Events1

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.

A film by the Playwright’s Laboratory and African Women Playwrights Network

Screening on 28 Nov 2022 | 6.30pm – 11.00pm AT Africa Centre, Southwark

AWPN was one of the partners who worked with the South African based production company, Village Gossip Productions, founded by multi-award winning playwright, director, poet, and performer, Napo Masheane, to host the inaugural HerStory International Theatre Festival from 24-30 April, 2022.

The Virtual Meet and Greet With Women in the Arts

Lanaire Aderemi and Nia-Cerise Conteh, ran 5 workshops through Africa Writes program with Stoke Newington schools’ years 7-9 students to perform two extracts from South African playwright Koleka Putuma’s play, Mbuzeni at British Library event.

JC Niala spoke about AWPN at the launch of a Caucus on Performance within the African Literature Association conference 2019 in Columbus, Ohio. ALA exec, Profs Folabo Ajayi-Soyinka (Prof Emerita, University of Kansas) and Ketu Katrak (UCL Irvine) – straight conference paper examining why the focus on Women playwrights in the 21st century, and their contributions to African literature with emphasis on the theatre.