As I write this, climate change has finally become the centre of media attention to an almost unprecedented degree.1 In London, Extinction Rebellion activists have blocked off five busy sites, which include Oxford Circus and Waterloo Bridge, over a week in an act of non-violent civil disobedience in April 2019. They have three simple demands: they want the government to âtell the truthâ about the climate emergency; they want emissions cut to net zero by 2025; and they want a citizen assembly to inform climate-related decisions (Extinction Rebellion n.d.). That same week, David Attenboroughâs documentary Climate ChangeâThe Facts (2019) has aired on the BBC and internationally. The destructive and fatal reality of climate change is unequivocally presented by one of the most authoritative voices on nature in the UK. During this time, young climate activist and founder of the school strike movement Greta Thunberg has delivered a speech to European Union leaders holding back tears: âI want you to act as if the house was on fireâŠWe are in the midst of the sixth mass extinctionâ (quoted in Rankin 2019). Here, climate change has finally been placed front and centre in the media, having pushed Brexit out of the UK headlines for at least a week. Perhaps a critical mass has been reached. There is no longer debate on whether anthropogenic climate change is happening and at what rate, rather what the effects will be, emissions reduction targets and what other action is necessary. The whiteness of these voices have joined Inuit voices, African voices, Central American voices, countries like the Maldives, Bangladesh and the Marshall Islands, and other Indigenous2 voices who have all been saying for years that urgent action is required as they are already experiencing the life-altering and at times deadly effects of global climate change. This is the ecological (and social, political) context in which this book has been written.
The urgency of climate change and its associated effects have created an ecological imperative for all fields to address. As theatre scholar Wendy Arons asserts: âhumanityâs relationship to the environment is an issue of urgent concern, and one that can and should be addressed by anyone engaged in critical and intellectual pursuits, including theatre artists and scholarsâ (2007: 93). Theatre and performance can offer something distinctive in their engagement with ecology. They can upend reductive narratives and images, embodying and performing contradictions, erasures and imaginative possibilities. Like theatre scholar Carl Lavery (2018), I am skeptical of hyperbolic claims of what theatre can do, particularly in relation to behaviour change. The problemâsolution model, drawn on when theatre is utilised to âcommunicateâ specific ecological problems and âsolutionsâ, often instrumentalises performance in a reductive way and largely focuses on content. This approach does not always leave room for the nuance, complexity or intermeshment of contemporary ecological issues. Rather, my argument that theatre and performance can offer new frames of thinking, feeling and viewing, or tell/show us something about our current ecological situation, follows theorisations on the social impact of theatre and performance in relation to ecology from such thinkers as Heddon and Mackey (2012), Arons and May (2012, 2013), Kershaw (2007) and Allen and Preece (2015). As Deirdre Heddon and Sally Mackey suggest, âit is the combination of artistry and reality, of aesthetics and world, that has the potential to produce affectâ (2012: 176). Through these combinations, theatre and performance have the potential to engage ecological thinking in unique ways to other mediums, speaking to our current context. This is the animating principle of my theory of ecodramaturgies.
Our current global ecological circumstances could be characterised as a crisis, catastrophe (Morton 2010) or emergency (Emmott 2012). The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has identified a tipping point of 1.5° Celsuis (above pre-industrial levels) as the level at which the impacts of climate change would be irreversible and devastating (Masson-Delmotte et al. 2018), which is likely to happen within 12 years. However, climate change is an immediate threat; it is already producing unequal and fatal effects for many. As Mike Hulme argues, âclimate change is not âa problemâ waiting for âa solutionâ. It is an environmental, cultural and political phenomenon that is reshaping the way we think about ourselves, about our societies and about humanityâs place on Earthâ (2010: 41). Climate change is just one aspect of ecology; however, it is the grand narrative of our current ecological context. Climate change is ecological in that it requires an urgent and radical reconsideration of the relationship between humans and the earth, how we live and how we shape, and are shaped by, the more-than-human world.3 This calls for a close examination of how climate change intensifies inequalities and injustices, falling along familiar patterns of vulnerability and marginalisation: race, gender, class, disability, social mobility, political capital and colonisation. This book asks questions about how theatre and performance embody, reveal and intervene in these inequalities in a climate-changed world.
To understand the approach I have taken in this book, it is important that the âIâ (and my knowledge) is situated. I am a white, Canadian (with Belgian, Ukrainian, Polish and British heritage) cisgendered woman who currently resides in the United Kingdom and holds a permanent academic post at a university in an urban centre. As such the critique of dominant Western worldviews, underpinned by colonialism, in this book is also self-reflexive. My experiences have shaped my political thinking, which informs this book, as I strive for social values of justice, rooted in intersectional feminist, anti-racist, decolonial, queer, disabled and non-anthropocentric ways of thinking. This is ongoing work that I do not always get right. My aim is not to speak for any group of people, rather I want to think critically about some of the underlying ethnocentric assumptions made about ecology, with an understanding of how this might develop what Joni Adamson refers to as âa more inclusive environmentalism and a more multicultural ecocriticismâ (2001: xix) by revealing different stories and dramaturgies.
My interest in this area stems from a formative experience learning about global warming and a long-nurtured love of live theatre and performance. As an 11 year old, I remember learning about global warming being caused by greenhouse gases, and at the time in 1995, CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons ) were identified as a prime culprit. I clearly remember an infographic that illustrated how greenhouse gases trapped in the atmosphere causes temperatures to rise. The hole in the ozone seemed like an immediate threat in the cultural imaginary of North America (the angel in Tony Kusherâs 1991 Angels in America enters earth through a hole in the ozone), while global bans of ozone-depleting chemicals were passed. I was struck by the deep injustice of global warming then as it imprinted on my young mind a specific view of the future: chemicals were trapped in the atmosphere and were destroying it. 1995 was also the 25th anniversary of Earth Day and there was a certain cultural capital associated with (mostly white) environmentalism. My interest in ecological issues continued as I became involved in activist organisations and efforts during my undergraduate degree.
My environmental consciousness-raising happened separately, but in parallel to, my excitement at live theatre. I was born on traditional Anishinabewaki territory in what is now known as Cambridge, a small city in Ontario, Canada. Growing up I was privileged to be taken to see theatre regularly as a child, including community theatre and annual trips to see musicals in Toronto or plays at the Stratford Festival in Ontario. The thrill of live performance was established in me from a young age. I also had the chance to perform in summer camp productions (including delighting in a large costume closet), and then study drama in high school, where I developed my theatre-making, writing and directing my own plays and taking them to local theatre festivals. My ecological interest and my interest in theatre and performance remained separate until I wrote and directed a play about a group of young people facing an uncertain ecological future for my undergraduate honours project at the University of Guelph, finally bringing the two together. This stemmed from a rather naive belief in the social and political power of theatre and performance after studying protest and political theatre practices. Although my thinking has become more nuanced and complex since that point, after writing my MA dissertation and PhD on the subject, I am still committed to the idea that theatre and performance can speak to critical socio-political and ecological contexts and issues in imaginative ways, particularly in light of climate and environmental inequaliti...