My intention in this essay is to use the work of three North American playwrights, namely – August Wilson, Ntozake Shange, and Djanet Sears – to illustrate that Africans on the continent and in the African diaspora have theories of their performances and that these theories are different in conception, methods of translocation, and execution, from Western i.e. European diasporic theories of performance. I also want to highlight that whereas theory operates primarily through the medium of typography in the West, largely because of the West's reliance on literature as a basic medium for the dissemination of information and knowledge, in most oral cultures of the world, including Africa and its diasporas, theory exists as orature, that is as verbal discourse, sagacity, performance, semiology as well as scholarly literature. The theory of ase, as I will presently illustrate, offers us a refreshing critical optic for appreciating the aesthetics and dynamics of contemporary African diasporic performance as well as a new understanding of other ways in which theory travels – phenomenologically.