Dr Ananda Breed is Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader of Theatre Studies at the University of East London. Between 2005-2010, Ananda conducted research in Rwanda that incorporated the performativity of nationalism, justice and reconciliation through grassroots associations, gacaca, commemorations and memorials, ingando solidarity camps, and theatrical productions.  She has served as a participatory theatre consultant, conducting projects in Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia, and Kyrgyzstan.

Ananda serves as the performing arts representative for the REF and RKE committees and coordinates IPAD practice-as-research seminar series.

• Performing Arts representative for REF and RKE research committees.
• IPAD practice-as-research seminar series coordinator.
• Theatre Studies International exchange supervisor with University of Colorado, Columbia College, and Fraser Valley.

Inter-cultural Performance, Applied Theatre, Memory and Performance, Documentary Theatre, East London Theare Archive / CEDAR, Theatre in Rwanda, Post-Colonial Theatre, African Theatre.

BA Theatre Studies & Theatre Studies International

• PA 1401: World Theatre I
• PA 2401: World Theatre II
• PA 3401: World Theatre III
• PA 2403: Performing the Archive
• PA 3402: Solo Performance

• Breed A 2012 ‘Juridical Performatives: Public versus Hidden Transcripts’ Performative Trans-Actions: Innovation, Creativity & Enterprise in African Theatre (ed) Kene Igweonu, Cambridge: Cambridge Scholar Publishers

• Breed A 2012 ‘Discordant Narratives in Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts’ Rwanda Fast Forward (ed) Patrick Noack, Hampshire: Palgrave

• Breed A 2011 ‘Memorialization and the Rwandan Genocide: The Use of Theater’ Cultures and Globalization Series, (eds) Yudhishthir Isar and Helmut Anheier, LA: Sage Publications

• Breed A 2009 ‘Participation for Liberation or Incrimination’ Applied Theatre Reader (eds) Tim Prentki and Sheila Preston, London: Routledge

• Breed A 2008 ‘Performing the Nation: Theatre in Post-Genocide Rwanda’ The Drama Review, 52.1, 32-50

• Breed A 2007 ‘Performing Gacaca in Rwanda: Local Culture for Justice and Reconciliation’ Cultures and Globalization Series (eds) Yudhishthir Isar and Helmut Anheier, LA: Sage Publications

• Breed A 2006 ‘Performing Reconciliation in Post-Genocide Rwanda’ Peace Review: A journal of Social Justice, 18, 1-7

Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

British Museum Talking Objects Project

Theatre for Peace Projects - Kyrgyzstan and Indonesia

In Place of War.

Juridical Performatives: Public versus Hidden Transcripts

In 1994 – between 500,000 to one million Rwandans, primarily Tutsi – were killed in a three-month period. The international community did little to stop the genocide. In fact, the UN peacekeeping mission was reduced from several thousand to a couple hundred troops during the height of the genocide and the French government was implicated in assisting the Hutu hardliners. Then, in July 1994, the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) invaded from Uganda, ended the genocide and established the Government of National Unity. Post-genocide, the Tutsi-dominated RPF government is constructing a new Rwandan identity devoid of the former ethnic labels – Hutu, Tutsi, Twa – which I refer to as rwandanicity, producing a post-genocide subject before (and within) the law. The main focus of this chapter is to address how the ‘traditional’ gacaca courts were used to try the perpetrators of the genocide – but beyond the exposed objectives of reconciliation and justice – how gacaca works as a performative to inculcate the post-genocide subject –to analyse what is being performed – for what audiences.

The reconstruction of Rwanda is much like a performance, in which concepts of unity and reconciliation are staged and the subject of the new nation is inculcated. Ngugi Wa Thiong’o in his book Penpoints, Gunpoints and Dreams analogizes the nation to a stage, directed by a political dictator, with entrances and exits at the borders.  Applying this metaphor, the whole of Rwanda might be conceptualized as a performance space. National narratives are curated; in the context of post-genocide Rwanda, the state carefully selects what is or is not allowed on the national stage both literally and metaphorically, conceptualizing the geographic and political boundaries of Rwanda.

Borrowing from James Scott, I use the concepts of ‘public’ and ‘hidden’ transcripts to differentiate between state-controlled versus individual narratives in post-genocide Rwanda.