b. 1986, Livingston, Guatemala) is an award-winning Garifuna poet, editor, and transdisciplinary artist. His work encompasses poetry, performance, and in-depth cultural studies, drawing from his African and American indigenous heritage, alongside modern and postmodern influences. He revives Garifuna cultural traditions, particularly in its music and deep-rooted beliefs, and explores the evolution of philosophical thought within his community. González has also led the micro-publishing project Wanichugu, dedicated to promoting recent literature from the Central American Garifuna community. He was awarded the Luis Cardoza y Aragón Mesoamerican Poetry Prize for his book traslaciones (Cultura, 2015). Currently, he is working on his first full-length Garifuna-Spanish-English poetry collection, contributing to contemporary art projects, offering private writing coaching, and conducting extensive research on Garifuna poetic songs, known as agáyusahani.

BOUCHRA KHALILI was born in Casablanca, Morocco in 1975. She lives and works between Berlin and Vienna. She graduated in Film & Media Studies at Sorbonne Nouvelle and Visual Arts at the École nationale supérieure d’arts de Paris-Cergy. Encompassing film, video, installation, photography, printmaking, and publishing, Khalili’s practice explores imperial and colonial continuums as epitomized by contemporary instances of illegal migration and the politics of memory of anti-colonial struggles and international solidarity. Deeply informed by the legacy of post-independence avant-gardes and the vernacular traditions of her native Morocco, Khalili’s approach develops strategies of storytelling at the intersection of history and micro-narratives. Combining documentary and conceptual practices, she investigates questions of self-representation, autonomous agency, and forms of resistance of communities rendered invisible by the nation-state model.

Repetições (Repetitions), 2017–2018
Single-channel video, colour, sound, 17 min.

Courtesy of the artist

This video features Izaias Almada, an actor from São Paulo’s Teatro Arena, as he tries to memorize the 1965 musical play Arena Conta Zumbi (Arena recounts Zumbi). Directed by renowned Brazilian dramaturge Augusto Boal and co-written by Gianfrancesco Guarnieri and Edu Lobo, this historical play was the first to denounce the military coup in 1964 in Brazil.

Observe how the body plays a key role in this work. How does the protagonist use the memory of his performing body to resurrect the memory of the resistance? Do you think this approach works? What would you do in his place?

The Wake, 2019—ongoing
Three-channel HD video installation, colour, sound, 35 min.

Courtesy of the artists and Spectre productions

The Wake is at once a video, a play, and an aggregation of The Living and the Dead Ensemble’s ongoing research. The group consists of ten members from Haiti, France, and England, with backgrounds in dance, slam, stand-up, literature, and visual arts. Adopting an epistemological position influenced by Spiralist thought and an understanding of circular time, The Wake shows collective members as they recite texts while wandering through the urban environment, often following circular paths. They blend their voices with those of poets and dramaturges of the past, such as Frankétienne, Édouard Glissant, and René Depestre. The back-and-forth between the present and the past, and the performers’ frequent movement between screens, add to the work’s polyphonic and chaotic structure, which is caught up in perpetual movement.

While colonial theatre was an effective means of promoting the oppressor’s doctrines, playwriters and theatre troupes from countries under colonial domination, guided by opposing ideologies, used their works to resist colonial powers. This ideological opposition transforms theatre into a laboratory of ideas, where playwrights struggle to reclaim their cultural identity. After independence, post-colonial theatre became a space for resistance and cultural reclamation, while at the same time focusing on the search for an aesthetic identity, thus becoming an ideological battleground.

Theatre has often been intimately linked to current events, maintaining a special connection with the political sphere, and offering an avenue for shaping, expressing or enlightening opinion.

Note how the members of the collective use the performative form to find ways to preserve and revitalize the Creole language and their cultural heritage, which had been suppressed or neglected under colonialism.

Da Mihi Crustulum (Tambourine), 2023
Found painting, paint, bottle caps, nails
104.1 × 73.7 × 5.1 cm

Placard #2 (Parliament pamper’d and clarified their zeal with marrow-puddings many a meal and cramm’d em till their guts did ach with Cawdle-Custard and Plumb-Cake), 2023
Indigo, cochineal, found pillow, wood
213.4 × 48.3 × 20.3 cm

The Horns and Flutes of Saturnalia persist with both expensive and quite cheap gifts, including writing tablets, dice, knucklebones, moneyboxes, combs, toothpicks, a hat, a hunting knife, an axe, various lamps, balls, perfumes, pipes, a pig, a sausage, a parrot, tables, cups, spoons, items of clothing, statues, masks, books, and pets, 2023
From the series The Neanderthalish Proverbs
Musical instrument parts, found materials
Various dimensions

Untitled, 2023
Carved Gannoderma applanatum, paint, found painted, Gannoderma applanatum, theatre costume, clothes hanger, twine
111.8 × 58.4 × 22.9 cm

From the series The Neanderthalish Proverbs
Courtesy of the artist and Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver

Made of found objects, Ashes Withyman’s sculptures in this exhibition stem from a large-scale project titled The Neanderthalish Proverbs that questions the inheritance of Cartesian dualism and the purported superiority of humans over nature. Taking the form of a large public procession, the project is built around thirty characters-troubadours and comprises theatrical dialogue, songs, and discordant musical compositions. Withyman designed militant accessories for each character—costumes, masks, banners, decorations, musical instruments, etc.—to be activated intermittently by the performers.

In your opinion, how important are these theatrical objects in the legacy of this story ? Choose an object and imagine a way of activating it. What difficulties might you encounter? How do you think you could work around them?

Many Kilometres, 2019–2023
Prints on kraft paper
29.7 × 21 cm each

Many Kilometres, Several Words, 2019
Single-channel video, colour, 5 min. 45 sec.

Courtesy of the artist

Amol K Patil comes from a lineage of militant activist artists: his grandfather, Gunaji Patil, was a poet and composer of powada (protest songs), whereas his father, Kisan Patil, who died while the artist was a child, was a Marathi avant-garde actor and dramaturge. Patil’s plays explored the living conditions of rural migrants in the city and the reality of factory workers.

The works presented reinterpret a play written by his father in 1982 that recounts a migrant’s alienating experience working in a textile factory in Bombay by way of postcard correspondence with his wife back in their village in Maharashtra. The issues raised by this play were in direct response to an eighteen-month-long strike that paralyzed the textile industry in the west of the country at that time, affecting nearly 250,000 workers who demanded better pay and benefits. In the video, Many Kilometres, Several Words, the artist positions himself before the camera, reproducing the repetitive gestures of factory work and revealing a body that gradually merges with the machine.

What can you say about the posture of the body of the artist in this work? Observe the movement of the hands and the immobility of the other parts of the body. What kind of relationship does the artist have with the machine and why do you think it is so?

History is an Endless Play, 2023
Two-channel HD video, colour and b/w, sound, 5 min. 34 sec.

Click here to access the production credits.

Archival Matter, 2023
Postcard to Funmilayo Ransome Kuti—Ransome-Kuti Papers, Kenneth Dike Library, University of Ibadan.

“An African at the Colonial Exhibition by Milton Brown, a Nigerian now working in this country” 1951, published by Milton Brown, Belsize Park, London.

Wãsù = Preach: journal of the West African Students’ Union of Great Britain, Volume XII, No. 3, Summer 1947, Fox, Jones & Co., Kemp Hall Press, Oxford.

The Keys Volume III, No. 1 July—September 1935, League of Coloured Peoples, London.

Prints on archival paper
Various dimensions

Courtesy of the artist

In 1947, London was a hotbed of anti-colonial, nationalist, and pan-African militantism for numerous international artists and intellectuals from the Caribbean and African colonies, among them Amy Ashwood Garvey, C.L.R. James, Kwame Nkrumah, George Padmore, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, and Sylvia Wynter.

History is an Endless Play imagines the 1947 London meeting of two women from different generations and countries, involved in the decolonial movements in the British colonies. The two characters are inspired by renowned Nigerian militant Ransome-Kuti and the Jamaican writer and dramaturge Wynter.

Choose two historical figures who have had a positive impact on modern human history. Imagine that they are meeting for the first time. What might they say to each other?

The Tempest Society, 2017
Single-channel video, color, sound, 58 min. 54 sec.

Courtesy of the artist and mor charpentier, Paris

The Tempest Society is the name of a theatre troupe consisting of three young Athenians inspired by the protest tactics of the Al Assifa theatre collective (“The Tempest,” in Arabic), associated with the Movement des travailleurs arabes (MTA, Arab Workers Movement). Active in Paris from 1972 to 1978, Al Assifa employed techniques such as “newspaper theatre,” using current events as reference points to campaign for equality and recognition of the rights of immigrant workers. Their demands included legal status, access to housing, and the right for all to work under decent conditions.

In the video, the three members of The Tempest Society revisit the history of the troupe and MTA, placing their denunciations and demands in parallel with those emanating from the specific context of Greece between 2011 and 2016, shaken by numerous uprisings and political, economic and humanitarian crises. The group underscores the profound convergences between the protests of the past and those of the present, questioning how we inherit histories, particularly with fragile memories that have not been archived, and how to impart them to future generations.

What role do you think the imagination plays in the oral narratives handed down from generation to generation? And how does this orality contribute to the writing of an alternative history and the emancipation of peoples oppressed by colonization?

El corazón del espantapájaros (The Heart of the Scarecrow), 2015
13 aquatints on paper, 39 × 26.5 cm each

Courtesy of the artist and Proyectos Ultravioleta, Guatemala

In 1975, amid the civil war in Guatemala and under the U.S.-backed military regime, students at the Popular University of Guatemala staged an adaptation of Hugo Carrillo’s 1962 political play El corazón del espantapájaros (The Heart of the Scarecrow). This revival caused a storm of controversy, triggering a series of repressive measures: the cancelling of showings, the burning of the theatre, death threats, and even the murder of an actor. No documentary trace of the 1975 production exists today, and the subject itself remains taboo.

Ramírez-Figueroa learned about this event through his uncle, who played a minor role in the play at the time. In recent years, his testimony inspired him to create works reimagining the universe of the censored play. One of the first creations is the aquatints series El corazón del espantapájaros presented in this exhibition. These images depict various characters camped out in corn fields where the scarecrows, according to Carrillo’s script, symbolize the bodies of dissidents found dead in the fields. Since 1975, the scarecrow has been associated within the popular imagination with the deer, whose heart, it is said, is that of a hummingbird.

What other symbols does the scarecrow bring to mind? What symbols of revolt do you use in your own communities, and how?

Lugar de Consuelo (Place of Solace), 2020
Single-channel HD video, color, sound, 35 min. 26 sec.

Commissioned by the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto
Courtesy of the artist and Proyectos Ultravioleta, Guatemala

Lugar de consuelo (Place of Solace) was shot at the same site at the Popular University of Guatemala where the censored 1975 play was originally presented. This work is based on a script by Wingston González, who reimagined Carrillo’s play by creating five main characters who embody the authoritarian powers of the time: the Oligarchy (the supreme ruler), the Church (subservient to the Oligarchy), the President (a military general), the Ranger (obedient to the President’s orders), and the Scarecrow (the murdered rebel).

Examine the ways in which the theatrical works are presented in the gallery space. Now imagine yourself attending a play in a traditional theatre, in front of actors and actresses. How does a staged version differ from the gallery space presentation? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each presentation mode, and how do they influence your experience?

Lugar de consuelo (textos y versiones hasta 2020) (Place of solace [texts and versions up to 2020]), 2020–2023
Prints on acetate
27.9 × 21.6 cm

Courtesy of the artist

Long-time collaborator of Ramírez-Figueroa, Guatemalan poet and writer Wingston González has written scripts reimagining the censored version of the play El corazón del espantapájaros (The Heart of the Scarecrow), staged by students in 1975 at the Popular University of Guatemala. González’s reinterpretation highlights the complicity between the authoritarian powers and depicts characters who have lost the ability to express themselves coherently.

His texts are printed on acetate sheets displayed on a transparent table, creating an effect where the words blend into the surroundings. By this subtlety, the work echoes the state of permanent vigilance and strategies of invisibility necessary in a context of surveillance and repression.

Observe the use of transparency and the superimposition of materials (the glass of the table on which the acetates rest, the acetate used for printing). How do you think these installation strategies affect the use of text and words?

Ajari, Norman. « Frantz Fanon : poétique de l’actualité et critique de la culture ». Dans Matérialismes, culture & communication – Tome 2, Cultural Studies, théories féministes et décoloniales, p. 247-260. Paris: Presses des Mines, 2016.

Bell, Natalie, Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa. New York: New Museum and Lisbon: Kunsthalle Lissabon, 2018.

Biet, Christian et O. Neveux. Une histoire du spectacle militant: Théâtre et cinéma militants: 1966-1981. Vic la Gardiole : L’Entretemps, 2007.

Boal, Augusto. Games for Actors and Non-Actors. Translated by Adrian Jackson. London: Routledge, 2002.

Boal, Augusto. Jeux pour acteurs et non-acteurs, Pratique du théâtre de l’opprimé. Paris : Éditions La Découverte, 1985.
Boal, Augusto, and Adrian Jackson. Aesthetics of the oppressed. Taylor & Francis Ltd, 2015.

Brewster, Yvonne. Mixed Company: Three Jamaican Plays. London: Oberon Books, 2012.

Diamond, David, and Fritjof Capra. Theatre for Living: The Art and Science of community-based dialogue. Victoria, BC: Trafford, 2008.

Fahlenbrach, Kathrin, M. Klimke, and J. Scharloth. Protest Cultures: A Companion. Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2016.

Fouché, Frank. Vodou et théâtre. Pour un théâtre populaire. Montréal : Mémoire d’encrier, 2008.

Frankétienne. Melovivi ou Le piège suivi de Brèche Ardente. Paris : Riveneuve Éditions, 2010.

Frankétienne. Foukifoura. Port-au-Prince : Creacom, 2000.

Howe, Kelly, J. Boal, and José Soeiro. The Routledge Companion to Theatre of the Oppressed. London and New York : Routledge, 2019.

Khalili, Bouchra. The Tempest Society. London, Book Works, 2018.

McKittrick, Katherine, Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis. Durham and London: Duke University Press Books, 2015.

Martin, Bradford D. The Theatre Is in the Street: Politics and Public Performance in Sixties America. Amherst and Boston: University of Masachussets Press, 2004.

Mossé, Claude. Politique et société en grèce ancienne: Le modèle athénien. Paris: Flammarion, 2012.

Ruprecht, Alvina. Les théâtres francophones et créolophones de la Caraïbe : Haïti, Guadeloupe, Guyane, Martinique, Sainte-Lucie. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2003.

Van Erven, Eugène. Radical People’s Theatre. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1988.

Wynter, Sylvia. We Must Learn to Sit Down Together and Talk About a Little Culture: Decolonising Essays, 1967-1984. Leeds: Peepal Tree, 2021.