Paper short abstract:

Theatre in Mali is deeply rooted in a traditional rural culture of performances. Urbanization and globalization and the resulting gap between the rural and the urban led theatre companies to treat the subject and to adapt their performance, equipment, and language depending on the place of performance.

Paper long abstract:

Since the French colonization, the Republic of Mali has been marked by a fast and strong growth of its population and a remarkable urbanization. During this period, traditional performances were influenced by established French schools and the introduction of occidental drama and prepared the base of an evolution in the development of Malian theatre. In an environment where today still two thirds of the population are illiterate and a society who is historically related to oral transmission, theatre presents an important medium to reach the people.

While the gap between the urban and the rural space seems to increase, dramaturges and comedians tend to establish a sort of a cultural bridge between them. In fact, after the decolonization, traditional Kotéba-Satire, originally coming from the rural villages, has first been influencing the new theatre of the independent nation and its capital (Koteba National) before the modern influences were flowing back to the villages by theatre companies performing in rural districts. Many of these artists, formed at the modern art-school of Bamako, have origins and family in the countryside and though are sensible to the switch between the rural and the urban space and languages. Therefore, theatre groups like Acte Sept, directed by Adama Traoré or Blonba by Alioune Ifra Ndiaye and Jean-Louis Sagot-Duvauroux adapted their plays precisely to this urban-rural switch. This is adapted on levels of content, language, conception and equipment of the plays. In my paper I'll illustrate these examples by relating them to the notions of identity, the modernity-tradition conflict and the rural-urban dialog.