Call for Papers: Theatre and Climate Change, Protest Theatre

2020

This book addresses theatre’s contribution to the way we think about ecology, our relationship to the environment and what it means to be human in the context of climate change. It offers a detailed study of the ways in which contemporary performance has critiqued and re-imagined everyday ecological relationships, in more just and equitable ways. The broad spectrum of ecologically-oriented theatre and performance included here, largely from the UK, US, Canada and Europe, have problematised, reframed and upended the pervasive and reductive images of climate change that tend to dominate the ecological imagination. Taking an inclusive approach this book foregrounds marginalised perspectives and the multiple social and political forces that shape climate change and related ecological crises, framing understandings of the earth as home. Recent works by Fevered Sleep, Rimini Protokoll, Violeta Luna, Deke Weaver, Metis Arts, Lucy + Jorge Orta, as well as plays and Indigenous activist movem...

Article on contemporary British theatre, environmentalism and climate change for the i newspaper. Online version here:

Theatre Research International

This dossier opens up a set of questions about what theatre and performance can do and be in a climate-changed future. Through a series of practice snapshots the authors suggest a diversity of responses to decolonizing and environmental justice issues in and through theatre and performance. These practices include the climate-fiction film The Wandering Earth, which prompts questions about what decolonizing means for China and the impact of climate chaos on the mental well-being of young people; The Living Pavilion, an Australian Indigenous-led project that created a biodiverse event space showcasing Indigenous art making; Dancing Earth Indigenous dance company who use dance as a way to engage Indigenous ecological thinking and Indigenous futurity; water rituals in the Andes of Peru that problematize water policy and ethnic boundaries.

Theatre has been used as an instrument all over the world from the very earliest of times – for many different ends, one of them being political. When it comes to instrumentalised theatre Africa has been in the forefront – starting way before colonisation and continuing up to the present day. In South Africa in particular what is called Protest Theatre was practised extensively during the apartheid era and all over Africa various forms of theatre in development have been and are still being practised. Most of this has not been the work of theatre artists. However, two forms have emerged from the theatre and university theatre departments in recent years, namely Forum Theatre and so-called ‘Applied Theatre’. This paper attempts to place Protest Theatre and ‘Applied Theatre’ in the context of instrumentalised theatre in Africa, in particular, Political Theatre and Development Communication. .

Theatre Survey, 2018

New Theatre Quarterly, 2015

In 2015 the concept of live performance as having efficacy to instigate political change is contested, yet some politically motivated performance has demonstrably facilitated change, and critical frameworks have been developed that account for performances that hold clear political stances. However, even where arguments exist for the enduring relevance of political performance, certain models of practice tend to be represented as more efficacious and sophisticated than others. In this article, inspired by her recent experiences of making political theatre, Rebecca Hillman asks to what extent prevalent discourses may nurture or repress histories and futures of political theatre. She re-evaluates the contemporary relevance of agitprop theatre made in British contexts in the 1960s and 1970s by comparing academic analyses of the work with less well-documented critiques by the practitioners and audiences. She documents also the fluctuation and transformation, rather than the dissipation,...

Green Letters

Canadian Theatre Review, 2011

Paper title: "Environmental Dramaturgy: Performing with Natural Spaces"