Postcolonial Theatre

While postcolonialism has a wide range of theoretical and practical study, at its core, it is a cultural practice that challenges a Eurocentric worldview. Within drama and literature, postcolonialism is marked by writers reclaiming their heritage, language, and history from colonizing empires. As an academic discipline, postcolonialism was first defined in the early twentieth century, and usually applied to non-fiction and theoretical essays and books, such as Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth. In recent decades, dramatic literature has included postcolonial themes from the perspective of non-Anglo/non-European writers, often using experimental forms.

Key Dates, Events, & Genres

• 1619 - The first enslaved people from Africa are brought to North America
• 1770 - Captain James Cook “discovered” New South Wales in Australia, which would become Botany Bay, a British penal colony
• 1919 - The beginning of the Irish War of Independence
• 1948 - The beginning of apartheid in South Africa
• 1949 - Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific premieres, provoking criticism from the American South for its attitude against racism
• 1961 - Frantz Fanon publishes The Wretched of the Earth
• 1994 - Nelson Mandela is elected president of South Africa, officially ending apartheid
• 2015 - Hamilton premieres, with a cast of non-white actors portraying the white (and slave-owning) Founding Fathers