Lisa Woynarski - Ecodramaturgies: Theatre, Performance and Climate Change

This series explores new dramaturgies within contemporary performance practice and deploys dramaturgical thinking as a productive analytical and practical approach to both performance analysis and performance-making. Designed to inspire students, scholars and practitioners, the series extends the understanding of the complex contexts of dramaturgy and embraces its diversity and scope.

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14742

Cover illustration: Trans-Plantable Living, Cardiff, Wales, 2013. Photo: Nigel PughTrans-Plantable Living, Cardiff, Wales, 2013. Photo: Nigel Pugh.

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

The series New Dramaturgies is afforded by recent developments in the discussion of dramaturgy: a significant number of English-language publications now exist that offer a range of introductory approaches to the field, frequently by discussing the work of the dramaturg. Given the greater understanding this body of work enables, it is now possible to explore the subject and process of dramaturgy without centring on the explication of fundamental terms and the division of roles, but rather approaching it from a range of perspectives and in relation to emerging debates and performance forms. While at times this may include further enquiry into the dramaturgs specific role, we also hope that the series will make a significant contribution through the deployment of dramaturgical thinking as an approach to performance analysis and performance-making.

If dramaturgical practice entails the facilitation of practical decisions by way of interpretation and critical perspective, dramaturgical analysis concerns attention to detail in relation to a wider whole. Dramaturgy has been characterised as being about making connections, moving between elements, forming organic wholes which are continually in process; this also implies attention to audience and context. Dramaturgy, then, entails a discussion of composition in terms of process and event, rather than the self-contained and singular art work. We note that dramaturgys historical association with literature, combined with its intrinsically holistic approach to the theatre event, enables movement and comparison across dramatic, postdramatic and other performance forms, without embedding divisions between them. It is also possible to expand the concept of dramaturgy to enable the discussion of performance in a wider, cultural sense. In this respect there are resonances with both sociology and performance studies.

Thus, while the series is partly concerned with dramaturgy as a professional and research field, it is equally a means to a discussion of contemporary performance, performance methodology and cultural context, through an address to the composition of action and eventor series of events. The title New Dramaturgies gestures towards our interest in discussing contemporary and future practices, yet the series is also concerned with new approaches to performance histories, always considering these in vibrant relationship to what is happening in the present, both in terms of artistic and wider cultural developments.

I would like to acknowledge the lands, traditional territories and Nations in which this writing, practice and research has taken place. This book was written in Reading, UK and involves research from multiple locations and many traditional territories (noted in the text). I acknowledge that universities and institutions in the Global North, including the one which I work for in the UK, were built on colonialism, slavery and empire, the exploitation of people and land. These contexts are a shared history and ongoing reality. I acknowledge the violent practices in which land and resources were stolen from Indigenous peoples and other First Peoples, as well as the languages and knowledges lost through the imposition of Euro-Western frames. Settler colonialism and neocolonialism continues to violently reverberate across lands, oceans and peoples today.

Thanks go to many people for their contribution to the process of creating this book. First and foremost, I would like to thank Sally Mackey, a generous, thoughtful, frank and kind PhD supervisor and mentor, who taught me how to be an academic. I am also grateful to Gareth White for his feedback and support at the very beginning when this project was in PhD form.

I am so appreciative of Adelina Ong for her honest and thoughtful feedback and for being an inspiring research companion, for listening and prompting me always to think further and resist authority. Thanks for all the days spent at the British Library. My thanks also go to the book support group: Angie Spalink and Jonah Winn-Lenetsky, whose comments and friendship were invaluable to developing this book. I am also grateful to Tanja Beer, Courtney Ryan and Bronwyn Preece, who gave me generous feedback. Special thanks go to Tamara Courage, John Whitney and Sarah Wray for their proof-reading, and to Tanya Izzard for indexing. As for my colleagues in the Department of Film, Theatre & Television at the University of Reading, thank you for being a supportive team. Thanks especially to Anna McMullan and Vicky Angelaki for their guidance at the proposal stage; Lucy Tyler and Adam OBrien for their thoughtful comments on chapters and continued support; Jonathan Bignell, Lisa Purse and Faye Woods for helping to carve out time to complete this project. Financial research assistance was gratefully received from the Heritage and Creativity Research Theme. Id also like to thank the third year FTT students of Performing Ecology, who engaged with these ideas as I tested them out and creatively responded in truly impressive ways.