“Actions from the South”: Teatro delle Albe and Takku Ligey Théâtre

Abstract Drawing on, and modifying, the title of Jean and John Comaroff’s recent book Theory from the South, the presentation will offer an in-fieri critical reflection on chaos as “anarchic synchronicity of the contemporary” and also as a “process of artistic creation” in the post-colony as applied to the arts of drama and performance. The case study will be the recent work of Mandiaye N’Diaye -- actor and director for Teatro delle Albe (Ravenna, Italy) and founder of Takku Ligey Théâtre (Diol Kadd, Senegal). His work will help to explore Africa’s and the Africans’ specific participation into modernity, drawing on Mbembe’s idea of decolonized Africa as both tracing independent paths of self-affirmation and dialogue in the global world, and as devising new locally-based strategies of collaboration and interaction (In the Postcolony and Sortir de la Grand Nuit). According to Mbembe and the Comaroff, the contemporary expression of African modernity, as opposed to that of supposedly technologically-developed countries, articulates new actions and practices of ethical creolized living, which an analysis of the recent work of Teatro delle Albe (its concern with the African experience and immigration in Italy) and of Mandiaye N’Diaye will try to illustrate.