Awam Amkpa is an accomplished and world-renowned theatre scholar and practitioner — director, playwright, actor, filmmaker, and curator of visual and performing arts. He is Dean of Arts and Humanities and Vice Provost for the Arts at New York University Abu Dhabi, as well as Professor of Drama and Cultural Theory in the Departments of Drama (Tisch School of the Arts) and Social and Cultural Analysis (Faculty of Arts and Sciences) at New York University. He is the author of Theatre and Postcolonial Desires (London: Routledge, 2003) and Archetypes, Stereotypes and Polytypes: Theatres of the Black Atlantic.
Additionally, he is the director of a new feature film based on Wole Soyinka’s prison memoir The Man Died, which has won seven awards so far, including the recent Africa Magic Film and Video Best Direction Award. Amkpa is also the director of film documentaries including Winds Against Our Souls, It’s All About Downtown, National Images and Transnational Desires, and the feature film Wazobia!. He is the author of several art catalogues and numerous articles in books and journals on modernisms in theatre, postcolonial theatre, Black Atlantic studies, and film studies.
As an interdisciplinary artist and scholar, Amkpa continues to exhibit globally and present his multifaceted scholarship in venues across the world. Amkpa holds a BA in Dramatic Arts from Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria; an MA in Drama from Ahmadu Bello University, Nigeria; and a PhD in Drama from the University of Bristol, UK.
United Arab Emirates