AWPN-Ghana Festival

In 2022 AWPN decided to host its inaugural festival of new work. It called for African women to submit 10-minute plays on the theme 'Tackling Taboo Topics in African Female Writing'. We felt that it is important to facilitate safe spaces to engage important issues that impact women, but that are taboo in many African societies. As a space of fiction marked as out of the everyday, theatre offers such a space.

We had 75 submissions from nine African countries that engaged a broad range of topics. Three judges: Tosin Tume of Nigeria, Ekua Ukumah from Ghana and Katharine Farmer, a UK director and founder of the Theatre Laboratory judged from a shortlist of 20, the top 10 plays by women from 6 African countries were then staged as performed readings by the festival’s co-hosts, the School of Performing Arts at the University of Ghana, 1-4 September 2022.These plays are to be published as a collection by Bloomsbury in 2023.

Link to AWPN-Ghana Frestival 2022 documentary

Watch 10 Plays online:

Email: africanwomenplaywrights@gmail.com