Jalila Baccar of Tunisia once characterized herself as a ‘citizen actress’ (Carlson). That term could be equally extended to all the women featured in this volume of African Theatre, for whether working as a member of a women's troupe, a solo performer, director or playwright, these women practise art as a means of imagining a world of greater possibilities for themselves and their communities. Editors Yvette Hutchison, Christine Matzke and Jane Plastow are to be commended for presenting a wide survey of work that might otherwise have gone unnoticed because, to varying degrees, these citizen artists are focused on speaking about women's concerns first and foremost to their local communities, and are typically not included in high profile festival venues (such as Grahamstown or Edinburgh) where they might gain international press coverage and scholarly recognition. Readers will encounter: accounts of women's performance troupes in Uganda and Tanzania; a description of a mixed-gender, multi-media physical theatre production in Botswana; histories of female performers and directors in Ethiopia, Tunisia, Egypt and Rwanda; reflection on the relationship between online activism and a Cape Town performance event that drew inspiration from India; and a play about the imposition of shari'a law in northern Nigeria.

Experiences of gender-based violence, discrimination and disregard for women's lives and knowledge resonate across national and linguistic borders. Indeed, as is evident in Sara Matchett and Nicola Cloete's article on online activism, inspired in part by Eve Ensler's Vagina Monologuesand a horrific rape and murder in India in 2012, knowledge of these experiences circulates globally. I want to suggest two large categories or umbrellas under which readers might consider the ten essays gathered here: accounts of performance-making targeted at local audiences in particular, and those that also engage large national issues but deploy an aesthetic vocabulary and linguistic register which render them more accessible to outsiders.

Susan Kiguli and Jane Plastow's report on a Ugandan intergenerational women's theatre is an example of a project targeted at local audiences. Participants capitalized on traditional skills of poetry-song creation to fashion narratives that would compellingly link women's personal and collective experiences.