Africa will be represented at Performing the World 2016 (PTW 2016). We are currently expecting to have nine sessions – three from Nigeria, three from South Africa, two from Botswana and one from Uganda.
The Street Project Foundation from Lagos, Nigeria-represented by Rita Ezenwa-Okoro, Adeyinka Adegbayibi and Eduvielawhe Ogoro – will return to PTW for the second time. This year they’ll be reporting on their “Creative Boot Camp,” which uses performance to help young people from poor communities connect to mainstream society, seek and find jobs. 
Allison Green of Johannesburg, South Africa works at the National School of Arts and Creative Voices, an integrated arts initiative associated with the Royal London Opera. She will share the impact of a project, funded by Rand Merchant Bank, that offered 5,000 children from poor communities a chance to experience the production of War Horse.
Yvonne Sliep from Durban and Lynn Norton from Klienmond will report on their work using storytelling and narrative theatre to help young refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo living in South Africa create personal and collective power in their new country.
Mmakgosi Kgabi, a physical theatre and improv performer and facilitator from De Deur, South Africa who has worked with Causing a Scene, Performance of a Lifetime and Clowns Without Borders, will present a one-person show, “Shades of a Queen,” about the anxieties of being gay in Africa.
A similar theme will be explored by Katlego K Kolanyane-Kesupile of Francistown, Botswana. Kolanyane-Kesupile is a trans artist who was named a British Commonwealth 2016 Young Leader and is also a winner of a 2015 Writivist Award by the Center for African Cultural Excellence. (A “writivist” is a writer/activist.) Her performance, “Afri-Queer Now” portrays “the experiences of indigenous Sub-Saharan Queer lives” and also looks at the transgender dialogue in the African context.
Fellow Botswana, Lebogang Disele, now pursuing a Ph.D. in Performance Studies at the University of Alberta in Canada, will be performing a devised piece on the “lived experience of womanhood in Botswana.”
Peter Nsubuga, who is based in rural Uganda, not far from the capital of Kampala, has attended every Performing the World since 2008. He is the founder of Hope for Youth-Uganda, which uses performance to engender “a lifelong commitment to active citizenship.” This year, Nsubuga will be presenting along with two collaborators whom he initially met through PTW and the Institute’s International Class – Kristen Bodiford, from Glencoe, Illinois, Principal of Community Strengths, and Celiane Camargo-Borges, a faculty member at Breda University of Applied Sciences in The Netherlands. Their topic is “Collaborative and Participatory Research to Create New Possibilities in the World.” In addition, Nsubuga will be a part of “The All Stars Variations” a presentation on programs inspired by the All Stars Project in countries as diverse as Uganda, Japan and Mexico.