School of Culture and Communication - Theses
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ItemTowards an ecocritical theatre: staging the Anthropo(s)cene( 2017)The current epoch of a human-induced interval in geological history has been called the Anthropocene Age. This has been a focus of concern that has expanded from a scientific to a broadly cultural inquiry. This period of profound human impact on the Earth’s ecosystems poses a paradigm shift in thinking about ideas of nature, ecology, and Homo sapiens itself, calling for new modes of address and representation. This thesis aims to make a timely intervention into the humanist bias of theatre by devising conceptual and aesthetic principles that relate to the Anthropocene. In the theatre, this geological, temporal, and spatial frame is shifting the focus from the human to the planetary scope, and my thesis examines how theatre is responding to this new reality by turning abstract ideas into “material expressions.” This project theorises the theatre’s role as a transformative force in dislocating dominant forms of anthropocentrism and recalibrating the problems of scale and agency born of current ecological challenges. Looking at the work of Caryl Churchill, Stephen Sewell, Andrew Bovell, EM Lewis, and Chantal Bilodeau through the lens of Anthropocene-oriented ecocriticism, this thesis argues that ecocriticism and environmental perspectives are needed in theatre studies to sharpen the focus on the revolutions the Anthropocene causes in humanity’s condition. In a detailed analysis of key works by these playwrights in relation to global and material trends of ecocriticism, the thesis demonstrates a collection of innovative responses to representational shifts towards human and nonhuman intra-relationships, communicating the discomforting truth of hyperobjects such as the change of climate, the presence of toxic pollution, the effects of extinction, and the anxiety of sustainability. Ecological thinking applied to theatre foregrounds the “agential force” of nonhuman animals and objects, calling for a rethinking of the human subject as a “geological actor.” Sketching a trajectory from plays that raise awareness of environmental issues to plays that directly undertake posthumanist ecological perspectives, this thesis shows how theatre and performance anticipates and stages the Anthropocene. This study demonstrates not just that the Anthropocene provides a challenge to the theatrical world but that theatre provides significant modes of inquiring into and locating it.