The schedule for Ghana's year-long celebrations in 2007 to mark fifty years of independence included a programme of productions of ‘classic Ghanaian plays’, one every month. In choosing to celebrate in this way, the committee tasked with marking the anniversary quickly found itself in the middle of debates about funding the arts and about the accessibility of performances. A host of questions were raised including: When will the money be available? (With the implication that it has been delayed!) What income, if any, is expected from ticket sales? (With the hope that some seats will be free or heavily subsidised.) Where will the productions be put on? (With the unspoken: Are you thinking only of the National Theatre in Accra as a venue?) And, perhaps most important: What scale of budgets can be submitted by directors and their business managers? Now that 2007 has passed into history and the Ghana@50 Secretariat has shut down, many of these questions are still being asked. Directors and performers are out of pocket and there is no obvious source of reimbursement for expenses they incurred in good faith.

These recurrent questions in relation to theatrical enterprises, and the attempts to answer them – in the Ghanaian context – drew attention to the fact that, down the years, the country has witnessed the emergence of a variety of different kinds of theatre organisation.