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What is popular theater and what do popular theater artists do? Scholarship on popular theater in Africa has highlighted how, despite artists' frequent use of the label, the form proves difficult to describe in any definitive way, even as it interacts with and draws from several coexisting, and sometimes competing, approaches to theatrical performance. Based on oral histories and research on the popular theater movement in Senegal, as well as four years of interaction, participant observation and collaboration with the popular theater troupe Kàddu Yaraax, this essay considers the historical context in which the popular theater movement emerged in this country and offers a case study of popular theater practice, underlining the artistry that goes into the performance and framing of popular theater events. Addressing popular theater as a craft operating within and dialoguing with a specific cultural heritage, this essay explores the popular theater movement's use of an articulated, dynamic view of culture in response to a shifting landscape of collaborators and sponsors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores the history of a form of theatrical performance in Senegal used to transmit the founding story of the Senegalese Sufi order known as the Muridiyya. Although absent from the extensive scholarship on Murid cultural and expressive forms, this innovative performance practice proves remarkable in its staged manifestation of the baraka, or spiritual essence, of the order's founding saint, Cheikh Amadou Bamba. The essay focuses on the presence and function of states of religious trance as experienced by both performers and spectators. It underscores the political role of such trance states on a stage space passed on under French colonialism, while exploring trance's poetic value as a means of staging the interplay of the seen and unseen worlds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]