The Department of Performing Arts in the Faculty of Arts and Design at the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) is excited to be hosting the 2026 annual conference of the African Theatre Association (AfTA).
AfTA started in 2006 with an inaugural symposium on Women in African Performance and Theatre. It was founded by a group of senior Africanist academics with a central aim of enabling and disseminating the highest quality of research and practice, as well as facilitating scholarly discourse and education on African theatre and performance.
AfTA operates globally and works to promote the understanding and appreciation of African theatre and performance forms and traditions by facilitating and maintaining scholarly discourse and collaborative research in the fields of African and African Diasporan theatre and performance.
In addition, it exists to advance research and education in the study and practice of African theatre and performance.
AfTA is committed to critically appraise dominant representations of theatre and performance in Africa and the African Diaspora and facilitates constructive global conversations between South Africa, other African countries and the diaspora.
More about this association may be found at https://africantheatreassociation.org/
The theme of the 2026 conference is Interartistic Afrikan performing arts in the 21st century: De/Post colonial performance, places, pedagogies.
The conscious choice to make use of the "k" in the Afrikan for the title is because most mother tongue or traditional languages on the continent spell Afrika with a K; therefore, the use of K is germane to us. Embracing the K symbolises a kind of Lingua Afrikana although coming from more than one Afrikan language.
The theme is inclusive of the concept that performing arts are intrinsically interartistic, denoting a field where different parts of any one performance discipline intersect. The preference is for interartistic as a term for the performing arts disciplines rather than interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary, where the notion of discipline is associated with the idea of rules, norms and borders that delimit an artistic field.
Alternatively, Afrikan performing arts as interartistic, coalesce all acting, theatre, dance, song and music, as well as denote a field where these arts intersect.
Further, the theme seeks to engage with this nexus of interartistic practice in the 21st century to celebrate both decolonial and postcolonial perspectives on performance, places and pedagogies in the arts.
The continued culturally rich African melting pot of the performing arts ensures that the terms de-colonial and post-colonial are not merely empty signifiers.
For the AfTA 2026 conference scholars and artists alike are encouraged to participate and share insights into their practices and processes.
AfTA 2026 conference will take place from 8 – 10 July 2026 on the Faculty of Arts and Design campus and will be convened by Prof Janine Lewis and Prof Owen Seda alongside a dedicated committee of staff from the Department of Performing Arts.
The call for papers may be found both on the AfTA webpage https://africantheatreassociation.org/, as well as on the FAD showcase website https://www.tutfadshowcase.ac.za/