Introduction: performance and ecology – what can theatre do?

Lavery, Carl

doi:10.1080/14688417.2016.1206695

Cited by 37 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Lavery proposes that, as distinct from strong performance that claims its critical importance to global issues, weak performance 'holds out the possibility of an alternative kind of eco-practice, rooted in a recognition of limits and capacities'. 68 There is some similarity here with Thomas Jellis and Joe Gerlach's argument on 'the minor' in geographic research, where 'Micropolitics and the minor attend to and work at the edges of knowing, at the register of the sensibility minus a sensible normativity'. 69 Weak performances, therefore, are practices that trouble claims or assertions on theatre/art making's importance to dealing with climate crisis and instead offer 'weak tools' for reflection.…”

Section: Pluriversal Techniques Beyond the Voidmentioning

confidence: 61%

Pluriversal scenographics and staging world feelings: climate crisis in SUPERFLEX’s ‘It Is Not The End Of The World’

Hann

2024

cultural geographies

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This article investigates the role of scenographics in staging climate crisis cultures. The art collective SUPERFLEX’s installation It Is Not The End Of The World (Copenhagen 2019) explored human-world relations through techniques of set design, lighting, sound and costume. Central to this was a detailed 1-to-1 scale replica of the UN Building toilets re-imagined as an archaeology of a future without humans. While described as an ‘installation’, It Is Not. . . is adopted as a case study that exemplifies the role of scenographics in irritating a sense of place and is argued as affording insight into the assemblages of place, world and atmosphere. Drawing upon Global South philosopher Arturo Escobar’s ‘pluriversal design’, I offer an argument for scenographics as a methodology when investigating world feelings in an era of climate crisis. ‘Pluriversal scenographics’ is proposed as a critical framework for the staging of nondualistic, relational and more-than-human ‘possible reals’. Pluriversal concepts are proposed as a model for renewing the political purpose of scenographic practice as a methodology for investigating world feelings. I conclude with a call for a renewed political task of scenography and the value of this perspective for theatre makers, arts professionals and cultural geographers.

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Section: Pluriversal Techniques Beyond the Voidmentioning

confidence: 61%

Pluriversal scenographics and staging world feelings: climate crisis in SUPERFLEX’s ‘It Is Not The End Of The World’

Hann

2024

cultural geographies

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“…(Hopfinger 2018) Engaging with entangled perspectives is an important ecological methodology (Ingold 2011), which has particular resonances with the devising methods of contemporary theatre practice (Hopfinger 2020). Following Carl Lavery (2016) to ask what theatre can do ecology, Hopfinger explores the possibility of 'producing unpredictability in performance 'as well as structuring dramaturgical connections between 'human and nonhuman performances' (2020, 2). These aspirations align with the processes of rewilding, as unpredictability of outcome and human and nonhuman entanglements are integral to the reintroduction of natural processes at specific sites such as Knepp.…”

Section: Knepp Castle Estate West Sussexmentioning

confidence: 99%

Field works: wild experiments for performance research

Overend

2021

Studies in Theatre and Performance

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This article reflects on a series of wild experiments in literal field sites. It develops a practicebased methodology that aims to identify, perform and assert wild presences and unruly processes, playfully and creatively engaging with vibrant and dynamic ecologies. To explore these concerns 'in the field', a series of research trips were undertaken in the United Kingdom between 2017 and 2020, including repeated visits to Knepp Wildland Project in West Sussex and Bamff Estate in Perthshire. These locations were chosen due to their engagement with rewilding as an experimental mode of ecosystem management. Rewilding is explored here as a process-driven approach to conservation that offers a potential model for transdisciplinary artistic research. Adopting and adapting its methods through a combination of place writing, collaborative performance making and site-specific art, a creative practice is developed that prompts collaborative ways of working in response to the ecologies, conceptualisations and performances of these field sites. Aiming to bring something back from the field into the academy, the article argues for a (re)wilding of disciplinary knowledge exchange. It concludes with a model for a wild epistemology, proposing that research in specific field sites can be informed by an artistic practice that is entangled, unsettling and continually practiced.

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“…It has various elements designed to bring participants into active engagement with multi-faceted issues (Lehtonen et al, 2020;Österlind, 2018;Wall et al, 2019). As in many areas, the insights of climate change and biodiversity loss are moving the field of drama and theatre to explore how the assets of the area can contribute to solutions (Heddon & Mackey, 2012;Lavery, 2016;Smith, 2020). Drama and theatre have a history of engaging with political and economic tensions, from the Greek dramas to today's applied theatre practices situated in societies and performed in close collaboration with citizens experiencing the issues at hand (Nicholson, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Drama as a hopeful practice when navigating liminal times

Fries,

Wall

2023

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This article presents results from a study where applied drama interventions were deployed in four different groups to build capacities to re-imagine economics. Participants were interviewed or entered dialogue with each other after completing the drama work. Through a close reading of one of the conversations that stands out as glowing in the research material and with inspiration from rhizomatic analysis, we identify four nodes that point to drama as a hopeful practice during insecure times. The dramatic arts have historically facilitated the navigation of localized political and economic tensions, but research and practice has not seemingly addressed the transitions to more holistic forms of development embedded within the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal 8: Decent Work and Inclusive Economic Growth. Conceptualizing this transition as liminal, we argue for the use of drama(tic) arts to navigate this state. The node Space for emotions articulates drama as a possibility to embrace and integrate difficult emotions. The node Openings and invitations – a new learning experience describes drama as an unconventional form of teaching that opens for creativity and new understandings. The third node Pretending towards new realities points to how the imaginative aspects of drama can give experiences of new pretended states beyond the liminal. Finally, the node Discomfort and its reinterpretations shows how challenging aspects of drama can be understood as in itself creating a liminal state where the unexpected can emerge. Findings echo the transformatory potential of drama(tic) arts in prior environmental and sustainability education research but extend it in the specific context of navigating and re-imagining economic growth (SDG8), and point to specific qualities of drama when trying to move towards sustainability in difficult times.

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Introduction: performance and ecology – what can theatre do?

Cited by 37 publications

References 11 publications

Pluriversal scenographics and staging world feelings: climate crisis in SUPERFLEX’s ‘It Is Not The End Of The World’

Pluriversal scenographics and staging world feelings: climate crisis in SUPERFLEX’s ‘It Is Not The End Of The World’

Field works: wild experiments for performance research

Drama as a hopeful practice when navigating liminal times

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