In comparison with Literary Studies and Media and Film Studies, the disciplines of Theatre and Performance, with their strong anthropocentric heritage, have been relatively slow in responding to such things as climate change, species extinction, or pollution and toxicity etc. However, in the wake of recent work on animals, cyborgs, and objects, as well as publications with a specific focus on ecology and environment, there are real signs that theatre and performance scholars are beginning to make their own contribution to the Environmental Humanities. But if theatre critics are engaged in new forms of ecocritical analysis, it is worth posing a pertinent question from the outset: namely, what can theatre do ecologically?
In this book, leading researchers and practitioners seek to answer that question from a number of perspectives and with diverse methodologies. Topics include: reflections on rehearsal processes, scores for performance, site-based interventions, ideas of conflict, investigations of temporality and time ecology, ecospectating, and the experience of disappointment. Taken together, these essays make an important intervention in the emergent (inter)disciplines of the Environmental Humanities and further our understanding of the ecological potential of Theatre and Performance in ways that are cautious, tentative but also generative.
This book was originally published as a special issue of Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism.
Edited by:
Carl Lavery (University of Glasgow UK)
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 246mm,
Width: 174mm,
Weight: 244g
ISBN: 9780367529734
ISBN 10: 0367529734
Pages: 132
Publication Date: 31 March 2021
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Primary
,
A / AS level
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Introduction: Performance and Ecology – what can Theatre do? Chapter 1: On Creating a Climate of Attention: The Composition of Our Work Chapter 2: The Performance ‘Apparatus’: Performance and its Documentation as Ecological Practice Chapter 3: Projecting Climate Scenarios, Landscaping Nature, and Knowing Performance: On Becoming Performed by Ecology Chapter 4: Theatre, Conflict, Nature Chapter 5: Theatre and Time Ecology: Deceleration in Stifters Dinge and L’Effet de Serge Chapter 6: Confounding Ecospectations: Disappointment and Hope in the Forest
Carl Lavery is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the University of Glasgow, UK. He has published numerous articles and books on theatre and ecology, including Rethinking the Theatre of the Absurd: Ecology, Environment and the Greening of the Modern Stage (2015). His current book project is Interrogating the Human: Ecology, Theatre and Theatricality.
