Discussion Group: 'Translating' Mother Courage and Her Children to Africa and the UK

The award-winning playwright Dipo Agboluaje discussed questions of adaptation and re-writing in his own version of Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children (Nottingham Playhouse, 2004), as well as the challenges of 'translating' African cultures on the contemporary British stage.

Oladipo 'Dipo' Agboluaje studied Theatre Arts at the University of Benin, Literature Representation and Modernity at London Metropolitan University and gained a PhD in African Drama at Open University. He is a playwright and workshop creative writing facilitator. Agboluaje has lectured at several universities, including Goldsmiths, University of London, and City University. He is Assistant General Secretary of the African Theatre Association, an organization committed to the development of research and practice of African theatre. He is a member of the Fence, a pan-European network of theatre practitioners whose aim is to discover new approaches to interrogating contemporary European theatre practice. Through his plays Agboluaje interrogates the notions of home, identity and diaspora, nationalism, and culture. Agboluaje's published plays include Early Morning, The Christ of Coldharbour Lane, The Estate, and New Nigerians. He has just completed a stint as the Writer in Residence at the National Theatre, London.

Tiziana Morosetti is Associate Lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London, and affiliate to the African Studies Centre, Oxford, where she teaches African Literature. She is the editor of The Palgrave Handbook of Theatre and Race (2021, with Osita Okagbue) and Africa on the Contemporary London Stage (Palgrave 2018), and the General Secretary of the African Theatre Association.