The book under review explores modern Senegalese theater from its colonial inception at the scholastic stage of the William Ponty elite training school, to the screen adaptation of the theatre populaire (popular theater) of grassroots theater troupes, to the emergence of Senegalese digital television series. Brian Valente-Quinn's study of Senegalese theater across time foregrounds an analysis of the practices of “theater-making” and “stagecraft.” He describes the former as “the work of crafting the stage space through the use of text, place, and embodied performance,” and the latter as “the nuts-and-bolts work that goes into the craft of theater-making from conception to reception” (pp. 1, 13). The book employs both terms to conceptualize theatrical practice and meaning while drawing on both textual analysis and fieldwork.
Senegalese Stagecraft explores the development of modern Senegalese theater in six chapters. The initial chapter traces the origins of Senegalese theater to 1930s colonial French West...