School of English, University of Leeds | staff pages
Jane
Plastow
Professor of African Theatre
Deputy Director of the Workshop Theatre;
Director, Leeds University Centre for
African Studies
email: j.e.plastow@leeds.ac.uk
tel: +44(0) 113 343 4722
fax: +44(0) 113 343 4774
room: WT G04
Professor Jane Plastow MPhil, PhD, Manchester
For a list of publications since 2001 click here
For a full list of publications click here
I am primarily an Africanist with special interests in African
theatre, African literature, education, development studies and politics. I
am also concerned with women’s studies in Africa and worldwide with Theatre
for Development. I have particularly strong links with East Africa and the Horn
of Africa; especially Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda,
all of which I have worked in in recent years. I also work as a theatre director,
usually but not exclusively in the area of African theatre, and teach across
a range of courses dealing with contemporary theatrical practice.
I have been a key player in a number of Theatre for Development projects. Throughout
most of the 1990s I ran the Eritrean Community-Based Theatre Project developing
community-based theatre training and practice across three language groups in
the country. I am currently building on this work and expanding it into education
with the Eritrean Ministry of Education and my Leeds colleague, John Holmes,
in a project looking to develop culturally appropriate and child-centred teaching
in Eritrean primary schools. I am also involved in a project in Eritrea with
Solomon Tsehaye, researching into vanishing Tigrinya oral literature forms.
In Ethiopia I was involved throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s with developing
the Adugna Community Dance Theatre, a project which gave street children the
opportunity to train as professional dancers and act as advocates for their
community, and which has now become its own Non-Governmental Organisation.
I have acted widely as a trainer, consultant and advocate for arts and development
initiatives, working with and for agencies such as ACORD, ActionAid, The British
Council, Comic Relief, The Department for International Development and Oxfam.
I regularly teach in a number of British universities and have recently run
Theatre for Development classes and courses in India, the USA and Uganda.
Recent publications include: Theatre
& Empowerment, Richard Boon and Jane Plastow (eds), CUP, 2004;
Three Eritrean Plays, Jane Plastow (ed and Introduced), Alumnus, 2004,
African
Theatre: Women (ed) Jane Plastow, James Currey, 2002.
Exemplary directing and production credits include: Obstacle Race by
Wole Soyinka, 2005 on the London Eye; Encounters with Africa, devised
touring production, Leeds, 2004; I Will Marry When I Want by Ngugi
wa Thiong’o (in
Tigrinya), 2001, National Theatre, Eritrea.
Acting credits includes The Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland, assorted
pantomime witches, and Margaret Thatcher for an ANC production to the Organisation
of African Unity in the National Theatre, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Recent activities
Dec 2005-Jan 2006 Pilot project with The Ministry of Education, Eritrea,
developing culturally appropriate and child-centred learning in primary schools,
She’eb and Bogu.
June 2006 Participatory presentation on Theatre for Youth in East Africa, Nyeri,
Kenya. Conference on Youth in East Africa: Past and Present. British Institute
in East Africa and Alliance Francaise.
July 2006 Workshop on Theatre for Development, Makerere University, Uganda.
July 2006 Discussant on Women’s Writing in Africa, for FEMRITE and The
British Council, Uganda.
April 2007 Invited particpant, Stanhope Centre for Communications Research.
Workshop/Seminar on communication strategies in Darfur, Sudan. Presentation
on the use of community-based theatre for grassroots communication. Philadelphia,
USA.
November 2007 Coordinator with Professor Martin Banham, Wole Soyinka's Blackout,
Blowout and Beyond, production for the 40th anniversary of The
Workshop Theatre, plus tour of northern Universities.
Projects and external positions held
Director; Eritrea Community-Based Theatre Project. (A national project aimed
at theatre training and building a community theatre network)
Director of the Leeds Centre for African Studies
Teaching
Undergraduate
African
Literature
Theatre,
Society and Self
Four
women write Africa
Convener (POLIS/LUCAS elective module)
Contemporary Africas
Postgraduate
Uses
of Theatre
African
Theatre
Making Theatre in the Community
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