Since the 1980s, Yoruba popular theatre has virtually disappeared due to radio, TV and other mass media in Nigeria. This is the personal account of a theatre worker on tour with the Oyin Adejobi Company. Drawing on archives, interviews and transcribed plays, she describes a successful Yoruba drama.

From the 1940s to the 1980s, Yoruba popular theater was one of the most spectacularly successful theaters in Africa. Today, these traveling companies have virtually disappeared, largely as a result of economic hardship and the rise of video entertainment. In The Generation of Plays, Karin Barber recounts the history of the Oyin Adejobi Theatre company. Drawing on archival sources as well as extensive interviews and transcriptions of plays, Barber uncovers the pulse points of generation, production, and improvisation that merge when a Yoruba popular drama is brought to the stage. Barber reveals the personalities of the principal actors, how plays are created (from the germ of an idea through the logistics of rehearsal and staging), how a play is made meaningful to its audience, and how a play changes and develops after several productions or according to the sensibilities of its viewers. This rich and detailed narrative illuminates notions of gender, language, politics, and self as they are expressed in a popular cultural form.

This collection of three Canadian plays--zahgidiwin/love by Frances Koncan, The Millennial Malcontent by Erin Shields, and Smoke by Elena Eli Belyea--speaks to millennials' complex and varied experiences and the challenges and stereotypes they often face.

Asian American plays provide an opportunity to think about how racial issues are engaged through theatrical performance physical contact, bodily labor, and fleshly desire as well as through the more standard elements of plot, setting, characterization, staging, music, and action. Asian American Plays for a New Generation showcases seven exciting new plays that dramatize timely themes that are familiar to Asian Americans. The works variously address immigration, racism, stereotyping, identity, generational tensions, assimilation, and upward mobility as well as post-9/11 paranoia, racial isolation, and adoptee experiences. Each of these works engages directly and actively with Asian American themes through performance to provide an important starting point for building relationships, raising political awareness, and creating active communities that can foster a sense of connection or even rally individuals to collective action.

This first major collection of contemporary Native American writing for the theatre ranges from the groundbreaking work of Body Indian to the experimental performance style of Spiderwoman Theater. Contains: Indian Radio Days by LeAnne Howe and Roxy Gordon (Choctaw) The Story of Susannah by Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl (Hawaiian) Body Indian by Hanay Geiogamah (Kiowa) The Woman Who was a Red Deer Dressed for the Deer Dance by Diane Glancy (Cherokee) Power Pipes by Spiderwoman Theater (Kuna/Rappahannock) Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth by Drew Hayden Tayler (Ojibway) The Independence of Eddie Rose by Willam S. Yellow Robe, Jr. (Assiniboine/Nakota) The volume includes an introduction by the editor, Mimi Gisolfi D'Aponte, Professor of Theatre at CUNY, and an epilogue by Elizabeth Theobald, director of the Manshantucket Pequot Museum in Connecticut.

In 1976 a dozen hopeful young Mexican dramatists – most of them studying with Emilio Carballido – began staging plays, primarily in small, out-of-the-way theater, and publishing them, mostly in university magazines with limited distribution. Until now, more than twenty years later, there has been no comprehensive study devoted either to this original group of writers or to those who followed in the same generation, and no central source of information about them or their production. Although they continue to produce more plays every year, they represent a lost generation. Ronald Burgess now offers the first extensive study of this group of playwrights and their work. Included is discussion of over 200 plays by more than 40 writers, but the work of nine key playwrights is examined in depth. Most of these dramatists concern themselves with the state of Mexico today, reacting to current social conditions with depictions ranging from violence to guarded hope to anguished hopelessness. Many look to their nation's history and culture for explanations. In his illuminating study, Burgess places this theatrical generation in the context of contemporary Mexican society and literature, employing a wide variety of analytic approaches to highlight essential characteristics of these representative authors.

Design, Make, Play: Growing the Next Generation of STEM Innovators is a resource for practitioners, policymakers, researchers and program developers that illuminates creative, cutting edge ways to inspire and motivate young people about science and technology learning. The book is aligned with the National Research Council’s new Framework for Science Education, which includes an explicit focus on engineering and design content, as well as integration across disciplines. Extensive case studies explore real world examples of innovative programs that take place in a variety of settings, including schools, museums, community centers, and virtual spaces. Design, Make, and Play are presented as learning methodologies that have the power to rekindle children’s intrinsic motivation and innate curiosity about STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields. A digital companion app showcases rich multimedia that brings the stories and successes of each program—and the students who learn there—to life.