Readings in Performance and Ecology

by Arons, Wendy; May, Theresa J.

• ISBN13: 9781137467003
• ISBN10: 1137467002
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2015-01-08
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Readings in Performance and Ecology is a groundbreaking collection of essays focusing on how theatre, dance, and other forms of performance are helping to transform our ecological values. Leading scholars and practitioners explore the ways that familiar and new works of theatre and dance can help us recognize our reciprocal relationship with the natural world; how performance helps us understand the way our bodies are integrally connected to the land; how environmentalists use performance as a form of protest; how performance illuminates our relationships with animals as autonomous creatures and artistic symbols; and how performance can help humans re-define our place in the larger ecological community.

Author Biography

Wendy Arons is Associate Professor of Dramatic Literature and Dramaturgy and Director of the "Performance and Ecology Public Art Initiative" at Carnegie Mellon University, USA. She is author of Performance and Femininity in Eighteenth-Century German Women's Writing, editor of a special issue of Theatre Topics on Performance and Ecology, and artistic director and organizer of the 2012 Earth Matters on Stage ecodrama festival and symposium.
Theresa J. May is Associate Professor of Theatre Arts and Artistic Director of "Earth Matters on Stage" at the University of Oregon, USA. She has published widely on performance and ecology, including essays in Performing Nature and a special issue of Theatre Topics on Performance and Ecology.

Table of Contents

Introduction; Wendy Arons and Theresa J. May
PART I: ECOCRITICISM AND DRAMATIC LITERATURE
1. Theatre, Environment, and the Thirties; Barry Witham
2. Bringing Blood to Ghosts: English Canadian Drama and the Ecopolitics of Place; Nelson Gray
3. Other Others: Dramatis Animalia in Some Alternative American Drama; Robert Baker-White
PART II: ANIMALS AND/IN PERFORMANCE
4. The Silence of the Polar Bears: Performing (Climate) Change in the Theatre of Species; Una Chaudhuri
5. Dancing with Monkeys? On Performance Commons and Scientific Experiments; Baz Kershaw
6. Everything à la Giraffe: Science, Performance, and a Spectacular Body in Nineteenth-Century Vienna; Derek Lee Barton
PART III: THEORIZING ECOPERFORMANCE
7. Ethics, Evolution, Ecology, and Performance; Bruce McConachie
8. Natural Disaster, Cultural Memory: Montserrat Adrift in the Black and Green Atlantic; Kathleen M. Gough
9. Stillness in Nature: Eeo Stubblefield's Still Dance with Anna Halprin; Arden Thomas
PART IV: ECOACTIVISM AND PERFORMANCE
10. British Alternative Companies and Antinuclear Plays: Eco-Conscious Theatre in Thatcher's Britain; Sara Freeman
11. Bikes, Choices, Action! Embodied Performances of Sustainability by a Traveling Theatre Group; Meg O'Shea
12. Earth First!'s "Crack the Dam" and the Aesthetics of Ecoactivist Performance; Sarah Ann Standing
PART V: CASE STUDIES IN GREEN THEATRE
13. Ecodirecting Canonical Plays; Downing Cless
14. Devising "Green Piece": A Holistic Pedagogy for Artists and Educators; Anne Justine D'Zmura
15. Sound Ecology in the Woods: Red Riding Hood Takes an Audio Walk; Cornelia Hoogland
16. The Labor of Greening Love's Labour's Lost; Justin A. Miller
17. Theatrical Production's Carbon Footprint; Ian Garrett
Epilogue: Thinking Forward . . .; Wallace Heim