The Environment on Stage: Scenery or Shapeshifter? 9780367353308, 9780429330735

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The Environment on Stage

The Environment on Stage: Scenery or Shapeshifter? investigates a pertinent voice of theatrical performance within the production and reception of ecotheatre. Theatre ecologies, unavoidably enmeshed in the environment, describe the system of sometimes perverse feedback loops running through theatrical events, productions, performances and installations. This volume applies an ecoaware spectatorial lens to explore live theatre as a living ecosystem in a literal sense. The vibrant chemistry between production and reception, and the spiralling ideas and emotions this generates in some conditions, is unavoidably driven by flows of matter and energy, thus by the natural environment, even when human perspectives seem to dominate. The Environment on Stage is an intentionally eclectic mix of observation, close reading and qualitative research, undertaken with the aim of exploring ecocritical ideas embedded in ecotheatre from a range of perspectives. Individual chapters identify productions, performances and installations in which the environment is palpably present on stage, as it is in natural disasters such as floods, storms, famine, conflict and climate change. These themes and others are explored in the context of site specificity, subversive spectators, frugal modes of narrative, the shifting ‘stuff’ of theatre productions and imaginative substitutions. Ecotheatre is nothing less than a vibrant matter that lets the environment speak for itself. Julie Hudson is an independent writer in the field of ecocriticism. She was awarded her PhD in English and Comparative Literary Studies (Warwick University) in 2018. Her main research interests include the environment and cultural change, ecotheatre, live theatrical events and audience research. Previous publications include: ‘Are We Performing Dearth, or Is Dearth Performing Us, in Modern Productions of William Shakespeare’s “Coriolanus”’, in A Cultural History of Famine: Food Security and the Environment in Britain and India, ed. by Ayesha Mukherjee (Routledge, 2019); Food Policy and the Environmental Credit Crunch: From Soup to Nuts (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014) and From Red to Green: How the Environmental Could Bankrupt the Environment (Abingdon: Earthscan, 2011), both co-authored with economist Paul Donovan.

Routledge Studies in World Literatures and the Environment

The Radical Ecology of the Shelleys Eros and Environment Colin Carman Roads, Mobility, and Violence in Indigenous Literature and Art from North America Deena Rymhs Human Minds and Animal Stories How Narratives Make Us Care About Other Species Wojciech Małecki, Piotr Sorokowski, Bogusław Pawłowski, and Marcin Cieński Climate and Crises Magical Realism as Environmental Discourse Ben Holgate Ecocriticism and the Semiosis of Poetry Holding on to Proteus Aaron Moe Christina Rossetti’s Environmental Consciousness Todd O. Williams Ecoprecarity Vulnerable Lives in Literature and Culture Pramod K. Nayar The Environment on Stage Scenery or Shapeshifter? Julie Hudson For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com

The Environment on Stage Scenery or Shapeshifter?

Julie Hudson

First published 2020 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 Taylor & Francis The right of Julie Hudson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-35330-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-33073-5 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra

To Pat, Paul, Mark and Jon.

Contents

List of Figures List of Tables Acknowledgements

ix xi xiii

Introduction: Setting the Ecotheatrical Scene 1 1 The Environment on Stage in Production and Reception 14 2 Natural Disasters as Ecotheatrical Shapeshifters 41 3 An Ecotheatrical Perspective on Dearth in Performance 62 4 The Environment in Performance: Stage Invasion or Deus ex Machina? 85 5 Environmental Theatre, Site Specificity and Theatre Ecologies 106 6 Frugal Modes of Storytelling as Ecotheatre 130 7 Bicycles on Stage – Shapeshifters or Scenery? 151 8 Reperforming Reception – The Skriker in 1994 and 2015 175 9 On the Importance of Intrinsic Environmental Responsibility 198 Index

211

List of Figures

I.1 Ecotheatrical Feedback Loops at Play 6 1.1 The Theatrical Metabolic Chart 26 3.1 Corn Pouring from the Sky into the Coffers of the Rich (Coriolanus Production Photograph) 75 5.1 PAX Cathedral Designed and Drawn by Clifford McLucas, Brith Gof 117 7.1 The Bicycle at the Core of Productions – Ecotheatre in an All-Round Sense 155 8.1 Ice Watch in the Dark – Shapeshifting Ice Meets City ‘Scenery’ 175 8.2 What Critics Focused on in Reviews of The Skriker in 1994 and 2015 191 8.3 How Critics Wrote About The Skriker, 2015 Vs. 1994 192 9.1 Another Place – Humans Contemplating Sea-Level Rise? 198

List of Tables

4.1 Reclaim Shakespeare – Eight Stage Invasions in 2012 98 7.1 Why The HandleBards’ Spectators Saw Their Performances as Ecotheatre 160 7.2 The HandleBards’ Summer Tour 2015, Analytical Categories Applied to Feedback Forms 163 8.1 Reviews Selected for Analysis in The Skriker Case Study 190

Acknowledgements

In Chapter 9, a biosphere held within an imagined human head (Morton, 2017) briefly stands in for the ecosystem of ideas discussed in this book. That same perspective demands recognition of the many people who have helped steer the line of thought it contains. Some of the materials contained in these chapters are drawn from my Warwick University PhD thesis, principally materials in Chapters 1, 3, 7 and 8. This book had to follow because, once I had learned how to see the environment on stage, it started coming into focus wherever I looked. As Chapter 3 says, ‘If humans cannot recognise the ubiquitous presence of the environment on stage, it is hard to see how entrapment in persistent and increasingly obsolescent cultures can be resisted.’ As I worked on this project, some of the performances, productions and installations in earlier stages of the work turned out to be connected to other ones, and those ‘feedback loops’ led to still others. New material includes explorations of two important Stan’s Cafe productions (Home of the Wriggler and the ‘Rice Show’); archival work on the site-­ specific theatre of Brith Gof, whose striking ecotheatrical works appear in ­Chapter 2 (natural disasters with reference to The True Cost of Coal) and ­Chapter 5 (site-specific theatre with reference to Los Angeles and PAX) and a foray into frugal modes of narrative in the work of Paines Plough and Forced Entertainment. I owe thanks to many people and organisations, including my Warwick University PhD supervisors Stephen Purcell and Carol Chillington Rutter; Warwick ecocritics such as Pablo Mukherjee and Jonathan Skinner; a number of other members of teaching staff, such as Tony Howard and Paul Prescott; and artists and writers who have helped me to develop some of the ideas in this work, particularly Baz Kershaw and Kirsten Shepherd-Barr. This book could not exist without the amazing work of theatre companies, performers, artists and playwrights, several of whom happily provided useful commentary and feedback. ­Gatherings – conferences and workshops run by organisations, such as The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH), the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment (SSEE), the International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR), the British Society for Literature

xiv Acknowledgements and Science (BSLS), the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) and the Theatre and Performance Research Association (TAPRA) – stimulated ideas, and individual participants too numerous to mention generously shared insightful perspectives. At SSEE, a famine workshop led to a book edited by Ayesha Mukherjee, which contains an early version of some of the material in Chapter 3. I owe particular thanks to The HandleBards, especially Paul Moss, and to the artists and archivists of Brith Gof, including Mike Pearson, Margaret Ames and the National Library of Wales Archive team. I have spent many productive hours in the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Library and Archive.

References Morton, T. (2017) ‘…and the Leg Bone’s Connected to the Toxic Waste Dump Bone’, Anthology of Consciousness, 28 (2), pp. 135–42.

Declaration I have worked for some quarter of a century with a leading investment bank, where I am an ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) and Sustainability Analyst. This book and the above-mentioned PhD were entirely self-funded and undertaken independently, and bear no reference to my work with the bank. I am solely responsible for all of the opinions and any errors or omissions in this book.

Introduction Setting the Ecotheatrical Scene

The Arcola Theatre setting for Samuel Beckett’s (1990, 2006) play Waiting for Godot (directed by Simon Dormandy, 2014) was centred round a pile of rubble, seemingly the crumbling red bricks of the theatre itself, in which the single naked tree stood entrapped by the roots. The wreckage rising up in front of the audience resembled a huge desiccated wormery whose inhabitants had long fled. It was so dry that, in the interval, jugs of water were thrown to slake the dust that might otherwise have choked us all. In this utterly awful place, Didi and Gogo waited for Godot, and the limits and pressures of human physiology and psychology visibly shaped the human suffering playing out before us (adapted from Hudson, 2014).1 In my reaction as a spectator seated in the Arcola Theatre within the living ‘ecosystem’ of this Waiting for Godot, organic and inorganic matter, actors and site-specific scenography (recycled red bricks unique to the Arcola), spectators and theatre infrastructure were inextricably interwoven. The environment thus came across to me as a ‘shapeshifter’ – defined as a complex, vibrant entity that changes shape in itself and at the same time reshapes everything around it – in this particular performance. The ‘scenery’ – bricks, chairs, dust, water, dilapidated surface underfoot – was no such thing; on the contrary, it played an active part in shaping the overall impact of the performance I saw. The prominence of the crumbling fabric of the very theatre walls themselves suggested to me that this ecotheatrical effect was intended by the production team. However, I wondered whether natural ecologies hinted at by jugs of water were a matter of accident or design. Was this presence of environmental ‘vibrant matter’ (Bennett, 2010) a form of ‘eco-stage invasion’, an intrusion not intended but nevertheless provoked by the production? Alternatively, did the environment make its presence felt in the manner of a ‘deus ex machina’, arriving by means of a human contrivance designed to allow the ‘vitality’ of matter to enter the stage through the ‘machinery’ of the scenography? As Bennett put it: By ‘vitality’, I mean the capacity of things – edibles, commodities, storms, metals – not only to impede or block the will and designs of

2  Setting Ecotheatrical Scene humans but also to act as quasi agents or forces with trajectories, propensities or tendencies of their own. (Loc 61) At one level, the suggestion of dead mud served to reinforce the impression of desolation conveyed by the physicality of the materials making up the scenery. At another, metatheatrical, level the jugs of water could be regarded as symbols of ecosystem vulnerability. The entropic mud they produced, as prop, symbolic node in the mesh of embedded meanings, and ‘quasi agent with [a trajectory] of their own’ was as dependent on the vagaries of a production ecosystem as any other mud, dead or alive. At yet another level, the jugs also served to trigger a somatic response in the body of the spectator (myself, in this case) connecting to the imagined possibility of struggling lungs. Baz Kershaw, whose writings prompted some of the questions addressed in this book, might describe this sensation as being ‘performed by’ theatrical ecologies (Kershaw, 2015, 2016). An experience such as the Arcola Godot is a connection leading to ideas of human mortality and planetary entropy at a stroke – earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Ecoeffective as they were, I do not think the jugs of water deployed during the interval were intended to have the effect I describe above. Nevertheless, I think the possibility of such trains of thought was a product of the ecoaware chemistry of this production making itself felt in subconscious ways. The fragments of ecoreviewing in the above paragraphs, in relation to Dormandy’s 2014 Arcola Theatre production of Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot, open the Introduction to this book for several reasons. It is a statement of my main aim, which is, where possible, to focus on live performance from the perspective of the spectator. It describes an example of a lived experience of the environment on stage as scenery, shapeshifter and indeed both at the same time, thus it is an example of an important form of ‘ecotheatre’, in which the environment is at work in ways intended and perhaps also not necessarily intended by the production team or expected by spectators. It demonstrates an ecocritical mode of spectatorship I apply throughout the book to a range of theatrical productions, performances and installations. I do this in three different ways: I describe my own experiences as spectator and observer; I mentally reperform performances after the event by means of theatrical archives, recordings and conversations and, where they are available to me in theatre critics’ reviews or spectator feedback forms, I analyse others’ spectatorial responses to them.

Theatrical Ecocriticism and Ecocritical Theatre Dormandy’s Godot and my reactions to it signpost the positioning of this ecotheatrical book in the broader field of ecocriticism, as I shall

Setting Ecotheatrical Scene  3 now explain. 2 Live theatrical productions, performances and installations provide a powerful locus for ‘ludic’ experiments (Kershaw, 1992, p.  24) that might bring potentially powerful insights to the problem of the existential threat facing humanity. This is partly because such experiences (as Dormandy’s Godot illustrates) are both experimental and ‘experiential’, to use Timothy Morton’s (2017, p. 137) word. Live theatre thus provides the possibility of direct connections to Bennett’s ‘vibrant matter’. Whether this happens for spectators is likely to be at least partly determined by the overall vision driving live theatrical productions. However, as my experience of Dormandy’s Godot suggests, this is only part of the story because of the embeddedness of living spectators alongside living actors in any live theatrical event, however staged or installed. As John Tulloch (2005, p. 59), analysing production and reception in the context of live theatrical events, observed, what is ‘different’ about ‘the gaze of theatre has much to do with “liveness” of shared physical, cognitive and emotional intimacy’. In this comment, he hints at the potential complexity of spectatorial reactions, as reflected, for example, in the reception research methodologies of Willmar Sauter (2000, loc ­131–151 and 1641), who structures his analysis according to three modes of reception, relating to a range of responses: sensory (sympathy, empathy, identification, antipathy, disgust), artistic (pleasure, evaluation) and symbolic (identification, interpretation), a framework I refer to in Chapter 8. To use Morton’s words again: ‘the phenomenology of something is the logic of how it appears’. This is not just the ‘logic’ embedded in production, but, rather, the overall shape of the ‘system’ of the theatrical event as a co-creation of production, reception and the broader contextual (theatrical, metatheatrical, societal, environmental, earthly) ‘ecosystem’ in which they are, in turn, embedded. The idea that live theatre is ecosystemic is particularly powerful in having the potential to eliminate the so-called nature/culture divide (cf.  Morton (2007) and Donna Haraway (e.g. 1988, 1989)). The idea of live theatre as a performative ecosystem recalls Morton’s (2010) ­ onella ‘mesh’. It also draws on the writings of systems thinkers such as D H. Meadows (2008) and Gregory Bateson (1972, 1990), the description of ecosystems by ecosystem scientists such as Dickinson, G. and Murphy, K. (1999, 2007), and indeed, on the work of those who have applied ecological ideas to theatre, such as Bonnie Marranca (1996), Theresa J. May (2010, 2017), Gabriel Egan (2015), Robert N. Watson (2006), Kershaw (2007, 2015, 2016) and Carl Lavery (2016). The idea that the ‘logic’ of live theatrical performances is not ultimately controlled by human beings (cf. Lavery, 2016, p.  232) positions this book, and live theatre itself, in the ‘material turn’ taken by ecocriticism, as discussed in the writings of new materialists such as Diana Coole and Samantha Frost (2010) and others in their edited volume,

4  Setting Ecotheatrical Scene such as Bennett (2010), Serenella Iovino and Serpil Oppermann (2014). As described by Iovino and Oppermann (p. 2): The ‘material turn’ is an extensive conversation across the territories of the sciences and the humanities […]. [T]his emerging paradigm elicits not only new non-anthropocentric approaches, but also possible ways to analyse language and reality, human and nonhuman life, mind and matter, without falling into dichotomous patterns of thinking. Ecotheatre as defined and debated in this book is not limited to the idea of productions designed to deliver a campaigning environmental message. Rather, it positions theatrical events as literally ecosystemic, therefore also unpredictable and potentially equivocal in meaning and effect. All theatrical events are dynamic, ambiguous (potentially disruptive or stabilising) flows of energy, matter and ideas, situated within and connected to many other such flows. They are characterised, as all planetary systems are, by ‘reinforcing, self-enhancing’ feedback loops (leading to ‘runaway growth or runaway collapses over time’); ‘balancing’ feedback loops (amounting to ‘sources of stability’ and ‘sources of resistance to change’). Such systems also ‘create [their] own behaviour’ (Meadows, 2008, p. 178), as a consequence of the combined activity of everything within them. Meadows’ guideline ‘for both analysis and design’ is to ‘locate responsibility in the system’ (also p. 178), an idea I will return to in several of the chapters that follow, sometimes with reference to Una Chaudhuri’s (1995, p.  84) discussion of the ‘memoir art’ of Spalding Gray. She describes it as ‘a theatre of gathering together, [whose] modes are those of an ecological imperative: narrative (continuity), memory (recycling) and [frugality] (conservation)’. Meadows’ idea of ‘intrinsic responsibility’ recalls physicist James ­Lovelock’s well-known Gaia hypothesis. In his ‘Preface’ to the 2000 edition of his seminal 1979 book, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth, Lovelock discusses the double-edged quality of the word Gaia, as a scientific hypothesis ‘speaking science in its own abstract language’ (loc 139) and at the same time an evocation of the complex idea of the planet as a living entity, suggested by novelist William Golding (loc 47). This brings me to a critical point about the meaning of the word ecosystem as used here. Gaia is regularly described as a metaphor (e.g. Lovelock, 2000, 2006, p.  16; Tickell, 2006, p. xix). In this work, when social systems or theatrical productions are described as ecosystems, the term is not always used as a metaphor. It denotes dynamic processes literally (physically, materially) at work alongside metaphorical representations of other bigger or smaller ideas. Lovelock’s concept of the planet as a self-regulating entity also captures the dynamic at work in live theatrical events, performances and installations in which production teams and their spectators and

Setting Ecotheatrical Scene  5 audiences co-creatively shape theatrical meaning. The inextricable entanglement of actors and spectators in any ‘theatrical event’ (cf. Susan Bennett (1997), Sauter (2010) and Tulloch (2005)) inevitably produces a complex, self-regulating ecosystem made up of several other inextricably entangled ecosystems. Emotional, cognitive and physical reactions in the chemistry between audiences and actors can be described as atmospheric, epistemological and ontological shapeshifters in the context of theatrical performances. The brief immersive experience of Godot described above might have been very different in another theatre building, without the red bricks to prompt reactions in a particular direction. As this suggests, audiences and spectators can, in effect, also change shape internally in themselves should the way they feel or think shift because of their reactions to what is on stage. I am therefore not, as Felix Guattari (2000, p. 24) might fear, using ‘pseudo-scientific paradigms’ to hold the environment at arm’s length. I am using the term in a phenomenological sense, as a reference to flows of matter, energy and indeed ideas and emotions, for they are nothing more nor less than flows of matter and energy themselves. Meadows’ description of systems thinking and the discussion immediately following it, above, unsurprisingly finds an echo in the work of new materialists Coole and Frost (2010, p. 12) who describe tumbleweeds, animal species, planetary ecosystems and economics as ‘amenable to the kind of explanation developed by complexity theorists’. They would be unlikely to disagree that live theatre or indeed any aspect of a live theatrical production (the acting company, the text however defined, rehearsing, devising, design, choreography, movement, sound, site, scenography, audiences, spectators, reviews taken singly or as a group, or indeed any production taken as a whole) could be added to the list.

Ecotheatre Defined An important assumption running throughout this book is that all theatre can be, in some sense, ecotheatrical. I use the term ecotheatre to denote responses and reactions in which the active presence of the environment on stage comes through, with or without the intention or even sometimes the awareness of those involved. This follows naturally from the idea that live theatrical performances are ecosystems, as discussed above. The idea is diagrammatically presented below in the form of a simple system of feedback loops. In essence, when the environment is at play on stage, this shapes the performance text, however defined, at point A. This, in turn, shapes production chemistry (B), and production chemistry reacts with audience chemistry (C). When a production runs more than once this experience feeds back into the performance text, thereby modifying production chemistry, and so on ad infinitum, round the series of feedback loops very simply represented below (Figure I.1).

6  Setting Ecotheatrical Scene

Core idea shapes performance text. CORE IDEA: ECOTHEATRE

Production chemistry reacts with spectatorial chemistry.

Performance text drives production chemistry.

Figure I.1  E  cotheatrical Feedback Loops at Play. Source: Author.

In successful productions, this is the mechanism that sets moving theatrical runaway warming systems, defined as successful performances enjoyed by (or provoking other strong reactions in) all involved. This diagram, which reappears in Chapter 7 in the context of audience research, is a representation of the flows of matter, energy and ideas running through the collective presence of actors, spectators and scenography. It can be described as depicting the essence of ecotheatre as discussed throughout this book. It is important to note that (as illustrated by examples in Chapters 5 and 7) the core idea in theatrical events, productions and installations does not need to be openly stated to be enjoyed, appreciated and understood. As a spectator, I much enjoy the open secrets, ironies, ambiguities and surprises that characterise live theatre.

On the Impossibility of Conscious Ecounconsciousness The well-known artist Antony Gormley (2016, p. 49) provides a powerful phraseology for ecotheatre: ‘We must become consciously unconscious, and unconsciously conscious.’ This suggests that several modes of awareness may be at work on stage. I argue that theatrical productions, performances, installations and spectatorial responses to them can be consciously ecoconscious, ecoconsciously unconscious or unconsciously ecoconscious. Even feeling ‘disconnected from ecological awareness is another mode of … ecological awareness’, in Morton’s (2017, p.  141) words. In Morton’s world, hypothetical states of conscious ecounconsciousness (an open statement of disconnectedness from the environment) or unconscious ecounconsciousness thus describe impossible states of being. Even when the environment seems to be mere ‘scenery’ on stage or in real life, this cannot possibly be the case because nothing

Setting Ecotheatrical Scene  7 can take place outside the environment. Thus, even the ‘explosion of contextualisation’ (p. 141) and potentially also resource usage in some of the theatrical productions described by writers from Richard Schechner (1973, 1994) to Mike Pearson (2010) to Arnold Aronson (2018) as ‘environmental theatre’ can give the environment an unexpected, sometimes deeply ironic voice. The relationship between environmental theatre, site-specific theatre and ecotheatre is further discussed in Chapter 1, and also in Chapter 5, in the context of performative runaway warming systems created by Brith Gof’s eco-site-specific theatre. Rubble, the wreckage of chairs and jugs of water in the Arcola Godot described above combined to suggest that ‘scenery’ is unlikely to be mere backdrop to theatrical productions. Whether simple or complex, naturalistic or conceptual, frugal or resource intensive, all ‘scenery’ will have scenographic effects. The field known as ‘expanded scenography’ is not in itself intendedly ecotheatrical, but the interconnectedness it contains might be described as a product of increasing ecoawareness (in a good example of ‘unconscious ecoconsciousness’) in the broader context of live theatre. Using words that chime with the idea of ‘vibrant matter’, Joslin McKinney and Scott Palmer (2017, pp. 1–20) describe ‘scenography’ as having the capacity to operate independently from a theatre text, ‘as a central component of the performance, not merely as a backdrop to the play’ (p. 1). Expanded scenography connects readily not only to site-specific theatre and ‘environmental theatre’, but, I think, also helps explain why both can be quite close, conceptually speaking, to ecotheatrical modes of production and reception. Hence: Scenography makes the underlying structures of representation visible, presenting the spectator with multiple […] understandings that expand a literal text. […] Site-specific scenography foregrounds the spectators’ interaction with the surrounding environment […]. Even in the most innocuous entertainments that employ such strategies, the political dimension becomes inescapable. (McKinney and Palmer, loc 249) In this definition, the ‘surrounding environment’ can be described as speaking for itself. Hence, McKinney and Palmer could also have said ‘the ecopolitical dimension becomes inescapable’.

The Ecotheatrical Shapeshifter: Not an Entity but an Ecosystem A number of ideas are embedded in the term ‘shapeshifter’ in my book title, which is borrowed with intent from Caryl Churchill’s (1994) prescient ecopolitical climate change play The Skriker (see also Chapters 1 and 8). A ‘shapeshifter’ usually denotes an entity that can change its

8  Setting Ecotheatrical Scene form at will, as Churchill’s malign sprite, the Skriker, does in the spirit world. In this ecotheatrical context, shapeshifters can take many guises, but all of them can be loosely described in ecological terms, as ‘ecosystems’. All ecosystems, including theatrical ones, inhabit (and contain) still other ecosystems, and most have a complex structure, within which ‘feedback loops’ (individual forces pushing the overall ecosystem in one direction or another) determine their shapeshifting qualities. The most ‘effective’ shapeshifters are defined as those that exert an influence going well beyond their immediate environment. To achieve this, they do not necessarily need to be large or powerful in themselves, nor do they need to be present by the intention of human protagonists. The direction of change exerted by a seemingly minor shapeshifter could be magnified by others that happened to be moving in the same direction at the same time. The reverse also holds: the direction of change in an ecosystem exerted by a powerful shapeshifter could be nullified by a combination of smaller feedback loops somewhere else in the overall system. As I argue in Chapter 8, The Skriker was written in the hope of putting the environment on stage in such a way as to allow it to speak for itself thereby exerting an influence more broadly. The later production (directed by Sarah Frankcom, 2015) seemed to do so more effectively than the earlier production (directed by Les Waters, 1994), and a question addressed later on in the book is whether, and if so why, this was the case.

Let the Environment Speak! With apologies to economist William Nordhaus (2013, p. 285), if you have mastered the externalities of global warming as described by climate scientists (including the difference between an oscillation in a stable system and a regime shift in a runaway warming phase), you have understood the basic workings of effective theatrical performances. The externalities of effective ecotheatre are no different to theatre in general. They have the potential to be either beneficial or harmful from an ecological perspective. In the context of live theatrical performances, this produces a seeming paradox, which collapses when the nature/culture divide is rubbed out. An ecoeffective theatrical production may need to behave like a runaway ecosystem to have any chance of producing, or helping to prompt, a cultural shift away from societal behaviour designed to destabilise planetary ecosystems. The challenge is, how to produce theatrical runaway warming systems (particularly when defined as theatre that is enjoyed, appreciated and internalised by its spectators) without getting trapped in the performative consumption of ‘ephemeral junk’ (Smil, 2014, p. 178) thereby creating further adverse runaway feedback loops from the perspective of the health of the planet and its resident life-forms. A further challenge, as an observer of such theatre, is how to know when such ideas are attained in theatrical terms.3

Setting Ecotheatrical Scene  9 If the environment on stage is not an ecosystem knowingly embedded in the ecosystem it performs as an ecosystem within an ecosystem of other ecosystems, then it can potentially be described as mere scenery, stranded in the deep gulf of the nature/culture divide. If, however, the environment on stage is indeed such an ecosystem, spectators and production teams as other ecosystems themselves embedded in ecosystems of ecosystems – including the theatrical ecosystem – may well be incapable of perceiving the difference between nature as scenery and nature as shapeshifter. Moreover, such epistemological entanglement could potentially be described as the height of ecotheatrical efficacy, in some conditions. In this book, I may thus be embarking on an impossible task. However, thanks to the spectatorial experiences described in this work, one thing is clear to me. The idea of ecologies and ecosystems must shape the spectatorial lens through which ecocritics approach the idea of the potential efficacy of live theatre in the context of the environmental crisis facing humanity. Writing this book, I also hope that an ecotheatrical lens applied to live theatre might potentially throw new light on the relationship between ecocriticism and human relationships with the environment.

The Structure of the Book This book is intentionally eclectic. There are good reasons for this: the environment is ubiquitous in real life, thus is also inevitably so on stage in live theatre. It is, moreover, constantly changing, as the very title of this book suggests. When I set out on this project, I had expected to write a chapter about climate change plays, extending the discussion I began in Hudson (2012), in ‘“If you want to be green, hold your breath”, Climate Change in British Theatre’. Climate change turned out to be ubiquitous on stage and beyond, appearing in every chapter as an active presence.4 Ecotheatre as discussed in this book encompasses a wide range of material. The works of Shakespeare and Beckett appear alongside new work (such as climate change plays by several playwrights), 5 and modes of production that do not always reference a play text: devised theatre, site-specific theatre and ecoinstallations. Watery, cloudy, smoky installations, scenographies and innovative modes of production thus feature alongside conventional theatre spaces as I tread in the environmental shapeshifter’s constantly moving ecotheatrical footprints. Chapters typically begin by playing with a specific spectatorial experience, which is then linked to ecocritical and ecotheatrical ideas discussed in this Introduction and Chapter 1, as well as to the core content of the chapter itself. Chapter 1 sets the scene by defining and exploring ecotheatre with reference to a number of live performances, and the broader context of ecocriticism. Chapter 2 focuses on natural disasters as ecotheatrical shapeshifters, and Chapter 3 considers what different treatments

10  Setting Ecotheatrical Scene of a specific natural disaster, dearth in selected modern productions of Shakespeare’s play Coriolanus, say about human relationships with the environment. Chapter 4 is about ecotheatrical stage invasions, some of which are human, and some not: the ghost of fossil fuels is projected into the limelight, sometimes by accident but also by design in some of the innovative modes of production explored here. Chapter 5 focuses, through the work of Brith Gof, Stan’s Cafe and Kershaw, on site-specific performances, site-specificity and the power of vibrant matter to travel in the imagination. Chapter 6 considers frugal modes of storytelling, through the work of Paines Plough, with reference to Duncan Macmillan’s (2011) climate change play Lungs as performed in the Roundabout, selected plays from Come to Where I’m From; and Forced Entertainment’s Table Top Shakespeare. Chapter 7 examines spectatorial responses as expressed in feedback forms to ecotheatrical Shakespearean performances by an innovative, energetic, vibrant theatre group, The Handlebards. Chapter 8 considers the reaction of a specialist segment of the audience, the community of UK theatre critics, to a climate change play in two productions two decades apart (The Skriker, 1994, 2015). The Conclusion, in Chapter 9, asks whether ecotheatrical experiences have the power to change human relationships with the environment, as represented in the live theatrical performances, productions and installations explored in this book.

Notes 1 2014 cast: Tom Palmer (Vladimir); Tom Stourton (Estragon); Jonathan ­Oliver (Pozzo); Michael Roberts (Lucky). Design: Patrick Kinnonth. 2 A thumb-nail sketch of developments in ecocriticism might be useful at this juncture. Chapter 1 refers to Lawrence Buell’s (2005) framing of developments in ecocriticism as ‘first’ and ‘second’ waves, which (broadly speaking) focused on nature and ‘a variety of landscapes (including places like cities) and timely environmental issues’ (Hiltner, 2015, p. 131). A third ‘wave’ is identified by Adamson and Slovic (2009, pp. 6–7) as recognising and transcending ‘ethnic and national boundaries’, and Slovic (2012) describes the ‘material turn’ of ecocriticism as a new ‘fourth wave’. Robin Chen-Hsing Tsai (2017) describes a shift away from the idea of ‘waves’ in favour of a ‘tangled root system growing in many directions at once’ (p. 272), crossing boundaries between the arts and the sciences, with reference to the work of the new materialists. 3 This book briefly considers and plays with qualitative research methodologies potentially well suited to circular problems. The circularity of the process inherent in ‘Grounded Theory’ as described by Corbin and Strauss (2015, pp. 6–7) is visible in the methodology applied to audience feedback forms in the playful experiment undertaken in Chapter 7, even though I did not discover Grounded Theory until the project was almost complete. Phenomenological research, largely an empirical, experiential (c.f.  Morton) approach, is also potentially relevant to ecocritical audience research. As described by John W. Creswell (2013, pp. 81–3), it is not about explaining or controlling the world but ‘offers us the possibility of plausible insights that bring us in more direct contact with the world’.

Setting Ecotheatrical Scene  11 4 John Charles Ryan (2018, p. 3) refers to climate change as an ‘urgent reference point for the ecocritical scholarship of 2017’. 5 UK climate change plays and when they premiered: Churchill, C., The Skriker, 1994; Pollard, C., The Weather, 2004; Godber, J. Crown Prince, 2007; Waters, S., Contingency Plan, 2009; Payne, N. If There is I Haven’t Found It Yet, 2009; Bartlett, M., Earthquakes in London, 2010; Buffini, M., Charman, M., Skinner P., and Thorne, J., Greenland, 2011; Bean, R., The Heretic, 2011; Stephens, S., Wastwater, 2011; Macmillan, D., Lungs, 2011; Hickson, E., Oil, 2016; Duffy, C., Arctic Oil, 2018. UK premier of Finnigan, D.’s 2017 play, Kill Climate Deniers, 2019. Climate change lectures that both premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, and were both directed by Mitchell, K.: Emmott, S., Ten Billion, 2012; Rapley, C. and Macmillan, D., 2071, 2014.

References Adamson, J. and Slovic, S. (2009) ‘The Shoulders We Stand On: An I­ ntroduction to Ethnicity and Ecocriticism’, MELUS, 34, pp. 5–24. Aronson, A. (2018) The History and Theory of Environmental Scenography, 2nd edn. London: Methuen Drama. First published in 1981. Bateson, G. (1972, 1990) Steps to an Ecology of Mind. The Estate of Gregory Bateson; Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Beckett, S. (1990, 2006) ‘Waiting for Godot’, in The Complete Dramatic Works, ed. by Beckett, S. London: Faber & Faber, pp. 7–88. Bennett, J. (2010) Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Bennett, S. (1997) Theatre Audiences: A Theory of Production and Reception. London: Routledge, repr. 2003. Buell, L. (2005) The Future of Environmental Criticism: Environmental Crisis and Literary Imagination. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Chaudhuri, U. (1995) Staging Place: The Geography of Modern Drama. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Churchill, C. (1994) The Skriker. London: Nick Hern Books, repr. 2015. Coole, D. and Frost, S. (2010) ‘Introducing the New Materialisms’, in New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency and Politics, ed. by Coole, D. and Frost, S. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 1–24. Corbin, J. and Strauss, A. (2015) Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory, 4th edn. Los Angeles, CA: Sage. Creswell, J.W. (2013) Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing Among Five Approaches. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Dickinson, G. and Murphy, K. (1999, 2007) Ecosystems. Abingdon: Routledge. Egan, G. (2015) Shakespeare and Ecocritical Theory. London: Bloomsbury ­A rden Shakespeare. Gormley, A. (2016) ‘Being in the World’ (1989), in Field for the British Isles, compiled by the Arts Council Collection on the 25th Anniversary of the ­Acquisition of Field. London: Hayward Publishing, p. 49. Guattari, F. (2000) The Three Ecologies. London: Bloomsbury. Haraway, D. (1989) Primate Visions: Gender, Race and Nature in the World of Modern Science. New York: Routledge. Haraway, D. (1988) ‘Situated Knowledges’, Feminist Studies, 14 (3), pp. 575–99.

12  Setting Ecotheatrical Scene Hiltner, K. (2015) Ecocriticism: The Essential Reader. Abingdon: Routledge. Hudson, J. (2014) ‘Arcola Theatre: Waiting for Godot’, Julie’s Ecotheatre Blog, Warwick Blogs, 16th June. Available at: blogs.warwick.ac.uk/juliehudson/. Hudson, J. (2012) ‘“If You Want to Be Green, Hold Your Breath”, Climate Change in British Theatre’, New Theatre Quarterly, 28, pp. 260–71. Iovino, S. and Oppermann, S. (eds.) (2014) Material Ecocriticism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Kershaw, B. (2016) ‘Projecting Climate Scenarios, Landscaping Nature and Knowing Performance: On Becoming Performed by Ecology’, Green Letters, Studies in Ecocriticism, 20 (3), pp. 270–89. Kershaw, B. (2015) ‘Performed by Ecologies: How Homo sapiens Could Subvert Present-Day Futures’, Performing Ethos, 4 (2), pp. 113–134. Kershaw, B. (2007) Theatre Ecology: Environments and Performance Events. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kershaw, B. (1992) The Politics of Performance: Radical Theatre as Cultural Intervention. London: Routledge. Lavery, C. (ed.) (2016) ‘Introduction: Performance and Ecology – What Can Theatre Do?’, Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism, 20 (3), pp. 229–36. Lovelock, J. (2006) The Revenge of Gaia. London: Allen Lane. Lovelock, J. (2000) ‘Science and Nature Live Chats: Science and Nature Books – James Lovelock’, Guardian, 29th September. Available at: www.theguardian. com/books/2000/sep/29/scienceandnature.livechats. Lovelock, J. (1979, 2000) Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Macmillan, D. (2011) Lungs. London: Oberon Books. Marranca, B. (1996) Ecologies of Theatre. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press. May, T.J. (2017) ‘Tu Eres Mi Otro Yo’ – Staying with the Trouble: Ecodramaturgy and the AnthropoScene’, The Journal of American Drama and Theatre, 29 (2), pp. 1–18 (Spring). Available at: https:\\jadtjournal.org/2017/15/tu-eresmi-otro-yo-staying-with-the-trouble-ecodramaturgy-the-anthroposcene/. May, T.J. (2010) ‘Kneading Marie Clements’ Burning Vision’, Canadian ­Theatre Review, 144 (Fall), pp. 5–12. McKinney, J. and Palmer, S. (2017) ‘Introducing “Expanded” Scenography’, in Scenography Expanded: An Introduction to Contemporary Performance Design, ed. by McKinney, J. and Palmer, S. London: Bloomsbury, pp. 1–20. Meadows, D.H. (2008) Thinking in Systems: A Primer, ed. by Wright, D. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing Company. Morton, T. (2017) ‘…and the Leg Bone’s Connected to the Toxic Waste Dump Bone’, Anthology of Consciousness, 28 (2), pp. 135–42. Morton, T. (2010) The Ecological Thought. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Morton, T. (2007) Ecology without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nordhaus, W. (2013) The Climate Casino: Risk, Uncertainty and Economics for a Warming World. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Pearson, M. (2010) Site-Specific Performance. London: Palgrave MacMillan. Ryan, J.C. (2018) ‘Ecocriticism’, The Year’s Work in Cultural and Critical ­Theory 2017, The English Association, 26, pp. 1–23.

Setting Ecotheatrical Scene  13 Sauter, W. (2010) ‘Thirty Years of Reception Studies: Theoretical and Methodological Advances’, About Performance, 10, pp. 241–64. Sauter, W. (2000) The Theatrical Event: Dynamics of Performance and Perception. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. Schechner, R. (1973, 1994) ‘Six Axioms for Environmental Theatre, 1967, ­Revised 1987’, in Schechner, R., Environmental Theatre: An Expanded New Edition. New York: Applause, pp. xix–xlv. Slovic, S. (2012) ‘Editor’s Note’, Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment, 19 (4) (Autumn), pp. 619–21. Smil, V. (2014) Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialisation. Wiley: Chichester. Tickell, C. 2006 ‘Foreword’, in The Revenge of Gaia, ed. by Lovelock,  J. ­London: Allen Lane, pp. xi–xiii. Tsai, R.C.-H. (2017) ‘Introduction: Contexts and Paradigms for Ecological ­Engagement’, Neohelicon, 44, pp. 271–81. Tulloch, J. (2005) Shakespeare and Chekhov in Production and Reception: Theatrical Events and their Audiences. Iowa: Iowa University Press. Watson, R. N. (2006) Back to Nature: The Green and the Real in the Late ­Renaissance. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Productions Mentioned Dormandy, S., dir. (2014) Waiting for Godot, Arcola Theatre. Opening night: 12th May. Available at: www.arcolatheatre.com/event/waiting-for-godot/. Frankcom, S. (2015) The Skriker, Royal Exchange Theatre Manchester, Manchester International Festival. Opening night: 4th July. Available at: https:// mif.co.uk/previous-festivals/mif15/the-skriker/. Waters, L. (1994) The Skriker, Royal Court Theatre London. Opening night: 20th January.

1 The Environment on Stage in Production and Reception

An ancient damaged shrieking shape spewed out an unstoppable stream of corrupted, toxic, intermittently comprehensible verbal bile. Like a dirty river throwing out indigestible dead matter, this verbal deluge harboured tainted gobbets of human experience – torture, dismemberment and murder – sugared but undisguised by the rhythms and rhymes of old folk tales. Such effects were intensified in Sarah Frankcom’s (2015) production by Maxine Peake’s delivery in the lead role in Churchill’s (1994) play The Skriker.1 She was by turns wheedling, needling, harrying, mocking, sarcastic and liltingly conversational in a quasi-operatic feat of vocal control. In the immersive version of this experience furnished to those with so-called stalls seats, it was impossible to know whether to try to stare down the Skriker’s unsettlingly close-up glare or look away. Little houses and sunflower gardens hovered improbably in the peripheral vision as the Skriker leapt unnervingly from one long planked banquet table to another, crashing down on gigantic trainer-shod feet right in front of the spectators at the feast. Above, the shadowy outline of many heads betrayed the presence of invisible eyes gazing down from several more circles of hell hovering in the hazy gloom. The only way out from the underworld was a dark subterranean passageway requiring negotiation by torchlight. It was hard to believe we were sitting in the Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre. The Skriker is an environmental polemic but, when this play first came to the stage in the 1994 production, with an astounding (1994 Olivier Best Actress Award-winning) performance by lead actor Kathryn Hunter, 2 Churchill herself thought no one had noticed the ecotheatrical dimension of the production. At first sight this is unsurprising, notwithstanding signposts to environmental wreckage in key speeches such as this: Have you noticed the large number of meteorological phenomena lately? Earthquakes. Volcanoes. Drought. Apocalyptic meteorological phenomena. The increase of sickness. It was always possible to think whatever your problem there’s always nature. […] But it’s not available any more. Sorry. Nobody loves me and the sun’s going to kill me. (Churchill, 1994, p. 48)

The Environment on Stage  15 However, the dominant plot line describes a collision between human and fairy worlds. The former is represented by two girls, Lily, who is expecting a child, and Josie, who is incarcerated in a mental hospital at the play’s opening, and the latter by the Skriker (‘a shapeshifter and death portent, ancient and damaged’, (Churchill, 1994, p. 9)) and her entourage. The spirit world is constantly present but mostly invisible to humans, and humans are born to find themselves in constant danger of terrible fates. The plot runs through matricide (Josie had killed her baby before the play began), horrific provenance trials by fire (when Josie wants Lily to make sure her baby is not a changeling by means of a hot shovel), and abandonment, as Lily leaves her daughter behind having given herself up to the Skriker’s underworld. A century on, and in the ‘same second’, the Skriker’s revenge is complete when Lily’s neglected, damaged ‘child’s child’s child’s’ (p.  56) bellows at her in rage.

Phenomenologically Experienced Ecological Rupture I have chosen this important 2015 production of this play (which is explored in greater depth in Chapter 8) to open this chapter of the book because it continues the work done by the 2014 Arcola Theatre production of Waiting for Godot (referred to as the Arcola Godot hereafter) in the Introduction. The Skriker as performed in 2015, when I was lucky enough to see it, is an exemplar of ecotheatre as defined in this book. It is also an important ecocritical literary work I see as positioned in the so-called ‘fourth wave’ of ecocriticism. This beginning also further underscores my main aim – where possible, to put the emphasis on live performance. The Skriker is far more than a fairy tale, strikingly told. Rather, from the ecocritical, ecological perspectives I took into the auditorium with me, it came across as a phenomenological experience of ecological rupture, ecopoetically performed. The immersive encounter described above magnified the small signs of a damaging fissure between humans and nature that are embedded in the Skriker’s language: ‘Now they hate us and hurt hurtle faster and master. They poison me in my rivers of blood poisoning makes my arm swelter’ (p. 9, 5, 12). From my perspective as a spectator, this theatrical event turned out to be a reperformance of the nature/culture divide. The problematic and pervasive rift between human beings and the ecosystem in which they are nevertheless inescapably embedded was symbolically delivered on several levels in this production – through the choreography, the two-part structure in the list of protagonists, the double helix of the verbal/non-verbal, human/ non-human plot, the two-way division in the audience (those of us in the underworld and the rest) and the human voice delivering fractured language.

16  The Environment on Stage Transmission mechanisms for phenomenological effects in the ecologies of the play must (I thought, for some) include unconscious connections to the imaginary world of childhood through nursery rhyme and folk tale. On stage, what really dominated in terms of the production’s visceral emotional effects was the embodiment of catastrophic wreckage in the Skriker herself, and her constantly moving choric entourage of semi-human forms. In this ecotheatrical experience, the vibrancy of the performance delivered by the company of dancers and actors was what mattered most with respect to the overall efficacy of the 2015 production. Other co-creative shapeshifters intervened from the ­periphery – outside the theatre. For some spectators, this might have been their awareness of environmental campaigns in the public domain, as suggested by comments I overheard in the audience. A further leitmotif running through this 1994 play was intergenerational damage caused by environmental degradation. With the benefit of hindsight, this play was a precursor of lines in We Turned on the Light, Churchill’s 2006 operatic climate-change collaboration with eco-composer Orlando Gough: ‘My granddaughter’s granddaughter says to my ghost I hate you I hate you’ (Gough, 2006, p. 26).3 In 2015, such intertextuality magnified the final moments of the play, enhancing its efficacy as ecotheatre. One of the catalysts for a key question in this book – whether there is any evidence to suggest that live theatrical performances can help bring about a shift to a new environment-aware way of life – was my reaction, as a spectator, to several live theatrical events such as the one described above, in the context of a narrative of occlusion in some theatre ecocriticism. Hence Chaudhuri’s frequently cited 1994 article: From the polluted streams of Dr Stockman’s town to Beckett’s ashcans and beyond, a largely negative ecological vision permeates the theater of this century. |Pervasive though it is, the specifically ecological meaning – as opposed to the mere theatrical presence – of this imagery has remained occluded, unremarked […]. (Chaudhuri, 1994, p. 23) This comment suggests that the environment as a living entity (as opposed to a ‘theatrical presence’) on stage is blocked, hidden, or indeed both. However, my experiences as a spectator suggested to me, in contrast, that specifically ecological meanings might quite often be there for anyone minded to see them, and it is unlikely that this was not also the case when Chaudhuri wrote her 1994 article. The Skriker took ten years to write, suggesting a gestation period going back to the early 1980s. As discussed in Chapter 5, Welsh theatre company Brith Gof had delivered two striking ecological productions, also likely to have been in gestation for some years before Chaudhuri’s article. Los Angeles (1990–93) an eco-allegory in which angels visited a toxic planet earth through an

The Environment on Stage  17 opening in the ozone layer, and PAX (1990, 1991a, 1991b) an eco-opera written for site-specific performances in cathedrals, found or fabricated, both premiered in 1990. For Chaudhuri, the environment on stage is scenery, not shapeshifter, yet, in Churchill’s play, written in the same year as Chaudhuri’s arcticle, the reverse seems to apply. I cannot speak for the 1994 production (also further explored in Chapter 8) in the same way as I do above as I was not present, but Chaudhuri’s perception is at odds with my 2015 spectatorial reaction to a memorable performance of Churchill’s play, in which the environment was the shapeshifter, and the shapeshifter was the environment. It must be acknowledged that the 2015 production of The Skriker took place in the context of the lead-in to COP21 (United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC), 2015), and the wave of performances, site-specific productions and installations that took place in the context of the ArtCOP21 festival, discussed in Chapter 4. This contextual influence made it more likely that the 2015 production would overtly articulate the active presence of the environment, and that audiences would notice it. Nevertheless, ­Chaudhuri’s 1994 suggestion that the environment is no more than a superficial theatrical presence in the plays of Beckett is also inconsistent with the pre-COP21 modern-day ecotheatrical experience of Waiting for Godot described at the opening to the Introduction. As I shall argue in the paragraphs below, naturalism is not necessarily ‘disastrous’ (Chaudhuri, 1994, p. 23) for the environment on stage.

Naturalism as Ecotheatre One of the earliest pieces of theatre ecocriticism is not so labelled although it has been widely recognised as such. This is the 1977 article by Raymond Williams entitled ‘Social Environment and Theatrical Environment: The Case of English Naturalism’. This article distinguishes between mere ‘setting’ and the environment defined as a fusion of the physical manmade and natural environments, thus a force that shapes and is shaped by the people within it. So-defined, naturalism consists of the ‘conscious presentation of human character and action within a natural and social environment’ (pp. 204–5). In its time, naturalism has been described as a reaction against the ‘rearrangement and systematic amputation of the truth’ (Zola, cited in Bentley 1968, 1990, p. 362) running through the classical and romantic movements. Some of the ideas running through naturalism as discussed by Emile Zola – such as the insistence on accuracy in costume, set and acting – could imply the opposite of ecotheatre on the basis of potential resource requirements. However, Zola sets ‘metaphysical man, the abstraction who had to be satisfied with his three walls in tragedy’ against ‘physiological man […] asking more and more compellingly to be determined by his setting, by the environment that produced him’ (Zola, pp. 369–70).

18  The Environment on Stage Following a similar train of thought, August Strindberg contrasts realism (‘a tiny art which cannot see the wood for the trees’) and ‘true naturalism, which seeks out those points in life in which great conflicts occur, which rejoices in seeing what cannot be seen every day’ (Strindberg, 1889, cited in Williams, 1977, p. 217), and, in his naturalistic tragedy, Miss Julie, strove to be neither ‘one-sidedly physiological nor one-sidedly psychological’ (Strindberg, 1913, 1992b, p. xi). The emphasis on physiological man immediately connects to nature, reaching across the nature/ culture divide. Thus, Williams frames ‘high naturalism’ in a manner that is consistent with the ideas of interconnectivity that often run through ecocriticism as discussed in the Introduction, whether on the page or on the stage: [T]he lives of the characters have soaked into their environment [and] the environment has soaked into the lives. The relations between men and things are at a deep level interactive, because what is there physically, as a space or means for living, is a whole shaped and shaping social history. (Williams, 1977, p. 217) Ecoawareness, defined as an acknowledgement of the unavoidably close dependency between humans and the physical environment, and the physical and social ‘limits and pressures’ (Williams, pp. 205, 218) this produces, was thus in the wings before the word ecocriticism was invented. Protagonists subjected to such ecological constraints and forces were most obviously in evidence on the stage in the works of Strindberg, Ibsen and Chekhov, notwithstanding differences in approach. As an example, Kirsten Shepherd-Barr (2015, p. 83), in her seminal book on the subject of theatre and evolution, describes Ibsen as ‘stag[ing] nature not only as backdrop but also as agent’ and nature as ‘completely integral to the themes of the plays, such as rebirth, adaptation, and the destruction of self’. Marvin Carlson identifies later works as standing in a similar tradition, such as Sam Shepard’s late 1970s and early 1980s works: Curse of the Starving Class, Buried Child, True West and Fool for Love. Here, entanglements of language and landscape can be seen as another perspective on the two-way ‘soaking’ between human lives and the environment described above, even though this is not always recognised: The parched farmland outdoors in Starving Class, the cornfield in Buried Child, the prairie in True West, and the desert in Fool for Love, like the attic in Ibsen’s Wild Duck or Chekhov’s Cherry ­Orchard […] remain solidly anchored within the objective world of realism and naturalism. (Carlson, 2002, p. 149)

The Environment on Stage  19 An alternative reading to the dichotomy Carlson describes is that human beings as depicted here have separated themselves from each other within families fractured by violent power-seeking behaviour. (See also the Chapter 5 discussion of a strong association between terrible things people do to each other alongside their tendency to wreck the environment in the work of Brith Gof.) Shepard’s protagonists have also broken away from the natural world because of the similarly exploitative, combative relationship with the land they live on – or, as Garner Jr. described the environment in Shepard’s plays, ‘living space reduced to an alien heap of things’ (Garner Jr., 1994, p. 97). However, a true breaking away is impossible, for ecologies and biology continue to drive the systems their behaviour has distorted; thus, in these plays to break away is to self-­ destruct. (See also the connection made by T.J. May (2005, p. 92) between degraded soil and Willy Loman’s failure in Death of a Salesman.) I was lucky enough to attend Scott Elliott’s production of Buried Child in January 2017 at Trafalgar Studios in London, with Ed Harris as Dodge and Amy Madigan as Halie. The naturalist scenography featured the sound of pouring rain, water leaks drumming loudly into tin receptacles and a pile of corn husks covering a dying man like a shroud. Yet, meaning in such materials surely goes well beyond literal interpretations, in the context of Shepard’s (1997) plot. The idea that a field, barren since the 1935 American Dustbowl, should suddenly and simultaneously deliver up ‘some kinda fancy hybrid’ sweetcorn and the bones of a child (also a hybrid son/brother as the product of incest) murdered by his grandfather/stepfather in response to the return home of the child’s father/brother is more supernatural than naturalist. If the nature/culture divide is dropped, and social and environmental systems are recognised as a single system, the entanglement of the self-destructive family and fertile soil reduced to dust by their farming practices could be read as the self-derailment of a societal runaway warming system: nothing less than the American Dream taken to unsustainable extremes. In this unlikely setting – spectators tightly packed in the horribly uncomfortable Trafalgar Studio seats watching the action play out on a naturalist set behind a traditional fourth wall – ecological meanings could not be more present. Whether or not the environmental message is regarded as a ‘stage invasion’ (defined as an idea not intendedly articulated by the production team nor expected by spectators) will depend on the perspective of those present. In a similar vein, read from the perspective of the 21st century, the environment comes across as a hybrid of the manmade and the natural in Williams’ thinking. For the ecocritic, it is possible to react to this in one of two opposing ways. An ecological perspective sees the natural environment as adapted by the creatures living within it as a realistic definition of the environment as a fusion of the human and the non-human, and works from this perspective towards a sustainable balance. The

20  The Environment on Stage opposite perspective might be to see only an environment degraded by human beings. Thus, Chaudhuri (in an argument that could ironically also be interpreted as an instance of the nature/culture divide running through ecocriticism) sees the idea that ‘the lives of the characters have soaked into their environment [and] the environment has soaked into the lives’ as ‘hyperenvironmentalist’: The sort of rupture between character and environment I am after occurs […] within this hyperenvironmentalist moment of naturalism. Because, as Williams makes clear, this hyperenvironmentalism is in the service of a social drama […] it ignores – or even actively obscures – the non-social parts of the environment. (Chaudhuri, 1995, p. 274) As Chaudhuri uses this term, it denotes a ‘fundamental dislocation’ between ‘humankind and nature’. Since Williams himself describes the relationship between human beings and the ‘physical and social environment’ as ‘at a deep level interactive’, it is not clear that the non-social aspects of the environment have been hijacked to social ends. Examples of environments cited by Williams as entwined ‘in the deepest layers of the personality’ are the room and garret in Ibsen’s Wild Duck, the ‘trapped interior’ in Strindberg’s The Father and the orchard in Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard. These loci can be read as hybrids of space shaped by human and non-human forces. The ecological perspective informing this book thus contests the idea that ‘hyperenvironmentalism’ (an active removal of the non-social parts of the environment) drives these plays. After all, as argued in the Introduction, because of the embeddedness of ecologies driven by organic and inorganic matter (humans included), thus the impossibility of taking an outside perspective, it may be impossible to perceive what is happening to nature as represented by these environments. In Wild Duck, for instance, humans and non-humans alike react to life-changing damage by seeking to escape through a quick death (Ibsen, 1980). The play is anthropocentric in the sense that the physiologically damaged entrapped duck tropes psychologically damaged entrapped humans. However, an ecological perspective also recognises that all concerned (humans and non-humans) are subject to natural (physiological thus ultimately trans-species) forces. These drive the behaviour of humans and non-humans; thus, they are more than a simply theatrical presence. The occlusion of the natural, non-social environment may well be an accurate description of the way the plays are produced, or, indeed, of the way in which they are interpreted by production teams and audiences, but the potential for the reverse, an ecocritical interpretation, is always present. The simultaneous presence of several possible interpretations in such plays and productions – conscious ecoconsciousness, unconscious ecoconsciousness or ecoconscious unconsciousness

The Environment on Stage  21 (as Gormley, 2016, p. 49, might have said) – can in itself be seen as an example of behaviours typical of all natural systems, which can have ambiguous, chaotic, unexpected effects on the stage and off it.

Vibrancy in 21st-Century Ecocriticism Notwithstanding a continuing note of pessimism in Chaudhuri’s writings in evidence two decades on from her 1994 plea for the environment on stage (see Chaudhuri, 2015, pp.  103–11), exciting and significant developments in the field of ecocriticism have been under way in the humanities for some time. It would be more surprising than not if the environment were not also present on stage. While it is not the beginning, the all-important 1994 Western Literature Association (WLA) conference entitled ‘Defining Ecocritical Theory and Practice’ is a good point from which to consider developments for it also contained a defining ecocritical moment for theatre, a point I shall return to shortly. Developments in ecocriticism since that 1994 meeting are conveniently punctuated by two ecocritical readers. The well-known collection of extracts from pre-existing publications put together by editors Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm (1996) in The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology is important as an orientation point in the complex development of the field. It is described in hindsight as having arrived at the end of the ‘first wave of ecocriticism’ by Hiltner, in the introduction to a further landmark in the field, his 2015 Essential Reader in ecocriticism. This volume overlaps with, expands on and continues the work of the earlier compilation. The presence of these two collections is itself a marker of the rapid growth of the field and the need to structure the often eclectic (but interconnected) contributions to it. Hiltner’s reference to ‘two waves’ of ecocriticism in the introduction draws on Buell’s ‘useful [2005] distinction between first- and second-wave ecocritical approaches’, which took the forms of: nature writing, wilderness and texts such as Thoreau’s Walden [on the one hand] and twenty-first century work that is more generally concerned with a variety of landscapes (including places like cities) and timely environmental issues [on the other]. (Buell, 2005; Hiltner, 2015, p. 131) As Buell himself emphasises, the two waves overlap. An important distinguishing feature of later ecocriticism is ‘the argument that ecocriticism’s progress hinges significantly if not crucially on its becoming more science-literate’ (Buell, 2005, p. 18), but it is important to emphasise that this idea emerged gradually (and much earlier) at the hands of hybrid thinkers, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) being a widely recognised and important precedent.

22  The Environment on Stage The chapters in Part Two of Hiltner’s 2015 volume draw out the congruence between ecocriticism and other ideas, such as ‘material feminisms’ and other ‘isms’ (Alaimo and ­Hekman, 2015, pp. 143–53), postcolonialism (Huggan and Tiffin, 2015, pp. ­178–95) and globalisation and its connectedness to everything else (Heise, 2015, pp. 164–77). Perhaps the most important chapters, for this book, are the extracts from the work of Latour (2004, 2015) and Morton (2007, 2015), and literary ecocritics Egan (2006, 2015b) and Watson (2006, 2015). Latour’s actor network theory connects forward to Jane Bennett’s new materialist conception of the environment as an ‘actant’, defined as a source of action ‘that can be either human or non-­human’ that ‘has efficacy’ (Bennett, 2010). Morton took the view that ‘the idea of nature is getting in the way of properly ecological forms of culture, philosophy, politics and art’ (Morton, 2007, p. 1); thus, he marks out the shift in the field from the relatively linear idea of nature writing towards an entire system of disciplines within an ecosystemic mode of thinking about ecocriticism. Put together, these two writers along with others following ecological approaches in the context of theatrical events and performances, such as Marranca (1996), Egan (2015a), Watson (2006) and Kershaw (2007), were amongst those who opened the way for live theatrical events to be considered as ecosystems in a literal sense. Three of Hiltner’s chapters connect to Shakespearean theatre. This chapter and the Introduction of my book both opened with modern productions of relatively modern plays, partly to make the point that it is about the environment here and now. Yet, many ecocritical roads lead to Shakespeare, and, although I set out on this project without the intention of (necessarily) working on Shakespeare, this is a road I also found myself travelling. It seems that Shakespeare has a great deal to tell modern ecocritics about the environment.

It Doesn’t Have to be Shakespeare, But… Hiltner’s collection of readings contains a number of exciting connections made by modern ecocritics connect to early modern ideas. In a particularly striking moment, Egan notes that while the ecological concept of feedback loops would have been a foreign language to the early moderns, Shakespeare’s plays ‘show an abiding interest in […] positiveand negative-feedback loops’ (Egan, 2015a, p. 297). Looking back to the sixteen conference position papers in the 1994 Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE) online compilation ‘Defining Ecocritical Theory and Practice’, they turn out to be of interest in the context of ecotheatre in two ways. In combination, they lay the ground for ideas that can be seen to run through ecocriticism for many years afterwards, as discussed above. Fifteen of the sixteen papers do not talk about the stage. Theatre is conspicuous by its absence in Thomas K. Dean’s (1994) enumeration of ‘cultural products (art works, writings,

The Environment on Stage  23 scientific theories, etc.)’. It is only indirectly present in Mark Schlenz’s (1994) mention of Joseph Meeker’s (1972) The Comedy of Survival. While he did not directly cite the following passage in his paper, it seems important to me to highlight, at this juncture, this decades-old ecotheatrical insight on the subject of cultural entrapment, for it presages the ecosystemic thinking that is now par for the course in ecocriticism, and was already latent in this nascent instance of theatre ecocriticism: Try as we may to use our mental ability to fulfil our comic instincts for survival, we are unlikely to succeed if we remain, like Hamlet, trapped in a cultural tradition which affirms the supremacy of the tragic point of view. (Meeker, 1972, p. 78) Meeker’s perspective on Hamlet is relevant to this discussion of ecotheatre, in that it indirectly describes entrapment in a societal runaway warming system heading ineluctably towards death and destruction. Considering that the early 1990s ecocritics mostly seemed, on the basis of the small sample of papers at this particular conference, not to talk about theatre other than in passing, a striking moment appeared with Ralph W. Black’s (1994) paper entitled ‘What We Talk About When We Talk About Ecocriticism’. It opens: ‘Not long ago I saw King Lear again’. This brief but insightful article (which I return to at the opening of Chapter 3) gives an individual spectator’s ecocritical perspective on a modern production of a Shakespearian classic. It thus implicitly positions ecotheatre in the context of production and reception, and theatrical ecocriticism as focusing on performance, rather than primarily written text. Black’s article was not immediately followed by a flood of ecoreviewing in the form of ecocritical reactions to theatrical performances, although Chaudhuri’s oft-cited 1994 article in relation to the plays of Beckett and Ibsen is a noteworthy observation in respect of failed connections between page and stage. However, in an important development, one of the early 1990s titles to link theatrical productions and the material environment, Ecologies of Theatre by Marranca (1996) explores the idea of ecological systems within the arts from a number of perspectives. She discusses Gertrude Stein’s description of a play as a ‘landscape’ (p. 7), describes John Cage as ‘document[ing] the sounds of the world, bringing human, animal, vegetable, mineral, industrial, meteorological and artificial sounds together just as they exist in the environment’ (p.  26) and explores ‘dramaturgy as an ecology’ (p.  34) with reference to the work of Robert Wilson. The ecoperformative experiences described by Marranca (1996) in Ecologies were an exciting and important early development, and called attention to the potential for the environment to be present in several modes in the consciousness of production teams and spectators.

24  The Environment on Stage Gradual as the development of consciously ecological approaches to theatre may have been in the 1990s, it can no longer be so described. In 2014, the spirit of the long-running Ashden Directory (archived in 2014) was captured in aspic in an online collection of interviews, projects and essays edited by Wallace Heim and Eleanor Margolies. This and the 2016 special edition of Green Letters provided further important punctuation marks in the field, in highlighting the proliferation of performance- and theatre-related ecocritical content. In his introduction to Green Letters, guest editor Lavery (2016, p. 231) identifies no fewer than six further edited ecotheatrical collections published in the space of nine years. He lists Heddon and Mackey (2012); Bottoms, Franks and Kramer (2012); Arons and May (2012) and Allen and Preece (2015). Lavery also footnotes two earlier nature-culture-performance books, edited by Szerzynski, Heim and Wateron (2003) and Giannachi and Stewart (2005). It is unlikely that this list has exhausted all possibilities. Returning to Black’s Shakespearean experience, the insights he delivered, as theatre ecocritic, could theoretically have been gained from a reading of the text. As John F. Danby (1961, p.  19) observed a few decades earlier, ‘the words “nature”, “natural”, “unnatural” occur over forty times’, and Robert Pogue Harrison (1992) played with ideas of nature, natural law and the storm scene in King Lear as a ‘cosmic response to […] moral confusion’ in Forest, published in 1992 (pp. 101–2). However, there seems to have been something about this production in recording, in which the part of King Lear was played by theatrical giant Olivier, that triggered ecocritical insights going beyond the mere presence of nature in the text or in the scenery to someone more primed to see them than he might have been on the first viewing. In an unconsciously ecoconscious moment, newly fledged ecocritic Black (1994) could describe Lear as ‘one of the last books [he] would put on an environmental literature reading list’.4 Yet, at the same time, as a second-time (at least) spectator of Laurence Olivier’s King Lear on DVD (King Lear, 1983), he could see the possibility of ‘exploring the relationship between human and natural worlds in the play’. 5 He described the way in which ‘the commodified landscape is sliced up and parceled out to the highest rhetorical bidder’. Black, connecting a pre-1990s production of an early-modern play to a modern-day discourse of exploitation and oppression in a recording of a staged performance of King Lear, provides a neat example of ecotheatre defined as an ecotheatrical experience in which the environment is discernibly at work as an active presence. Whether this happens without the intention of the production team (cf. jugs of water in the Arcola Godot) or by design (cf. the crumbling bricks in the Arcola Godot or the underworld in The Skriker) is irrelevant, in the ecosystemic perspective of this book. Later on, at the opening to Chapter 3, I return to Black’s experience to consider scenographic effects visible in the DVD recording, and this leads in to a more detailed exploration of embedded ecological

The Environment on Stage  25 meanings in productions of the dearth play Coriolanus. In that chapter, theatrical infrastructures and scenography – the ‘stuff’ of theatrical ­productions – can often be seen to determine whether the voice of the environment (actively played by dearth) is heard or not. In the paragraphs below, I now consider material ‘stuff’ of theatrical productions in the context of initiatives often called ‘green theatre’.

Coming Back to Earth – the Stuff of Theatre Operations The term ‘ecotheatre’ could be used in a narrow physical sense to refer to the work of theatres that seek to minimise their real-life environmental footprint by the way they (consciously ecoconsciously) manage the energy, water, materials and transport that facilitate production operations. The term ‘green theatre’ is widely used to capture this definition. I now want to consider where and how concepts such as scenery, scenography, site-specific theatre, environmental theatre and green theatre fit, in this discussion of ecotheatre. Once again, a key moment in theatre ecocriticism, in the form of ‘green theatre’, is found in the early 1990s. Following on from the ‘first international conference on the environment for theatre professionals’ in the early 1990s, Larry K. Fried and T.J. May included the following diagram in their guidebook for theatre practitioners intent on greening their theatre operations (1994, pp. 16–17). Their book draws on the prototypical company conceived by Ernest Callenbach, Fritjof Capra and Sandra Marburg (1990), to produce the concept depicted in Figure 1.1, namely the theatrical metabolic chart. When originally developed, this chart was well ahead of its time in attempting to site all theatrical productions in the broader context, including the environment. Here, theatre is configured as another system, not as a living system but as an industrial input–output model that mimics ecological stocks and flows (cf. Duchin, 1992, pp. 851–5). Resources, drawn from the environment and the community, are put through the theatrical production machinery. This system delivers outputs and waste after the theatrical process has run its course, but also contains an element of circularity where materials and waste are recycled. Since Fried and May wrote their book, interest in ‘greening’ theatre operations has grown significantly. In a good example in the UK, a specialist company, Julie’s Bicycle (2013), advises companies on how to reduce their environmental footprint in physical terms. The increasing ubiquity of such efforts is reflected in the fact that since 2012 the UK’s Arts Council England (ACE) (2018, p. 3) portfolio organisations’ funding agreements include environmental actions and disclosures. Such efforts tend to be framed primarily in terms of tangible resources (natural, human, financial), with less emphasis on intangible inputs, such as culture or aesthetics. In the context of the definition of ecotheatre in this book – as a mode of production and reception in which everything

Source: Your Theatre’s Metabolic Chart, by T.J. May. See Fried and May, p. 16. ­Reprinted with permission.

Figure 1.1  T  he Theatrical Metabolic Chart.

The Environment on Stage  27 is connected to everything else – I want to consider whether a (seeming) separation of aesthetics and operations shapes the environment on stage as scenery or shapeshifter. To explore this point, I return to the field of naturalism, in an example of a play derived from a naturalist play, Patrick Marber’s After Miss Julie (1996, 2003) produced in an overtly ecoaware context, from the perspective of theatre operations. The aim of the Young Vic’s Classics for a New Climate series was to ‘achieve maximum pleasure and insight from the existing repertoire while also thinking about how it could involve less carbon’ (Hemming, 2012). Director Natalie Abrahami, interviewed by David Lan (2012), said that she had suggested After Miss Julie for this inaugural environmental slot because ‘the play’s journey from dusk to dawn provides a neat challenge for an energy-low production style’. The environment thus shaped the choice of play text for this first ecotheatrically positioned production. On the one hand, this comment initially suggested a possible separation between theatre operations and aesthetics. On the other hand, the bread and butter of live theatrical performance is to aim for ‘theatrical peak-­experiences’ (Eversmann, 2004, p. 139) on the basis of a particular configuration of available resources. Even as production planning must separate aesthetics and operations to keep track of the budget, the chemistry of live performance is an inevitable fusion of both. The power of resource limits or their sudden unavailability to produce exciting innovations is sometimes observed directly when a lead player is indisposed and the acting company must adapt. Even as I regret the nature/culture divide that seems to me to be embedded in green theatre operations seemingly conceived without regard to ecological meanings (cf. Chaudhuri, 1994), the fact is that a divide between operations and aesthetics cannot possibly be a clean separation; therefore, putting a carbon budget on theatre operations may turn out to have powerful aesthetic effects. Theatre operations shape aesthetics, in ways intended and (all importantly) not necessarily intended by the production team. The environment can intervene in subtle and sometimes mischievous ways on stage. After Miss Julie focused on low-carbon theatrical operations. At first sight, neither the original Miss Julie nor the derivative After Miss Julie would (in Black’s 1994 words) necessarily be the first choice for a climate change production, notwithstanding the ‘neat challenge’ the play presents. However, appearances can be deceptive: Strindberg’s original plot – young female aristocrat seduces her father’s valet in the course of a midsummer eve celebration and exits at the end razor in hand bent on suicide as the only way out against a contextual backdrop (carried inside many of the spectatorial brains in the auditorium) of climate change and environmental degradation – readily connects to themes embedded in this seemingly anthropocentric story. Life, death, lust, creation, procreation, destruction, self-destruction, chaos, conflagration and entropy are profoundly ecological. Spectators would have arrived at the performance primed to think about energy by the pre-performance advisory to wear layered clothing.6

28  The Environment on Stage Such spectators who also happened to be armed with knowledge of the two versions of the play might more readily see a deep irony in the outof-control explosion in society’s lust for energy in the interval between the two plays. Miss Julie by Johan August Strindberg (1931, 1992a) came to the stage in the course of the fossil fuel-driven British Industrial Revolution. The second version of the play After Miss Julie (Marber), set in 1945 and staged in such a way as to contain energy demand within the production in 2012, straddles the post-war acceleration in fossil fuel-­ driven CO2 emissions as industrial production recovered, and the long rise that followed. From an ecocritical perspective the time shift to 1945 in Marber’s version of the play thus further enriches meaning, especially for spectators potentially already primed to see environmental meanings. The only solid conclusion I could initially come to without having been a spectator (or spoken to other spectators) was that the potential for ecocritical spectatorial readings was present because of potential for theatrical alchemy in the combination of green theatrical operations and the specific modifications made to the play text. The opportunity to talk to Abrahami threw further light on the production.7 She explained that the main aim of the Classics for a New Climate experiment (which was very important to the Young Vic) was to see whether it might be possible to deliver an excellent theatre within the parameters set by the energy-low stagecraft. The intention was not to put an environmental statement openly on stage, because spectators generally do not go to the theatre for didactic experience. Nor can the production team control how spectators react. Nevertheless, the environment was subtly present for anyone minded to see it. This became clear as Abrahami explained an important piece of behind-the-scenes thinking: the shift to 1945 in Marber’s play was thematically important because 1945 was (perforce) a time to make do and mend. Spelling this out further, Abrahami observed: By choosing a play that was set during the scarcity of resources of the Second World War, we were encouraging the audience to make a link with their own time […]. The frugal approach to staging therefore connected, within the theatrical ecosystem, to what was afoot on stage. The largest and most prominent prop – a big solid country-house table – was actually no such thing even though it looked just like one. As explained by Abrahami, this table was made up of reused wooden scaffolding boards which could be taken apart and reshaped to some other purpose. This was in tune with one of the production goals – to leave nothing behind, thereby controlling waste as well as costs. I also asked Abrahami if she thought changes to theatrical operations because of energy- and materials-saving production parameters had

The Environment on Stage  29 knock-on aesthetic or theatrical effects. This question was answered in the affirmative in our conversation: the production only used objects that were vital to the show (such as the table). Abrahami observed that this ‘harnessed the imagination’, suggesting, therefore, that resource frugality had the power to enhance or intensify what was happening on stage. The imagination was also harnessed in other ways, after the event. Abrahami described the infographic walkway set-up to show what had changed to make the show work within energy constraints. Spectators could therefore choose to watch the show without thinking about the environment, or they could in effect choose to reperform the show afterwards, remembering what they had seen, but this time contextualising it against what had happened behind the scenes in the name of energy-low stagecraft. There was therefore considerable scope, in the context of this production, for the on-stage and behind-the-scenes feedback loops to connect. This describes a subtle but unmistakeable fusion of operations and aesthetics, running counter to first impressions of separation between operations and aesthetics. In the meantime, what had happened behind the scenes was important whether spectators were aware of it or not. Perhaps the biggest impact of the decision to work within a carbon budget was what happened to production deadlines, and this is that they had to be much longer than they usually are. As Abrahami explained, on the basis of her experience in this production, without the carbon budget, money can be used to save time. With the carbon budget, taking more time reduces costs and carbon emissions, and the energy and resource culture of the entire production team must also change for as long as the environmental budget is in force. She also observed that the experience altered some of the Young Vic’s production practices as well as making a difference to the way she herself now thinks about theatre production. In other productions, the approach taken to environmentalism is less subtle, illustrating the dangers of didacticism. Another Young Vic production, this time containing an overt ecocritical perspective in the messaging, was David Harrower’s 2013 play Public Enemy, a new version of Ibsen’s well-known play (An Enemy of the People, Ibsen, 2012), directed by Richard Jones. The production broke the fourth wall and (in effect) put the audience onstage with the players, by turning the auditorium into a forum, in the key scene in which the Doctor addresses the crowd. Here, the finger was pointed directly at the audience – unexpectedly cast into the role of protagonists. ‘You are the enemies of truth. The majority. You.’ (p. 58). In his memorable scene, the theatre audience was thrust into a direct role in the production, as the meeting crowd voting on what to do about the pollution in the spa. This could have been a brief, galvanising moment of interactive theatre for spectators, engaging them in an emotional environmental debate, but this is not what happened. On the contrary, it felt to me like an entrapment of the audience (myself

30  The Environment on Stage included) in traditional theatre seating under the accusatory glare of the full-on house lights. We were the guilty party in the dock, with nowhere to run or hide. How effective was this uncomfortable power play? It is possible it was effective, for some. For instance, the impact of this alienating scene may have been to make some feel frustrated or outraged at the accusation of stupidity, causing them to leave the theatre resolving to move for change. Theatre critic Michael Billington (2013) thought not. He thought Jones had turned the audience into passive ‘victims’ of Stockman’s angry diatribe. He wondered what would have happened if someone in the audience had talked back, as he ‘felt like doing’. The potential for dramatic tension to be undone was suggested by the ripple of chuckles I heard in reaction to the answer shouted out by another spectator on a different evening – the evening on which I saw the production: ‘Yes, journalists!’ All eyes moved briefly from Stockman to the speaker in a moment of comic relief, and the actor had to work hard to bring things back on course. Provocation seemed to be intended, yet the production – perhaps as trapped in convention as its spectators – was not ready for unruliness in the audience. The frustrations politely expressed here suggest that Harrower left no room for ecological, ecoaware mindsets potentially already present in spectators to see the point already well made in the original play. An unanswered question raised by initiatives such as Classics for a New Climate or productions such as Public Enemy is whether, notwithstanding their efforts, they are trapped (without intent) in the existing fossil fuel-­ driven energy system. A relative approach to carbon emission reductions, in line with the targeted sixty percent reduction in CO2 emissions from a 1990 baseline by 2025, mooted by the Mayor of London (2008, p. 5), may or may not be sufficient to escape from runaway cultural warming systems driven by fossil fuels. If the idea of reducing CO2 emissions from a baseline with the goal of maintaining the global average temperature change below two degrees, and preferably 1.5 degrees, as agreed during COP21 is indeed feasible, cultural entrapment is not a problem. However, it is unlikely that the fusion of natural and human systems contained within the environment can be controlled with such precision, considering that all ecosystems are ultimately beyond the control of any individual entity. The question is whether a clean break (in the form of net zero greenhouse gas emissions rather than gradual reduction) in some contexts would be more effective. I now return to Dormandy’s production of Beckett’s (1990, 2006) Waiting for Godot, which I attended at the Arcola Theatre in June 2014 in London to explore connections between Arcola’s well-advertised ecoaware approach to theatre operations and meanings in this production of the play. The company is quite clear about its environmental mission from the moment spectators come through the door. In the lobby of the theatre on the day of my visit, a display board described Arcola Energy, a ‘leading specialist in hydrogen and fuel cell technologies’ (undated).

The Environment on Stage  31 On the Arcola Theatre Company’s website (2013), production Guidelines are offered to visiting companies. The company’s approach to carbon emissions is unusual in being absolute (couched in terms of carbon neutrality) rather than relative (e.g. annual emissions reductions versus a baseline). The company’s 2007 feasibility study (Elementenergy, 2007) includes a pathway of steps designed to move incrementally towards net zero carbon emissions. This ambitious, performative approach to clean energy is hard to ignore, for spectators attending an Arcola production. Embedded in the ecocritical spectatorial reaction cited in the Introduction is my awareness of the environment as an ecosystemic presence working through the behaviour of human beings trapped in an utterly degraded environment lacking food, water or shelter. The sense of immersion in the experience was clearly intended by the production team. The dilapidated, abandoned chairs strewn towards the back of the area that had apparently once been a building bore a striking resemblance to those we spectators sat in. Also, present in the tree was an unstated – thus occluded in the sense that it is hidden but nevertheless present – extratheatrical intertextual reference. This was my memory of a specific cataclysmic event – the Fukushima earthquake and tsunami in which a solitary pine tree not swept into the sea along with the rest of the forest and people’s lives and livelihoods became a media icon of the disaster (Demetriou, 2011). Eventually the Fukushima tree succumbed to the alien salty environment its roots were now trapped in and was rebuilt as a national monument (Malm, 2013). Notwithstanding the high profile of the Fukushima tree in the media, it is impossible to say whether other members of the London audience around me, thousands of miles away from Fukushima and three years on from the disaster, also connected this performance to this tree in this specific environmental disaster in the specific context of the Arcola Theatre. Speaking as a spectator, it was an integral part of the ecological theatrical ecosystem that informed my spectatorship of this theatrical event. Others may have brought quite different sensibilities to the event. Thus, to give another example, someone who happens to have experienced famine or chronic hunger directly might be less aware of potential connections to the Fukushima tree because of the blocking effects of a more dominant theme, as Joseph Roach (2002, p. 88) explains: Like the ‘abode of stones’ of which Lucky speaks in his thrice-­ repeated naming of Connemara (Godot, 28–29), rural Ireland is haunted by dead voices. […] [T]hey speak of the consequences of the potato famine, or the Great Hunger, the effects of which endured long after its deadliest years, 1845–51. For Roach the effect of Lucky’s incantation was to set moving theatrical feedback loops connected to Irish history. In another interpretation,

32  The Environment on Stage David Bradby (2001, p. 72) describes French audiences who brought into the theatre with them the ‘images of starvation, sickness and exploitation’ of the recent Nazi occupation. Thus, for all of us, memory was at work in different ways in Godot, reinforcing certain environmental feedback loops embedded in the play and its productions. For my part, I thought it was the physicality of the set, the dust, the tree, the rubble, the acting and the narrative that forged the ecosystem of my reactions to the whole. As a spectator vicariously experiencing post-apocalypse privation, I was mentally reperforming the ecologies of Beckett’s landscape of environmental wreckage. However, the idea of responsibility for ecoaware carbon-neutral operational ecologies lay elsewhere. I did not feel sufficiently connected to them in the moment to observe any embedded ecotheatrical effects they might have had on the aesthetics of the production. A nature/culture divide can thus be seen to run through my response to this production. Based on my ecocritical response to Godot, I cannot be described as a spectator in denial regarding my embeddedness in the environment, but something that might, wrongly or rightly, be interpreted as denial is ‘ecologically systemic’ in my reaction, seen as an integral part of this theatrical event. On the other hand, again, see my experience of Kershaw’s Meadow Meanders (Chapter 5), in which the impossibility of blocking out any aspect of a well-constructed ecotheatrical event is demonstrated. The Arcola Waiting for Godot and Young Vic’s After Miss Julie, as described above, are ecoaware with intent on the part of the production team in two respects: Arcola as a theatre company and Classics for a New Climate as a group of theatrical productions perform responsibly from the perspective of their energy profile and consciously ecoconsciously make their spectators aware of the fact. The above-mentioned are but two examples. Other ecotheatrical plays and productions delivered by theatre companies that report ‘green’ theatre practices include Hickson’s 2016 play Oil, directed by Carrie Cracknell at the Almeida Theatre; Mike Bartlett’s 2017 play Albion, directed by Rupert Goold also at the Almeida Theatre and Clare Duffy’s 2018 play Arctic Oil, directed by Gareth Nicholls at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh. The two perspectives described above, namely ecoawareness in theatrical operations on the evidence of CO2 targets and ecological narratives running through the story played out on the stage, can be described as ecological feedback loops in the overall ecosystem of the theatrical event. The question is whether and how they connect, and how this juxtaposition changes the overall chemistry of live theatrical productions. The answer can be expected to vary from one production to the next. I think it likely, for instance, that, for its spectators, the Arcola production of Godot described above worked in a similar way to site-­specific theatre, in which meaning is inseparable from the site in which it is read (cf. Pearson, 2010). As will be seen, several productions explored in later

The Environment on Stage  33 chapters gain ecotheatrical impact from elements of site specificity either intendedly crafted into the production or in the minds of spectators attending the event, even though the said productions are not strictly speaking site-specific because they are not outside purpose-built theatre buildings. Striking examples include several of the productions discussed in Chapter 2, such as Rupert Creed’s 2009 Hull Truck Theatre production of Every Time It Rains, and the 2015 production of The Skriker discussed in Chapter 8. Sometimes the location itself drives this through direct association (Hull in Creed’s play). Sometimes, scenographic effects driven by design (as in the Arcola Godot and the 2015 production of The Skriker) are responsible for the inseparability Pearson describes. In the following paragraphs, I now want to change gear slightly and approach the idea of the ‘stuff’ of theatrical operations through the mode of production known as ‘environmental theatre’. At first sight, environmental theatre is the opposite of green theatre. In the context of the ambiguous, ecosystemic definition of ecotheatre running throughout this book, I believe it is important to recognise that environmental theatre also has the power to be ecotheatrical. On the basis that it does not seek to constrain its resource and energy footprint, it is tempting to describe it as consciously ecounconscious. The Introduction, with reference to ­Morton (2007, p. 141), explains why this cannot be the case. More importantly, however, environmental theatre is unconsciously ecoconscious in the sense that it actively exploits the ecosystemic tendencies of live theatre ecologies. It is no different to any other live theatre in seeking to set moving emotional runaway warming systems in performers and spectators.

Site-Specific Theatre: Everything Is Connected to Everything Else Environmental theatre is not resource-aware in the same way as green (resource-constrained) theatre; yet, it is relevant to the ideas and theories discussed in the Introduction. Indeed, environmental theatre (also known as ‘non-frontal’; Aronson, 2018, loc 241) was described as ecosystemic by Schechner himself in Environmental Theatre (1973, 1994), in an unconsciously ecoconscious moment. In the following comparison, which separates ecological and performance environments (in an interesting instance of the nature/culture divide), commonalities are nevertheless in evidence in the behaviour of both: In a word, environments ecological or theatrical can be imagined not only as spaces but as active players in complex systems of transformation. Neither ecological nor performance environments are passive. They are interactants in events organically taking place through vivified spaces. (p. x)

34  The Environment on Stage Notwithstanding the non-frugal beginnings, in resource terms, of ‘environmental theatre’, the fact that it is a ‘system’ is the key point. As discussed in the Introduction, ecosystems are ambiguous. ‘Environmental’ theatre has the potential to be tremendously ecoeffective (or the opposite) because it has the power to set moving affective runaway warming responses in audiences (at the same time as potentially consuming a lot of energy and materials in an ironic imitation of ecosystemic behaviour going wrong for the human race). ‘Environmental theatre’ encapsulates the question identified in the Introduction. Namely how is it possible to produce ecoeffective runaway theatrical warming systems (defined as an excellent theatre enjoyed by, or provoking strong responses in, its spectators) without getting trapped in environmentally damaging theatrical and other systems? Pearson’s (2010) ‘operational’ definition of site-specific performance, cited below, emerged from the experience of putting together large-scale works such as Gododdin, PAX and Haearn. Thus, it might seem irrelevant to conventional theatre productions of well-known plays in small seated theatre spaces in London. Yet, my reading of Waiting for Godot, set in a former brick factory-turned-theatre in which the fabric of the old walls was a prominent part of the scenography, in an ecotheatrical mode of ‘narrative (continuity), memory (recycling) and [frugality] (conservation)’ (Chaudhuri 1995, p.  83) is not far-removed from Pearson’s definition. Ecotheatre is not (necessarily) a form of site-specific theatre, but the characteristics of site-specific theatre seen from the perspective of a leading practitioner suggest that site-specific theatre could readily become ecotheatrical. On the basis that site-specific theatrical productions are shaped for and within environments originally shaped for other purposes, like the brewery and the car factory mentioned in Chapter 5, they are inescapably ecological: They make manifest, confound or criticise location, history, function, architecture, micro-climate. They [interpret] the found and the fabricated. They are inseparable from their sites, the only context in which they are ‘readable’. (Pearson, 2010, p. 4, citing Pearson and McLucas, Undated) The large-scale project PAX (Brith Gof, 1990, 1991a and b, discussed in detail in Chapter 5) was ecotheatrical in the sense that it intentionally contained an environmental message and set out to generate emotional connections between spectators and the degraded environment. Notwithstanding the point that Brith Gof’s mode of production may not always have espoused resource frugality, Bennett’s ‘vibrant matter’ could not have been more visible, as I will explain later in the book. The power of site-specific theatre (or theatre with many of its

The Environment on Stage  35 characteristics) to put the environment as a living entity centre stage without necessarily being trapped in cultural systems that also destroy planetary ecosystems is further discussed in Chapter 4 in the context of stage invasions and in Chapter 5 in the context of site-specific theatre itself. The potential, as Pearson describes it, for production companies to be ‘proactive in espousing the recycling of materials and moves towards carbon-neutrality’ (Pearson, 2010, p. 102) might even be seen as the opposite of ecotheatre as discussed in this book, if the effect of separating out and measuring such impacts is to disconnect them from emotions and meanings generated by the overall theatrical event. On the other hand, my vicarious spectatorial experience of After Miss Julie illustrates the power of theatrical ecosystems to forge connections that can override the risks inherent in instrumentalism. Indeed, the power of live theatre to connect everything to everything else through its ‘immanent capacity for affecting bodies, individually and collectively’ (Lavery, 2016, p. 230, 2018) points the way to a resolution of this ecotheatrical quandary. Interconnectivity characterises many of the ecospectatorial experiences described in productions encountered in later chapters. These include new writing sparked by floods in Hull (Chapter 2); dearth-aware productions of Coriolanus in Chapter 3; ecotheatrical climate change productions discussed in Chapter 4 including Stan’s Cafe’s (2006) Home of the Wriggler and selected ArtCOP21 (2015) productions, performances and installations; Brith Gof’s eco-opera PAX (1990 and 1991) discussed in Chapter 5, alongside Kershaw’s (2016, p.  272) meandering ‘performances that recycle the vital materiality of earthly renewal’; the frugal theatrical tours and powerful ecotheatrical message in the work of the theatre company Paines Plough in Chapter 6; The HandleBards’ bicycle-­driven theatrical performances of Shakespearean plays (­Chapter 7) and Churchill’s The Skriker (1994 and 2015, Chapter 8).

Notes 1 Choreography – Imogen Knight; design – Lizzie Clachan; music – Nico Muhly and Antony (Antony and the Johnsons); illusions – Chris Fisher. 2 Director – Les Waters; choreography – Ian Spink; design – Annie Smart; music – Judith Weir. 3 Music is barely touched upon in (and is beyond the scope of) this book. Gough has written music for several eco-site-specific productions. We Turned on the Light was written for and sung by a ‘rabble of amateur singers’ in two 2006 performances at a day at the London Proms. www.­orlandogough.com/ choral-site-specific. 4 By the early decades of the 21st century, not only was it no longer new or unusual to discuss King Lear as ecotheatre, but Lynne Bruckner (2011, 2016), writing about ‘Teaching Shakespeare in the Ecotone’ named this play alongside several others as ‘standard terrain’ for ecocritical readings from about 2006 onwards: As You Like It, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The

36  The Environment on Stage Tempest, The Taming of the Shrew, King Lear, Richard II, Macbeth, Titus Andronicus and The Winter’s Tale (p. 223). 5 Black, ‘What We Talk About When We Talk About Ecocriticism’. Olivier took on the role of Lear twice: in the Old Vic production of 1946–7, and in the 1983 Granada Television production, directed by Michael Elliott and produced by Laurence Olivier. I have assumed Black is referring to the film. 6 Not using air-handling systems in theatre buildings saves energy and money, but spectators might want to add/remove layers as the temperature fluctuates. For this production, in the Maria Studio, ‘the theatre manager relaxed the building management system temperature control to between 18–24 degrees and made use of natural ventilation. By doing this they saved thirty-­ four percent on their energy consumption during the run. […]. The Young Vic has now made these settings standard for the Maria Studio.’ See: Julie’s Bicycle, Sustainable Production Guide 2013, p. 19. 7 The contents of the discussion are used in this book with Abrahami’s kind permission.

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The Environment on Stage  37 Bradby, D. (2001) Beckett: Waiting for Godot. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bruckner, L. (2011, 2016) ‘Teaching Shakespeare in the Ecotone’, in Ecocritical Shakespeare, ed. by Bruckner, L. and Brayton, D. London: Routledge, pp. 218–33. Buell, L. (2005) The Future of Environmental Criticism: Environmental Crisis and Literary Imagination. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Callenbach, E., Capra F. and Marburg, S. (1990) The Elmwood Guide to Eco-Auditing and Ecologically Conscious Management. Berkeley, CA: The Elmwood Institute. Carlson, M. (2002) ‘After Stein: Travelling the American Theatrical “Langscape”’, in Land/Scape /Theater, ed. by Fuchs, E. and Chaudhuri, U. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, pp. 145–58. Carson, R. (1962) Silent Spring. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett. Chaudhuri, U. (2015) ‘A “Turn to the Species”: Una Chaudhuri Reflects on Some of the Ethical Challenges and Possibilities That Are Emerging from a Decade of Ecological Practice and Performance Scholarship’, interviewed by Bronwen Preece and Jess Allen. Performing Ethos, 4 (2), pp. 103–111. Chaudhuri, U. (1995) Staging Place: The Geography of Modern Drama. Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press. Chaudhuri, U. (1994) ‘“There Must be a Lot of Fish in that Lake”: Toward an Ecological Theater’, Theater, 25 (1), pp. 23–31. Churchill, C. (1994) The Skriker. London: Nick Hern Books, repr. 2015. Danby, J.F. (1961) Shakespeare’s Doctrine of Nature: A Study of King Lear. London: Faber & Faber. Dean, T.K. (1994) ‘What Is Ecocriticism?’ position paper, Western Literature Association, 6th October, Salt Lake City, UT: ASLE. Available at: www.asle. org/wp-content/uploads/ASLE_Primer_DefiningEcocrit.pdf. Demetriou, D. (2011) ‘Sole Surviving Pine Tree and Symbol of Japan’s Post-­ Tsunami Hope is Dying’, Telegraph, 5th December. Available at: www. telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/8935112/Sole-surviving-pinetree-and-symbol-of-Japans-post-tsunami-hope-is-dying.html. Duchin, F. (1992) ‘Industrial Input-Output Analysis: Implications for Industrial Ecology’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), 89 (3) (1st February), pp.  851–5. doi:10.1073/ pnas.89.3.851. Duffy, C. (2018) Arctic Oil. London: Oberon Books. Egan, G. (2015a) ‘Ecopolitics/Ecocriticism’, in Ecocriticism: The Essential Reader, ed. by Hiltner, K. London: Routledge, pp. 279–300. Egan, G. (2015b) Shakespeare and Ecocritical Theory. London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare. Egan, G. (2006) Green Shakespeare: from Ecopolitics to Ecocriticism. New York: Routledge. Elementenergy (2007) Arcola Theatre. Energy Feasibility Study. Final Report, 12th April. Electronic Report: Arcola Theatre. No longer available at: www.­ arcolatheatre.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Element_Study_Report_ April07.pdf. Eversmann, P. (2004) ‘The Experience of the Theatrical Event’, in Theatrical Events: Borders, Dynamics, Frames, ed. by Cremona, V., Eversmann, P., Van Maanen, H., Sauter, W. and Tulloch, J. Amsterdam: Rodopi, pp. 139–74.

38  The Environment on Stage Fried, L. and May, T.J. (1994) Greening Up Our Houses: A Guide to a More Ecologically Sound Theatre. New York: Drama Book Publishers. Garner Jr., S.B. (1994) Bodied Spaces: Phenomenology and Performance in Contemporary Drama. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Giannachi, G. and Stewart, N. (eds.) (2005). Exploring Nature: Explorations in Ecology and the Arts. Bern: Peter Lang. Glotfelty, C. and Fromm, H. (eds.) (1996) The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology. Athens: University of Georgia Press. Gormley, A. (2016) Field for the British Isles. London: Hayward Publishing. Gough, O. (2006) We Turned on the Light. Vocal Score. London: Boosey & Hawkes. Gough, O. (Undated) Choral/Site-Specific Works. Available at: www.­ orlandogough.com/choral-site-specific. Harrison, R.P. (1992) Forests: The Shadow of Civilization. Chicago, IL: ­Chicago University Press. Harrower, D. (2013) Public Enemy. London: Faber & Faber Limited. Heddon, D. and Mackey, S. (eds.) (2012) ‘Themed Edition: Environmentalism’, Research in Drama and Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 17 (2), pp. 163–316. Heim, W. and Margolies, E. (2014) Landing Stages: Selections from the Ashden Directory of Environment and Performance, 2000–2014. London: Crinkle Crankle Press. Available at: www.ashdendirectory.org.uk/intro.asp. Heise, U.K. (2015) ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Ecocriticism’, in Ecocriticism: the Essential Reader, ed. by Hiltner, K. London: Routledge, pp. 164–77. Hemming, S. (2012) ‘After Miss Julie, Young Vic, London, Review’, Financial Times, 25th March. Available at: www.ft.com/content/7c27d436-74d1-11e1ab8b-00144feab49a. Requires FT subscription password. Hickson, E. (2016) Oil. London: Nick Hern Books. Hiltner, K. (ed.) (2015) Ecocriticism: The Essential Reader. Abingdon: Routledge. Huggan, G. and Tiffin, H. (2015) ‘“Introduction” to Postcolonial Ecocriticism: Literature, Animals, Environment’, in Ecocriticism: The Essential Reader, ed. by Hiltner, K. London: Routledge, pp. 178–95. Ibsen, H. (2012) An Enemy of the People. First Start Publishing eBook Edition. Ibsen, H. (1980) ‘The Wild Duck’, in Ibsen Plays 1: Ghosts, The Wild Duck, The Master Builder, translated & Introduced by Meyer, M. London: Methuen Drama, loc 1967–4014. Julie’s Bicycle (2013) Sustainable Production Guide 2013. Available at: www. juliesbicycle.com/resource-production-guide-2013. Kershaw, B. (2016) ‘Projecting Climate Scenarios, Landscaping Nature, and Knowing Performance: On Becoming Performed by Ecology’, Green Letters, Studies in Ecocriticism, 20 (3), pp. 270–89. Kershaw, B. (2007) Theatre Ecology: Environments and Performance Events. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lan, D. (2012) ‘Classics for a New Climate: How to Produce a Low Carbon-­ Footprint Play’, Guardian, 28th March. Available at: www.theguardian.com/ stage/theatreblog/2012/mar/28/young-vic-low-carbon-footprint-play. Latour, B. (2015) ‘What Is to Be Done? Political Ecology!’, in Ecocriticism: the Essential Reader, ed. by Hiltner, K. London: Routledge, pp. 232–6.

The Environment on Stage  39 Latour, B. (2004) Politics without Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into ­Democracy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lavery, C. (ed.) (2018) Performance and Ecology: What Can Theatre Do? Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 229–36. Repr. Lavery (2016). Lavery, C. (ed.) (2016) ‘Performance and Ecology: What Can Theatre Do?’ Green Letters, Studies in Ecocriticism, 20 (3), pp. 229–36. Malm, S. (2013) ‘The Miracle Pine: Tree That Survived 2011 Japanese Tsunami Before Dying Six Months Ago Is Rebuilt as a Monument to 19,000 Victims of the Disaster’, Mail Online, 11th March. Available at: www.dailymail. co.uk/news/article-2291799/The-miracle-pine-Tree-survived-2011-Japanese-­ tsunami-dying-months-ago-rebuilt-monument-19-000-victims-disaster.html. Marber, P. (1996, 2003) After Miss Julie. London: Methuen Drama. Marranca, B. (1996) Ecologies of Theatre. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins ­University Press. May, T.J. (2005) ‘Greening the Theatre: Taking Ecocriticism from Page to Stage’, Interdisciplinary Literary Studies: A Journal of Criticism and Theory, 7 (1), pp. 84–103. Mayor of London (2008) Green Theatre: Taking Action on Climate Change. Greater London Authority, September. Meeker, J.W. (1972) ‘Chapter Four. Hamlet and the Animals’, in Meeker, J.W., The Comedy of Survival: Studies in Literary Ecology. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, pp. 60–78. Morton, T. (2015) ‘Imagining Ecology without Nature’, in Ecocriticism: the Essential Reader, ed. by Hiltner, K. London: Routledge, pp. 237–58. Morton, T. (2013) Hyperobjects. Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Morton, T. (2007) Ecology without Nature: Rethinking Environmental ­Aesthetics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Pearson, M. (2010) Site-Specific Performance. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Pearson, M. and McLucas, C. (Undated) ‘The Host and the Ghost: Brith Gof’s Large Scale Site-specific Works’, Company Document. Brith Gof ­A rchive, NLW. Roach, J. (2002) ‘“All the Dead Voices”: The Landscape of Famine in Waiting for Godot’, in Land/Scape/Theater, ed. by Fuchs, E. and Chaudhuri, U. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, pp. 84–93. Schechner, R. (1973, 1994) ‘Six Axioms for Environmental Theatre, 1967, ­Revised 1987’, in Schechner, R., Environmental Theatre: An Expanded New Edition. New York: Applause, pp. xix–xlv. Schlenz, M. (1994) ‘Survival Stories: Towards an Ecology of Literary Criticism’, position paper, Western Literature Association, 6th October, Salt Lake City, UT. Electronic Publication: ASLE. Shepard, S. (1997) ‘Buried Child’, in Sam Shephard: Plays Two. Introd. by ­Gilman, R. London: Faber & Faber, pp. 61–132. Shepherd-Barr, K. (2015) Theatre and Evolution from Ibsen to Beckett. New York: Columbia University Press. Strindberg, J.A. (1913, 1992a) Miss Julie, trans. by Bjorkman, E. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons; Dover Publications. ­ jorkman, Strindberg, J.A. (1913, 1992b) ‘Author’s Preface’, in Miss Julie, trans. by B E. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons; Dover Publications, pp. ­ix–xx.

40  The Environment on Stage Szerzynski, B., Heim, W. and Wateron, C. (eds.) (2003) Nature Performed: ­Environment, Culture and Performance. Oxford: Blackwell. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (­U NFCCC) (2015) Conference of the Parties (COP) 21. Available at: https://unfccc.int/ process-and-meetings/conferences/past-conferences/paris-climate-changeconference-november-2015/cop-21. Watson, R.N. (2015) ‘Ecology, Epistemology and Empiricism’, in Ecocriticism: the Essential Reader, ed. by Hiltner, K. London: Routledge, pp. 322–34. Watson, R.N. (2006) Back to Nature: The Green and the Real in the Late ­Renaissance. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Western Literature Association (1994) Salt Lake City, UT. ASLE. Available at: www.asle.org/wp-content/uploads/ASLE_Primer_DefiningEcocrit.pdf. Williams, R. (1977) ‘Social Environment and Theatrical Environment: The Case of English Naturalism’, in English Drama: Forms and Development, ed. by Axton, M. and Williams, R. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 203–223. Zola, E. (1968, 1990) ‘From Naturalism in the Theatre’, in The Theory of the Modern Stage, ed. by Bentley, E. London: Penguin Books, pp. 351–372.

Productions and Performances Mentioned Abrahami, N., dir. (2012) After Miss Julie, Young Vic, London. Opening night: 15th March. ArtCOP21 (2015) A Global Festival of Cultural Activity on Climate Change. Cape Farewell and COAL, September-December. Available at: www.­ artCOP21.com. Brith Gof (1990–1993) Los Angeles. Premiered in the former Whitbread ­Brewery, Rhymney, in March 1990. Toured internationally. Brith Gof (1991a) PAX, in the Former Ship-Building Factory of Harland and Wolff, for the Tramway Theatre Glasgow (19th–21st September). Brith Gof (1991b) PAX, in Aberystwyth Railway Station, 16th–18th October. Brith Gof (1990) PAX. Premiered in St. David’s Hall Cardiff on September 20th–21st.Cracknell, C., dir. (2016) Oil, Almeida Theatre London. Opening night: 7th October. Elliott, S. (2016) Buried Child, Trafalgar Studios. Opening night: 14 November. Available at: www.buriedchildplay.co.uk. Frankcom, S., dir. (2015) The Skriker, Royal Exchange Theatre Manchester, Manchester International Festival. Opening night: 4th July. Goold, R., dir. (2017) Albion, Almeida Theatre. Opening night: 10th October. Jones, R., dir. (2013) Public Enemy, Young Vic. Opening night: 4th May. King Lear: Tyranny, Terror, Tragedy (1983) directed by Elliott, M., dir., prod. By Olivier, L. UK: Granada Television DVD. Nicholls, G., dir. (2018) Arctic Oil, Traverse Theatre Edinburgh. Opening night: 6th October. Stan’s Cafe (2006, 2009) Home of the Wriggler. Waters, L., dir. (1994) The Skriker, Royal Court Theatre London. Opening night: 20th January.

2 Natural Disasters as Ecotheatrical Shapeshifters

Seated in the reading room of the beautiful National Library of Wales, thinking about the spectacular view of the sea that would greet me as I left later on that day, my imagination was caught by a dark fragment of text I found in the archives of Brith Gof: Amid the debris were twisted steel bars and bold, heavy chains. They lay there waiting to be salvaged like cruel torture instruments of some medieval age, but in fact they were implements of the twentieth century that failed to tame the coal faces beneath the earth. (Walters, 1986, p. 43) On Tuesday 14 October 1913, the earth slipped. An earthquake seemed to hit the tiny town of Senghenydd, to the north of Caerphilly, in Wales. The cause was ‘huge’ series of ‘self-fuelling explosions’ deep underground in the Senghenydd coal mine. It was so powerful that it propelled the miners’ cage-lift up out of the shaft, wedging it into the lifting gear above. In the ‘most lethal and tragic mining disaster in British history’, the explosion tore through the mine, leaving behind fires and noxious fumes. This disaster killed four hundred and thirty-nine of the nine hundred and fifty men and boys who were unfortunate enough to find themselves below ground at the time. Some one thousand people were bereaved (Caerphilly Heritage Website, undated). Three quarters of a century later, time slipped. This was the phrase used by the former Brith Gof’s Margaret Ames when I met her in 2018, over three decades on from Brith Gof’s site-specific reperformance of this real-life event in the Morriston Tabernacle Chapel, Swansea. She vividly remembered the explosion that ripped apart the comforting rhythms of the familiar chapel service in Brith Gof’s Pandaemonium: The True Cost of Coal (1987). Fragments of Walters’ text, cited above, were sung or spoken in the libretto running through the five-act sequence of events (Brith Gof Archive, ‘Devising Notes’, undated). Words and phrases in the company’s notes give a flavour of the narrative arc running through the production: storm scene, surges of women, fears of entombment, a perilous descent into a ‘battlefield’ (people locked

42  Ecotheatrical Shapeshifters in embrace, tableaux) and finally grief and the recovery of bodies. Spectators familiar (as the production team was) with the iconic Welsh novel, Cwmardy by Lewis Jones (1937, 2006), might recall the thunder and lightning curtain-raiser to the imagined explosion that tore through a fictional local community: [The] usual rolling rumbles that chased [the initial crack of thunder] were drowned in an unearthly roar that made the house tremble; […] for a moment the air was full of little flaming bubbles that suddenly spluttered out and left the world dark and still as if all existence had ended. (Jones, pp. 98–9) It was the company’s aim to produce this level of intensity in performance. The production was designed to produce invisible, intangible theatrical effects in its spectators by drawing on a fusion of real and imaginary ideas held in the memory. This ‘play within a play’ (­Pearson, 2018) combined fact and fiction in the context of a deeply sensitive ­subject – coal, coalmines, the close-knit communities surrounding them and loss of life and livelihood. What triggered the real-life explosion – explored by the company as the production developed – will never be known for sure. The company’s devising notes suggest that their research uncovered a range of possibilities: ‘A batch of defective lamp glasses’; ‘It was the electric bell’; ‘They were using a metal file to cross the signalling wires’ and ‘There were sparks. There were sparks all the time’. Whatever the cause, once the initial spark was ignited, conditions in the pit were ripe for a runaway death spiral: methane gas everywhere, coal dust in the air, more coal dust underfoot. In less time than it takes to read this description, the first shock wave would have unsettled the thick layer of coal dust on the ground, driving more fuel into the fire, in a monstrous chain reaction of explosions, an intense runaway warming system in microcosm. For those who experienced the real-life explosion at first hand this was a human disaster on a huge scale. From the ecocritical perspective of this book, the disaster was produced by an entire system of happenings: the human search for food, shelter and warmth through work, combined with chemistry and physics, earth, wind and fire imprisoned in a confined space. When we speak of human error in the context of disasters, we often have in mind the small minutiae of operations, such as the lamp glasses or the electric bell. The real error is a lack of awareness of human embeddedness in the environment, and the potential for natural forces to bite back. This chapter about the ‘environmental shapeshifter’ in the form of natural disasters opens with this Brith Gof production because this ­community-specific piece of theatre is a response, many years later, to a horrific tragedy in which humans were both shapeshifting and shapeshifted by their environment. Brith Gof’s Pandaemonium was not devised

Ecotheatrical Shapeshifters  43 as ‘ecotheatre’, and yet, viewed from the perspective of the early 21st century and reimagined thanks to the rich archive held in the National Library Wales in Aberystwyth, it is open to such interpretations. It was a human tragedy thus some readers may be thinking that it does not belong in a book chapter about natural disasters. Yet, as a product of the embeddedness of humans in the environment and the environment in humans, it is also a natural disaster, once the nature/culture divide is removed from the picture and we recognise humans as one among many organisms inhabiting planet earth. So-called natural disasters – earthquakes, storms, cyclones, tornadoes, floods, drought, fires, epidemics – tend to be noticed by human beings when they affect human society. So-called human disasters, such as Senghenydd, the Deepwater Horizon disaster or the Fukushima nuclear disaster, also tend to be noticed primarily for the damage wrought on humans. Often, however, attention is called by local communities, global NGOs, scientists or the media to the significant damage to non-human ecosystems and life forms.1 Fire, famine, floods, storms and other apocalyptic events have been so universally feared through the ages that they also appear regularly as powerful metaphors in the arts. As I drafted this chapter of the book, in the summer and winter of 2018, drought and fire were on the front page of every newspaper, exacerbating fears of future apocalyptic events driven by anthropogenic global warming. On stage (a term I use throughout this book to include site-specific performances), storms frequently demonstrate the power of the environment to put humans in their place, Shakespeare’s King Lear being a particularly well-known example of deflated hubris: ‘Oh, I have ta’en too little care of this.’ (1997, 3.4.32–3). The frequency and scale of ‘natural’ and ‘technological’ disasters as described in the data collated by the International Disaster Database (Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters CRED, Undated) is palpable evidence of the presence of the environment in people’s daily lives. The database is couched in terms of human lives lost, numbers of people ‘affected’, and economic damage done, suggesting an anthropocentric perspective. Yet, even as science connects increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events to human greenhouse gas emissions and fossil fuel energy systems, a UNSDR and CRED report (Wallemacq, Below and McLean, 2018) describes the impact of environmental forces on humans. ‘[C]limate-related and geophysical disasters’, mostly ‘floods, storms, droughts, heatwaves and extreme weather events’ killed and deracinated millions. Humans have not only failed to ‘tame’ the fossil fuels they bring to the surface, they are also provoking untamed thus runaway (as opposed to oscillating) behaviour in planetary ecosystems, in an increasingly spectacular system of self-harm. Natural disasters and their effects are both an output of and an input to the ecosystem of feedback loops inextricably woven through broader social and environmental ecologies. They are reperformed in the ecologies collectively represented in charts and

44  Ecotheatrical Shapeshifters maps of carbon emissions, warming scenarios, water stress and resource consumption, produced by organisations such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the Global Footprint Network. While the proliferation of ecodata collection is encouraging in suggesting a degree of societal ecoawareness, many of the data series continue to run in the wrong direction. The Global Footprint Network documents a seemingly inexorable progression towards a renewable resource ‘environmental credit crunch’ (Donovan and Hudson, 2011; Figure P1). On a more positive note, CRED documents a fall in three out of four in the above-mentioned statistics (number of disasters, deaths and people affected have fallen, and economic damage has risen), relative to the ten-year average. CRED data thus suggest that human systems can become more resilient to ecosystem volatility, but also hints at less resilience in modern economic systems. The rise in the frequency and scale of disasters associated with increased weather volatility is repeatedly predicted to be typical of a warming climate by the research of scientists and scientific bodies, such as the IPCC. This is one of the main messages in an important ecopolitical report, IPCC Special Report No. 15 (2018), commissioned by the 21st Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (2015), in Paris, known as COP21. Human energy systems have double-edged effects in that some of them lead directly to significant natural disasters (such as Senghenydd, Deepwater and the Fukushima), and, in another feedback loop, fossil fuel-driven systems are implicated in climate change, also potentially a producer and magnifier of extreme environmental events. Thus, neither the Senghenydd coal pit explosion nor the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, as individual events, can be described as directly causative of climate change, but they and other disasters like them are a forceful reminder of the damage – past, present and future – associated with human energy systems that developed from about the mid-19th century onward. In this way, natural disasters inevitably cut through the nature/ culture divide. At such moments, human beings are visibly, palpably and viscerally shapeshifted by their environment, thus likely to be emotionally open to the fact that they are also changing their environment in dangerous ways. Theatrical events based on natural disasters have the potential to be ecotheatrically very powerful, by setting in motion new emotional feedback loops, or magnifying old ones. The purpose of this chapter is to seek out and think about natural disasters on stage, and consider the power of live performance to forge emotional connections. This is a potentially infinite task, so I began by identifying prominent disasters whose broader influences might be reasonably readily identified, and, in that context, consider several possibilities, such as new writing or pre-existing plays performed in response to such events, and longer term ecotheatrical reactions to the events and

Ecotheatrical Shapeshifters  45 their context. A closer look at the CRED ecodata I explored as I wrote my PhD thesis found that a handful of years stand out, in terms of damage done: 1995, 1999, 2004, 2005, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013, years corresponding to the Kobe Earthquake, the Boxing Day Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, the Haiti Earthquake and Deepwater, the Sichuan Earthquake and the Fukushima Earthquake and Tsunami. Sometimes, as will be seen below, theatre is chosen by those affected by disasters as a way of responding to them – theatrically playing with the event and the aftermath may well be healing for those involved. These facts suggest that the transatlantic observations regarding the occlusion of the environment on stage made between 1994 and 2012 by writers such as Chaudhuri (1995, p. 55), Downing Cless (2010, loc 118) and Arons and May (2012, p. 1) may not always have represented what was happening in the complex ecosystem of production and reception. Recently prominent examples of environmental disasters – the ­Boxing Day 2004 tsunami, the August 2005 tropical cyclone known as ­Hurricane Katrina, the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the March 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster – are discussed in the context of theatrical performances in this chapter. Each of these events was woven through with a strong social narrative that would be likely to forge strong emotional connections in real life. Hence, the communities around Fukushima worked impressively together to endure post-quake conditions yet, ironically, the high-water mark of previous tsunamis had been above the top of the protective wall (Acton and Hibbs, 2012). In an ominous paradigm for prevarication in the context of climate change mitigation and adaptation, these authors discuss evidence to suggest that this disaster might have been averted by a more effective system of risk mitigation in the form of higher walls. Hurricane Katrina meanwhile demonstrated the propensity of natural disasters to affect the less economically well off to a disproportionate extent. Those who could afford to do so lived on higher ground or fled before the event (Magnus, 2011, pp. 286–7). It might be less surprising to find Chaudhuri, writing in 1994 as an accelerating trend in the frequency of major disasters seemed (with hindsight) to be taking hold, refer to an occlusion of ecological meanings in productions of plays containing relatively obvious ecological themes such as Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People and Samuel Beckett’s Endgame. Nevertheless, post-tsunami and cyclone, oil spill and nuclear melt-down, narratives of ecological oblivion in the field of ecocriticism such as the following may not always hold true: [At] the beginning of the second decade of the twenty-first century, ecology and environment are not only underrepresented and underthematized on the Western stage, but also undertheorized in theater and performance scholarship. (Arons and May, 2010, p. 1)

46  Ecotheatrical Shapeshifters The next few paragraphs of this chapter identify theatrical reactions to extreme events as the most readily identifiable evidence that the environment is not always occluded as an active presence on stage. On the contrary, in the context of natural disasters, the environment is a source of action that ‘has efficacy’, to use the phraseology of new materialist Jane Bennett (2010). The next few paragraphs suggest that the abovenamed events and the human behaviour observable in their context have an influence on theatre – shaping what is played where, and how the relationship between human beings and the natural environment is perceived, received and presented in theatrical productions connected, intentionally or otherwise, to such events. I note that this section is likely to under-represent theatrical responses to such catastrophes, because direct connections to specific events may not always be overtly stated. On the contrary, as demonstrated by the earlier discussion of Dormandy’s (2014) Arcola Godot they are likely to be an open secret, known to all involved in the proceedings, but perhaps less apparent to an outsider’s gaze. Moreover, major natural disasters may have more than a short-run effect, as illustrated by the opening of this chapter. Brith Gof, drawing on the Senghenydd coal pit explosion, made an overt connection to a specific disaster and, no doubt, also drew out other long-running storylines of other similar disasters held in the memory of Welsh communities and embedded in Welsh culture. In other contexts, evidence of a connection between certain natural disasters and specific theatrical events (such as the connection I made as a spectator between Waiting for Godot and the Fukushima tree in Chapter 1) may be hard to identify when time lags are at work. Yet, time lags and cumulative memories are likely to have powerful effects in the context of theatrical performances because of the emotional reactions they set moving in individual spectators and communities of people who experienced the same or similar catastrophic events. Campaigning groups sometimes seek to exploit such mechanisms. Chapter 4 explores the activity of Reclaim Shakespeare (now known as ‘BP or Not BP’), an ecotheatrical campaigning theatre troupe still energetically seeking, seven years on from their 2012 premier performance as this book goes into production, to interrupt the flow of money between the arts and oil in the aftermath of and as a reaction to the Deepwater Horizon disaster. In terms of the definitions in the Introduction, the campaigners are shapeshifters, using live theatrical performance to produce a shift in the broader socio-environmental ecosystem. Plays performed in an overt response to natural disasters might have similar effects. Waiting for Godot stands out as a play that regularly appears as a response to extreme natural events, suggesting that I am unlikely to have been the only audience member who connected this play to environmental catastrophe in the Arcola production described in the Introduction. Its frequent post-disaster appearance suggests, indeed, that Godot may

Ecotheatrical Shapeshifters  47 be a means of externalising deep feelings in a safe space. Extreme events spawned a number of productions of the play as theatrical responses. Classical Theatre of Harlem staged a 2006 production on a partially submerged set, trapping Didi and Gogo on a rooftop, thus recalling post-Katrina roof-top strandings widely seen in the global media as the disaster unfolded (Genzlinger, 2006). In 2007, Director Paul Chan embedded Godot ‘in the very fabric of the [post-Katrina] fabric of New Orleans’ (Chan, 2007). In 2011, the Loyola University New Orleans Department of Theatre and Dance set their production of Godot in the post-Deepwater Louisiana Coastal wetlands (Hope, 2011). Returning to Fukushima, the Kamome Machine Theatre Group filmed a five minute production of “Waiting for Godot”@Fukushima (in Japanese with English subtitles). It was staged near a Fukushima cross-road, against the back-drop of the wrecked nuclear power station and within reach of its radioactive emissions (Maxwell, 2011). Detailed evidence of the responses of spectators involved in these productions is unavailable to me. However, I encountered two striking fragments in my searches. First, in his New York Times review of Chan’s Godot, which was staged in in the wards most affected by the floods, Holland Cotter (2007) cited the play text: ‘Let us not waste our time in idle discourse! Let’s do something while we have the chance!’ Cotter describes new meaning in the play for those experiencing it on location, at a time when emotions would still be running high in the local community (also the audience) directly impacted by environmental extremes. In picking up these words in his review he also hints at politics at work in the audience, in the form of anger about the slow arrival of help and support. Chan’s Godot, as described in this reaction, seems to have set moving desire to ‘do something’. What better definition of the environment as a shapeshifter (in collision with human prevarication) could there be? A spectatorial response to “Waiting for Godot”@Fukushima turned up by my internet searches was a chilling observation on the YouTube website (Ohiohomey, Undated). The commentator identified with the physical danger the actors in this Fukushima Godot put themselves in: ‘I’m sorry the young actor went barefoot and laid down on that surface!’ The recording allows later spectators such as myself to see what the commentator might have been reacting to. The company seemed to me to be performing behind the bollards in place at the junction to prevent traffic from coming into the danger zone, pacing around as they waited for Godot on a section of tarmac tossed into a fractured wave by the earthquake. A soundscape of soft piano music, cicadas and the roar of passing cars and trucks intruded whenever they stopped speaking. They were safe from traffic but not noise pollution, particulate emissions, and, most ominously, not safe from radioactive fallout. Considering the effort taken by the acting company to put themselves on that stretch of road (travel would have been difficult because of damaged infrastructure and

48  Ecotheatrical Shapeshifters post-disaster chaos), it seems clear that the actors took the risk of radioactive exposure without similarly damaging their spectators, with the intention of effectively shocking their potentially far-flung audiences. The theatrical tactic described above, in which the players put themselves in harm’s way, is calculated to produce visceral emotional connections, even though its virtual spectators would be protected by distance. Fukushima is a re-awakening of a long-past horror-story kept alive partly because genetic damage is feared to go on for generations: the horrors of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Such threads of meaning observed from afar, as in the above reaction, can continue to shock for many years. For local people affected by the disaster, there would be an immediate connection to the ‘hibakusha’ – Hiroshima’s children (and, in the Skriker’s words, perhaps children’s children’s children (cf. Churchill, 1994, p. 56)) – l­iving with the slur of genetic damage sustained in the first atomic bombs. Connecting such ideas to an iconic play has the potential to leave such connections in the memory of individual spectators, who might never see Waiting for Godot in the same light again – it would be for ever connected to death, destruction and environmental damage. This play, subsequently performed in a conventional theatre building behind a traditional fourth wall, seen from the perspective of such spectators happening to be in the audience, could fairly be described as ecotheatrical for those spectators. Moving on to a different example, the best-known overt theatrical response to the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami is Children of the Sea, which retold the story of Shakespeare’s shipwreck play, Pericles. Children of the Sea was first staged as a promenade production at the Edinburgh International Fringe Festival in August 2005. Directing and writing, Toby Gough had the narrator in the original play, Gower, ‘[tell] the story of Pericles to Sri Lankan children living in a makeshift orphanage (Dachel, 2006).’ For its audience, it is likely that dramatic impact achieved through an imaginative fusion of fact and fiction had both psychological and physiological effects. As reported by Genevieve Love (2006), Gough’s (2005) production drew attention to the strain the unfamiliar climate might put on players used to tropical temperatures. ‘Of course, the actors [playing the traumatised children] actually were cold and wet’. In this production, Pericles carried photographs of the missing Marina through the audience, recalling the visceral impact of similar scenes of tsunami survivors searching for loved ones, seen by global media audiences after the event. This use of photographs would be likely to bring with it many emotional layers connecting to shattering events in which people lost loved ones in real life. It is not dissimilar, as a device, to the use of iconic images (such as the single tree, as discussed in the context of the Arcola Godot in Chapter 1 of this book) or the invisible presence of nuclear contamination under bare feet, discussed above, which weave past disasters through present ones thereby increasing their emotional punch on stage.

Ecotheatrical Shapeshifters  49

New Writing Prompted by Natural Disasters Extreme events prompt new ways of looking at old plays, and new writing has arguably always been prompted by environmental events, major and minor. Going back to earlier years to pick up a few brief examples, storms drive events in several Shakespearian plays (e.g. Pericles, Comedy of Errors, The Tempest, Twelfth Night and King Lear); harvest failure and hunger are visible as political shapeshifters in Coriolanus; Chekhov’s play The Wood Demon seems to have been a response to ‘deforestation and the consequent degeneration in human life’ (Gottlieb and Allain, 1960, 2010, loc 4921). Donald Rayfield (1994, p.  31) describes cherry orchards as ‘go[ing] back to Chekhov’s childhood memories of Russia before the deforestation of the 1880s’ and refers to a ‘poignant biographical link’ to an orchard of 50 cherry trees Chekhov planted in 1892, that were chopped down by a timber dealer seven years later. The Irish ‘landscape of famine’ is described by Roach (2002, p. 88) as running through the plays of Samuel Beckett many years after the potato famine that caused ‘excess mortality’ of over 1 million people and caused 2.1 million (Donnelly, 2007, pp. 171, 178) to emigrate. Tom Murphy’s 1968 play Famine (2001) refers to the same 19th-century Irish Famine. The Druid (2012) production of Famine was found ‘harrowing’ by Telegraph theatre critic Dominic Cavendish (2012), who saw Hampstead Theatre (London) performance, in a six-month run that began in Galway and ended in Washington, DC, USA. In a similar vein, Hurricane Sandy (USA, 2012) prompted Daniel McCabe (2014) to write The Flood, which premiered in the New York International Fringe Festival in 2014 and travelled to the Belfast Lyric Theatre in November that year. Steve Waters’ 2009 climate change play The Contingency Plan, draws on the UK experience of the devastating 1953 east coast floods (Met Office, 2011). John Godber connects fears of flood risk in the low-lying city of Hull to climate science in his 2007 climate change play Crown Prince. Hull Truck Theatre’s Every Time it Rains was a 2009 documentary drama by playwright Rupert Creed, which drew on real-life experience of the death and destruction wrought by the 2007 Hull floods. Ten years on, Hull, as UK City of Culture 2017, commissioned the Leeds-based theatre company Slung Low to develop a four-part epic called Flood, written by James Phillips (2017), not to be confused with The Flood (McCabe 2014), above-mentioned. As the above examples collectively suggest, some disasters cast a long shadow by becoming focal points for an identifiable sequence of performance events. In the aftermath of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, between 2011 and 2012, Caridad Svich (2016, p. 11) developed the play The Way of Water in a workshop setting. It depicts the struggle of a small group of people to survive after the spill. It toured internationally and frugally (see Chapter 6) in the form of readings (Morgan, 2013;

50  Ecotheatrical Shapeshifters NoPassport, 2012), and the play text was eventually also published in 2016. In March 2014, Leigh Fondakowski’s docudrama Spill opened at the Reilly Theatre, Louisiana State University (LSU) (Brasted, 2014). A further University of Florida School of Theatre and Dance production took place on 29 January 2015 (University of Florida, 2015). In 2017, New York Times theatre critic A. Soloski (2017) described the Ensemble Studio Theatre (New York) production (directed by Fondakowski herself) as ‘a play to make you clutch your programme then recycle it’. In a hint at post-disaster momentum still under way eight years on, it was also later published as an audio recording (Fondakowski, 2018). A highly rated documentary relating to the Deepwater oil spill, The Great Invisible, directed by Margaret Brown (2015), also appeared in the course of 2014 (Hoffman, 2014). Later years delivered the film Deepwater Horizon, directed by Peter Berg, launched in September 2016, and a new play by Ella Hickson, Oil, which premiered at the Almeida Theatre in ­London in October 2016. In 2018, Duffy’s new play Arctic Oil, premiered at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh. It is unlikely these productions are the last word on the subject of oil and environmental catastrophe. As discussed above, theatrical events on stage and in other media in the form of responses to major natural disasters (including those caused by humans) can appear many years on from such events. Such strands of memory are enormously important as feedback loops in the ecosystem of spectatorial memory shaping reactions to such events. Some are readily apparent, such as the flood- and oil spill-related examples above. These are inevitably the tip of the iceberg, because such memories and the emotional reactions associated with them or similar events will often be unspoken, hidden in the memory of specific individuals or communities, unless (as in the example with which this chapter opens) they are brought back into the light of day in novels, poems and theatrical performances. There are many reasons why such subtexts can be expected to be present. Sometimes events keep repeating themselves, as shown by the data of CRED, above-mentioned, but even if they are relatively unique, they reappear at least annually as people and communities remember and grieve. Sometimes scientific developments, such as the advances in climate change science in the late 20th and early 21st centuries brought into the public domain by the IPCC and the UNFCCC, evoke fears of a repeat. Such fears are likely to be magnified by global news media reports associating such disasters in other countries with the science of global warming. Sometimes, it can take a long time for people to digest what has happened in extreme, intensely emotional events. Sometimes physical and psychological consequences of environmental disasters continue for a very long time. In the following paragraphs, I focus on two topics that stand out in the above brief whistle-stop tour of theatrical reactions to natural disasters: floods in the city of Hull, and the theme of climate change and fossil fuels.

Ecotheatrical Shapeshifters  51 Strictly speaking, John Godber’s climate change play Crown Prince is not an example of a response to a specific natural disaster. Rather, it was a forward-looking response to the concerns of his children about climate change and the propensity of Hull (where Godber was involved with the Hull Truck Theatre between 1984 and 2010) to flood. Most of the city is below sea-level, and there is a long history of damaging flooding around the River Humber, making the city particularly vulnerable to sea-level rise. Thus, local audiences attending this play might more readily make embodied emotional connections to this play. Indeed, as recounted by the playwright himself in his introduction to the play, the Godber ­family moved to live on higher ground. Crown Prince came to the stage in May 2007. As described by the playwright himself: One of the intentions with this play was to deliver a curve ball to the audience, so that they, like the characters, don’t see global warming coming, and even when they do they feel that it really has nothing to do with them. (Godber, 2009, p. xix) For spectators who saw the play, the idea of the curve ball in the above description would be particularly evocative. Godber instructs that the scenography be arranged so that the players on the bowling green appear to send their bowls directly into the audience; I can well imagine the feeling in the pit of the stomach as a flying object appeared to come right into the auditorium, but, not having been present, I do not know if anyone actually flinched or ducked. A new chapter in Hull’s climactic history was written when, ironically only a matter of days after the first run of Crown Prince (31 May to 23 June 2007; see Gardner, 2007), the UK experienced severe flooding from rainfall. In Hull, the heavens opened on 25 June 2007 and deluged the city (Airey, 2017). Crown Prince turned out to be a curtain-raiser to a 150-year pluvial flooding event – Hull was more severely affected than anywhere else in the UK. As reported by the authors of the Independent Review Body (Coulthard et al., 2007) commissioned to assess the disaster, over twenty thousand people living in eight thousand six hundred and fifty-seven houses on six hundred streets were affected. Six thousand three hundred people were forced out of their homes into ‘alternative accommodation’. At first sight, Hull would not be expected to have the capacity to be resilient to such an extreme catastrophe, as the ‘9th most deprived area in England’. However, the review body noted that resilience is shaped by many different factors, among which they cited ‘informal and formal networks’ and the local community culture (p. 8). They described their astonishment at the ‘incredible resilience, […] good will, comradeship and willingness to help neighbours and strangers in times of need’ (Coulthard et al., 2007, p. 61).

52  Ecotheatrical Shapeshifters It is often possible to look back on extreme events and, with the benefit of hindsight, see that warning signs were clearly visible, thus that mitigating action could have been taken to reduce the scale of the disaster. The report recommended, among other things, that ‘more consideration should be given to adaptive strategies of living with the threat of flooding’ through infrastructure designed to constrain excess water flows and houses designed or retrofitted ‘to better withstand periodic inundation’ (p.  26). This also seems to have been the case in New Orleans in the context of Hurricane Katrina (Magnus, 2011), but, in that instance, photographs in the media drew out a narrative of social inequalities in terms of who could get away and who could not, who was stranded on rooftops and who was not. Perhaps it is the strong community culture that also explains the strong theatrical response in Hull to the 2007 flooding, described below. For spectators of Every Time It Rains (Creed, 2009), this production would have been a profoundly intimate experience, considering the use of verbatim accounts of what happened to people in the play (Allen, 2009). Creed’s play was produced in a conventional theatre building thus it was not site-specific theatre in the same way as Godot outside theatre buildings on a flooded rooftop or on radioactive land. However, the audience was predominantly from Hull, in a Hull-based theatre, and the play uses language drawn directly from real experiences of floods that took place locally. Following Pearson’s (2010) definition of site-specific theatre, it is likely that meaning and location would be inseparable, and this element of site-specificity would increase the emotional intensity of the experience. The play weaves the story of two couples (a composite of several real stories) caught up in the flood around the story of an individual policeman’s attempt to rescue a man trapped in a drain. The words of the policeman (Rocky) and the bereaved father are ‘edited but verbatim accounts from recorded interviews with each of them’ (Play Script).2 On a minimal set, actors-as-individuals recount what they remember as witnesses, drawing spectators into a scene played out on stage. As described by the playwright in his opening stage directions, there is to be no real water, only lighting effects. The stage is to be divided into several spaces that double as different living spaces, rooms in a house, a caravan, and is required to be flexible enough to transition through the four phases of the narrative: pre-flood normality, empty rooms more or less bare of furniture, an empty shell (flood-wrecked interiors stripped out by builders), to post-recovery normality. Creed structured the dialogue in such a way that real events told by a fictional eyewitness acquire physical shape on stage as they are acted out, and then recede again as the narrator moves back into focus. Spectators thus alternately stand back and stare, taking on the role of bystander as a horrific real-life drama plays out, and then step in to experience horror through the shared mind’s eye. Rocky, the policeman, recalls his arrival

Ecotheatrical Shapeshifters  53 on the scene in the expectation that the call-out to a man trapped in a drain would be a minor event. In a few moments, he went from worrying about getting his socks wet, to wondering why there were two men on a roof holding ropes, to the shock of seeing Michael Barnett up to his neck in a torrent of black water, to the physical sensation of the water battering Michael’s body and his own: You couldn’t see what you were standing on. The force of the water was …. They said after it was around nine to ten tons of water pressure, pushing him into the grill. You couldn’t see a thing. You put your hand under the water and couldn’t see it. (Creed, 2009, pp. 19–20) Rocky spoke to the young man, promised he would get him out, failed, and watched his eyes change as he slowly gave up and died. As Rocky tells spectators, addressing them directly, failing to keep that promise is a permanent scar you can never be rid of but must live with forever. In other sub-plots woven though the main story, we live through the story of two couples as they go through the physical and psychological effects of wrecked homes. Relationships suffer from strain as the floodwaters bring out different priorities, absurd moments alongside tragic moments as people chaotically veer from doing what matters (even to seemingly minor things such as getting bedding upstairs to have something dry to sleep on) to desperately trying to keep what does not. Upclose and personal, we watch people apply familiar rules of normality and common sense to an ineluctable force – puny humans overwhelmed by the environment. Throughout the play the power of the water to over-ride absolutely all attempts to stop it as it comes in through vents, up through floors, up through toilets bringing sewage with it, is vividly conveyed. One man rescuing his pride and joy – his car – is seen from two perspectives: panic when he thinks the engine will not start as he rushes to drive the car to higher ground out of harm’s way, not hearing (or refusing to hear) the shouts of householders; and then, swapping perspectives, the horrified reaction of householders facing waves in the floodwater lapping over sandbag defences at their doors. A decade later, it is unlikely that spectators from Hull, watching Slung Low’s Flood close to the ten-year anniversary of the 2007 disaster, were unaware of its local meaning or emotionally unaffected by its content. This 2017 production is: ‘An epic adventure about the end of our world, set in the future, told in many parts. Flood is the story of what happens to Hull when the waters come.’ (Slung Low, 2017). Flood was a fourpart performance event. Part I: From the Sea, a short film, was staged on a fishing boat on the North Sea. (At the time, it could be watched online on the Hull 2017 website.) Part II: Abundance was a live performance on floating platforms in Victoria Dock. (It was also available to watch as

54  Ecotheatrical Shapeshifters a podcast.) Part III: To the Sea was a television performance transmitted by BBC 2. Part IV: New World was also a live performance. In Parts III and IV, three floating platforms represented three post-­inundation ­societies – Holy Island, Renaissance Island and Albion.3 Flood was a local, community-based production but it weaves in other global ideas. In being about ‘the end of the world as we know it’, it connected local happenings to global apocalypse and the future of the planet in the context of climate change, to which Hull is singularly vulnerable because of the low-lying geography above-mentioned. Early in the film, the trawler pulls up its nets only to find no fish, but a mound of migrants’ orange life jackets (Phillips, 2017, p. 8). Migration is, at the time of writing, primarily about politics and war. However watery floods and other apocalypses tend to produce floods of humanity seeking to escape, and humanity, forming new communities in the aftermath of disasters, is capable of extremes of behaviour, running from the amazing resilience of Hull communities in 2007 as described by the investigative report, to the dysfunctional behaviour witnessed on the island of Albion in the second half of this epic production. Clare Brennan (2017), reviewing the production for The Observer, did not find the production overall to be effective (or ecoeffective) in the sense discussed in this book. Describing Part II, she did not enjoy the ‘sense of isolation’ produced by headphones and described the script as leaving ‘no imaginative space’ for its spectators, thereby amounting to ‘being done unto by the performance rather than co-creating it with performers’. Yet the words of her review unwittingly connect to ideas at work in this book. If she felt she was being shapeshifted by (‘done unto’) the performance, it seems unlikely this would be seen as an unsuccessful effect of the production by anyone who had lived through the Hull floods ten years before. Shivering on the dock, bodily remembering the power of floodwater, thinking back to the young man drowned in the storm drain – what is this but being ‘done unto’ by flood, thus, appropriately, Flood. Thinking about such direct experiences or indeed other drownings on Mediterranean coastlines vicariously experienced by anyone reading press reports, it seems unlikely that imaginative space was entirely absent for spectators. In her review, Brennan describes the role of Gloriana, the seemingly dead woman caught in the nets of the trawler along with the lifejackets, who had (impossibly) survived submersion at depth in very cold seas, as ambiguous. This observation picks up an important point about ecotheatre in general, as well as this specific production. Gloriana was not only alive but turned out to have considerable spiritual powers. She is reminiscent of Churchill’s shapeshifting Skriker. Gloriana could be malign or benign depending on her mood. She could bring down the rain by opening her palms to the sky (p. 37), but could also evoke the sounds of the city and music and make the sun rise by putting her hands over her eyes.

Ecotheatrical Shapeshifters  55 She could be described as literally representing the environmental shapeshifter in the title of this book, as a force that shapes and is shaped by human society in microcosm as it plays out in performance. As she remarks: Right now you think the rain is done to you | Right now you think the rain is separate | But, understand this: you too are liquid | Which means you too may be implicated. |Which means you too may not be fixed. (Phillips, 2017, p. 53) These remarks cross the nature/culture divide by positioning human beings as potentially ambiguous dynamic forces in the ecosystem. Like Gloriana, like the Skriker, they can be agents of salvation or destruction. I now turn the calendar back a year to consider Hickson’s 2016 play Oil. This play does not seem to have been triggered by a specific catastrophe. Whether it was or not, it is a relevant theatrical production in the context of the discussion of environmental disasters, feedback loops and long-run responses at work in this chapter and this book. Mark Shenton’s October 2016 review for The Stage opens by saying that the play was ‘six years in the writing’. This does not, notwithstanding the timing, imply that the Deepwater Horizon disaster prompted Hickson to write the play. However, considering its subject matter, I think it reasonable to position this play in the collective of theatrical responses to the nexus of disasters driven by fossil fuel human energy systems. Appropriately enough, considering time compressions and slippages experienced in real disasters, the play itself strives to pack into a short space of time the complex, large-scale, small-scale, long-term, immediate, slow, fast environmental (thus also human) apocalypse increasingly recognised by science and society to be under way. The play spans one hundred and sixty-two years between Part One (which opens in 1889) and Act Five (which is set in 2051). The lead protagonist, May, who is pregnant with her daughter Amy as the play opens carries the narrative thread from one act to the next. In the first act, set in Cornwall, she is in love but unhappily trapped farmer’s wife, who flees the family home having been hooked by her first taste of the fuel in a kerosene lamp. Part Two shifts to Tehran in 1908 and the colonial struggle for resource domination, where May is working as a servant. In 1970, it is May’s turn, as CEO of an international oil company, to fight back against Libyan attempts to sequester oil assets from the company. Part Four shifts to the Kurdistan desert in 2021, and Part Five comes full circle back to Cornwall in 2051 – where stage directions describe ‘Bare interior. Grey light. Dead screens. Dead light. Dead consoles.’ (loc 1865). As I write this book, a major piece of ecotheatre has begun, is developing further and will come to full fruition in 2020. This is Brookes’ Storm Cycle, which has its roots in the Pearson/Brookes collaboration

56  Ecotheatrical Shapeshifters that preceded it, thus, ultimately, reaches back to the theatrical ecosystem of ideas created by Brith Gof. This production will eventually consist of a series of several theatrical storms. The National Theatre Wales Press Release (2018) hints at underlying themes relating to the contemporary, yet not necessarily new, concerns of ‘an era of climatic and environmental uncertainty and of social and political upheaval’. Two of the storms have already taken place. The first was a ‘poetic, cinematic reimagining’ of Ovid’s Metamorphosis, Books I and II; Storm 1: Nothing Remains the Same (15–17 February 2018 at Pafiliwn Bont, Pontrhydfendigaid, Ceredigion for National Theatre Wales). The second was Storm 2: Things Come Apart (21–24 March 2018, Tabernacle Church, Cardiff), which reperformed Cardiff’s 1919 riots. The third, Storm 3: Together and Alone, travelled to The Neon in Newport on 21–23 March 2019 (­Edwards, 2019). Charlotte Higgins, reviewing Storm 1, describes the world created by Pearson and Brooks as one in which nature is in a state of turmoil, a state of affairs that human beings make worse (Higgins, 2018). Theatre Critic Matt Trueman experienced ‘a sense of hurtling momentum that slips out of control’, but, in an interesting instance of the nature/culture divide he observed that the production ‘also touches on environmental concerns’ (Trueman, 2018). Yet, what are storms rendered more extreme and frequent by climate change if not a sign of ecologies and ecosystems hurtling off in a new direction? In the ecological parlance of this book, runaway feedback loops as performed in Things Come Apart are exacerbated by human activity – thus this production can be described as an overt depiction of the 21st-century environmental crisis in microcosm. Storm 2 seemed to focus primarily on human events – violent race riots that hit Cardiff in the hot, post-war summer of 1919. Newspaper reports were spoken by three actors, and Cardiff was ‘spread out over five table tops, each printed with an old map’ on which running battles were reperformed in the manner of war games, or indeed real life wars strategised in war rooms with the help of counters, replicas and maps. A  ­photograph in Trueman’s (2018) review shows spectators standing round one of the maps alongside Pearson, following the action up-close. On the face of it, Storm 2 had nothing to do with the environment. Appearances are deceptive: an important connection can be discerned by travelling back to earlier (1990–93) ecotheatrical productions also driven by Pearson, to the clear connection between human conflict, harm done by humans to other humans on the basis that they are different, and environmental degradation that runs through the work of theatre company Brith Gof. Archival documents discussed in Chapter 5 in this book make it possible to explore PAX (a stunning piece of ecotheatre which came to the stage just as the UNFCCC’s climate change talks were beginning) and the pilot-test-turned-show-in-its-own-right, Los Angeles. Angels descended to earth through a hole in the ozone layer in Los Angeles, and horrifying tortures were inflicted on them in the name

Ecotheatrical Shapeshifters  57 of ‘racial’ homogenisation. As further discussed in Chapter 5, race riots, wartime atrocities and environmental degradation are deeply embedded in each other. Competitive human behaviour is not only a readily identifiable root cause of environmental calamity but – as sometimes demonstrated in a small scale in Creed’s play – exacerbates its impacts on the human beings caught up in it. Theatrical events in which the environment is recognisable as a vibrant force for change, whether by intention or not, have the power to change the mental landscape of any of those involved, in production or reception. As the experiences described in this chapter (and in the Introduction and Chapter 1) illustrate, spectators can bring site-specific theatrical recollections into conventional theatre spaces with them. Flows of energy, matter and ideas held in the memory can put the environment on stage to speak for itself, sometimes where least expected. An accumulation of such experiences has the potential to reveal the ubiquitous presence of the living environment in any theatrical event no matter where staged, thereby bringing about a change in mind-set that may be a necessary precondition for acting meaningfully on climate change. The next chapter continues this discussion with an exploration of another environmental disaster made worse for its victims by conflict – dearth – in selected modern productions of Coriolanus in conventional theatre spaces and contexts.

Notes 1 Example: in the case of Deepwater Horizon, ‘Recovery of high-turnover populations generally is predicted to occur within 10 years, but some slower growing populations may take 30+ years to recover.’ See Cameron H. Ainsworth et al. (2018). 2 The stories were gathered for a Red Cross project organised by Jellycat ­Media, DeepWaterHull (Play Script, p. 2). 3 Different media and locations for the four parts of the production may have presented a challenge to spectators trying to follow the narrative through all four productions. The recording of the live performances as podcasts was an opportunity to retrace narrative steps for those who wished to do so.

References Acton J.M. and Hibbs, M. (2012) ‘Why Fukushima Was Preventable’, Carnegie Papers, Nuclear Policy. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment, March. Available at: https://carnegieendowment.org/2012/03/06/why-fukushima-waspreventable-pub-47361. Ainsworth C.H., Paris C.B., Perlin N., Dornberger L.N., Patterson W.F., ­Chancellor E., Murawski, S., Hollander, D., Daly, K., Romero I.C., ­Coleman  F., Perryman, H., (2018) ‘Impacts of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Evaluated Using an End-to-end Ecosystem Model’, PLoS ONE, 13 (1). doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0190840.

58  Ecotheatrical Shapeshifters Airey, T. (2017) ‘The Forgotten City of the 2007 Summer Floods’, BBC News, 25th June. Available at: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-humber-40380693. Allen, P. (2009) ‘Memories Flood Back in Hull Truck Every Time it Rains’, Guardian, 19th June. Available at: www.theguardian.com/stage/2009/ jun/19/flood-hull-truck-every-time-it-rains. Arons, W. and May, T.J. (eds.) (2012) Readings in Performance and Ecology. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Bennett, J. (2010) Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham: Duke University Press. Brasted, C. (2014) ‘“SPILL” Play Inspired by Deepwater Horizon, Premieres at LSU’s Reilly Theater’, The Times-Picayune https://www.nola.com/­ entertainment/baton-rouge/2014/03/spill_play_inspired_by_deepwat.html. Brennan, C. (2017) ‘Flood Review: A Sadly Submerged Parable’, Observer, ­Sunday 1st October. Brith Gof (Undated) Pandaemonium Devising Notes, National Library Wales: Brith Gof Archive, PN1. Caerphilly Heritage Website (undated) Aber Valley, 1913 Pit Disaster. Available at: http://your.caerphilly.gov.uk/abervalleyheritage/1913-pit-disaster. Cavendish, D. (2012) ‘Tom Murphy, Hampstead Theatre Review’, Telegraph, 26th June. Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) (Undated) International Disaster Database. Available at: www.emdat.be. Chaudhuri, U. (1995) Staging Place: The Geography of Modern Drama. ­M ichigan: Michigan University Press. Churchill, C. (1994) The Skriker. London: Nick Hern Books, repr. 2015. Cless, D. (2010) Ecology and the Environment in European Drama. New York: Routledge. Cotter, H. (2007) ‘A Broken City. A Tree. Evening’, New York Times, Art & Design Section, 2nd December. Coulthard, T., Frostick, L., Hardcastle, H., Jones, K., Rogers, D., Scott, M., and Bankoff, G. (2007) The June 2007 Floods in Hull. Final Report by the Independent Review Body, 21st November, p. 61. Available at: www.coulthard. org.uk/downloads/floodsinhull2.pdf. Creed, R. (2009) Every Time It Rains. Hull Truck Theatre, Unpublished Manuscript. Dachel, K. (2006) ‘Pericles, Prince of Tyre, by William Shakespeare, directed by Kathryn Hunter; Children of the Sea by Toby Gough’, Theatre ­Journal, 58 (3) (October), ‘Hearing Theatre’, The John Hopkins University, pp. 495–8. Donnelly, Jr., J.S. (2007) The Great Irish Potato Famine. Stroud: Sutton Publishing. Donovan, P. and Hudson, J. (2011) From Red to Green? How the Financial Credit Crunch Could Bankrupt the Environment. Abingdon: Earthscan. Duffy, C. (2018) Arctic Oil. London: Oberon Books. Edwards, C. (2019) ‘Storm 3: Together and Alone’, Buzz: Wales What’s On Guide. Available at: www.buzzmag.co.uk/storm-3-preview. Gardner, L. (2007) Theatre Preview, Guardian, 26th May. Available at: www. theguardian.com/stage/2007/may/26/theatre4?CMP=Share_IOSApp_Other. Genzlinger, N. (2006) ‘“Waiting for Godot” Performed by the Classical Theatre of Harlem’, Review, New York Times, 3rd June.

Ecotheatrical Shapeshifters  59 Godber, J. (2007) ‘Crown Prince’, in Plays: 4. Our House, Christmas Cracker, Crown Prince, Sold. Introduced by the author. London: Methuen Drama, 2009, pp. 239–350. Gottlieb, V. and Allain, P. (eds.) (1960) The Cambridge Companion to C ­ hekhov. Repr. 2010. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hickson, E. (2016) Oil. London: Nick Hern Books. Higgins, C. (2018) ‘Storm 1: Nothing Remains the Same Review – A Symphony of Creation and Ruin’, Guardian, 16th February 2018. Available at: www. theguardian.com/stage/2018/feb/16/storm1-nothing-remains-the-same-­ review-national-theatre-wales?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other. Hoffman, J. (2014) ‘The Great Invisible Review: An Eloquent Return to Deepwater Horizon’, Guardian, 30th October. Available at: www. theguardian.com/film/2014/oct/30/the-great-invisible-review-an-eloquent-return-todeepwater-horizon. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2018) Summary for Policy ­M akers: Global Warming of 1.5℃. Electronic Publication: IPCC. Available at: www.ipcc.ch/, see ‘Reports’. Jones, L. (1937, 2006) ‘Cwmardy’, in Cwmardy and We Live. Foreword by ­Hywel Francis. Cardigan: Partian, Library of Wales, pp. 98–9. Love, G. (2006) ‘Tsunami in the Royal Botanic Garden: Pericles and Children of the Sea on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe’, Borrowers and Lenders, Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation, 2 (2) (Fall/Winter). Available at: www. borrowers.uga.edu/7151/toc. Magnus, G. (2011) ‘The Climate Change Catch-22’, in Magnus, G., Uprising: Will Emerging Markets Shape or Shake the World Economy? Chichester: Wiley, pp. 261–97. Maxwell, K. (2011) ‘“Waiting for Godot” – in Fukushima’, Wall Street ­Journal (Japan), 16th August. Available at: https://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/ 2011/08/16/waiting-for-godot—in-fukushima/. McCabe, D. (2014) The Flood. Available at: www.thefloodplay.com. Met Office, UK (2011) Saturday 31 January 1953 (East Coast Floods). National Meteorological Library and Archive, Devon, UK. Available at: https://www. metoffice.gov.uk/binaries/content/assets/metofficegovuk/migrated/pdf/n/ east_coast_floods_-_31_January_1953.pdf. Murphy, T. (2001) Famine. London: Methuen Drama. National Theatre Wales Press Release (2018) ‘National Theatre Wales present The Storm Cycle, created by Mike Pearson and Mike Brooks, ­2018–20. Locations across Wales’, Available at: www.nationaltheatrewales.org/press/ 2018-season-announcement/. Ohiohomey1 (2011) Comment Appended to the Kamome Machine Film of Waiting for Godot, YouTube, by a Member of the Virtual Audience. Available at: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GeEPEUIRp14. Phillips, J. (2017) Flood. London: Bloomsbury. Rayfield, D. (1994) The Cherry Orchard: Catastrophe and Comedy. New York: Twayne Publishers. Roach, J. (2002) ‘“All the Dead Voices”: The Landscape of Famine in Waiting for Godot’, in Land / Scape / Theater, ed. by Fuchs, E. and Chaudhuri, U. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, pp. 84–93. Shakespeare, W. (1997) King Lear, ed. by Foakes, R.A. London: Arden Shakespeare.

60  Ecotheatrical Shapeshifters Soloski, A. (2017) ‘Review: In “Spill”, an Oil Disaster Seems too Big for the Stage, New York Times, 21st March. Available at: www.nytimes.com/2017/03/21/ theater/review-spill-deepwater-horizon-oil-disaster.html. Svich, C. (2016) The Way of Water, 2nd edn. New York: No Passport Press. Trueman, M. (2018) ‘Review: The Storm Cycle 1: Nothing Remains the Same (National Theatre Wales), WhatsOnStage, 16th February. Available at: www. whatsonstage.com/wales-theatre/reviews/storm-cycle-1-national-theatrewales_45809.html. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change UNFCCC (2015) Conference of the Parties No. 21 (COP21), Paris. Available at: https://unfccc. int/process-and-meetings/past-conferences/paris-climate-change-conferencenovember-2015/cop-21. University of Florida (2015) Press Release, ‘New Play, Spill, Gets Its Florida ­Premiere at the University of Florida and Sheds Light on the Deepwater ­Horizon Oil Spill’, UF in the Loop, 11th December. Wallemacq, P., Below, R. and McClean, D. (2018) UNISDR and CRED Report: Economic Losses, Poverty and Disasters (1998–2017). Available at: www. emdat.be/publications. Walters, B. (1986) ‘Best Suit, the Afan Valley in 1969’, in The Enemy Within: Pit Villages and the Miners’ Strike of 1984–5, ed. by Samuel, R., ­Bloomfield, B. and Boanas, G. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 39–43. Waters, S. (2009) The Contingency Plan: On the Beach and Resilience. ­London: Nick Hern Books.

Productions and Performances Mentioned Berg, P. (2016) Deepwater Horizon, film. Production companies: Participant Media, Di Bonaventura Pictures, Closest to the Hole Productions, Leverage Entertainment. Brith Gof in collaboration with Theatre Taliesin (1987) Pandaemonium: The True Cost of Coal, Morriston Tabernacle Chapel, Swansea. Brookes, M. (2018–2020) The Storm Cycle, National Theatre Wales. Available at: www.nationaltheatrewales.org/ntw-projects/the-storm-cycle/. Brown, M. (2015) The Great Invisible. Participant Media. Available at: www. pbs.org/independentlens/films/great-invisible/. Chan, P. (2007) Waiting for Godot in New Orleans, Creative Time, 2007. Available at: www.creativetime.org/programs/archive/2007/chan/welcome.html. Druid (2012) Druidmurphy: Conversations on a Homecoming, A Whistle in the Dark and Famine, co-produced with Quinnipac University Connecticut, NUI Galway, Lincoln Center Festival and Galway Arts Festival. Opening night: 25th May, Town Hall Theatre Galway. Available at: http://archive. druid.ie/websites/2009-2017/druidmurphy/famine#people. Dormandy, S., dir. (2014) Waiting for Godot, Arcola Theatre. Opening night 12th May. See www.arcolatheatre.com/event/waiting-for-godot/. Fondakowski, L. (2018) Spill. Audio recording: L.A. Theatre Works. Fondakowsi, L. writer and dir. (2017) Spill, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Off Broadway, New York. Gough, T. (2005) Children of the Sea, Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Opening night: 19th August.

Ecotheatrical Shapeshifters  61 Hope, L. (2011) Waiting for Godot, Lower Depths Theatre, Loyola University New Orleans Department of Theatre and Dance, 16th–20th February 2011. Available at: http://cmfa.loyno.edu/calendar/theatre/waiting-godot. Kamome Machine Theatre Company (2011) ‘“Waiting for Godot”@Fukushima’, YouTube, 10th August. Available at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeEPEUIR p14. See also www.kamomemachine.com/waiting-for-godot-in-fukushima. Morgan, B. (2013) The Way of Water by Svich, C. at the Welsh Fargo Stage Company. Opening night: 19th March. Available at: www.­ welshfargostagecompany.com. NoPassport (2012) The Way of Water by Svich, C. Fifty Readings Took Place ­B etween April 3rd and June 4th at US Venues. Available at: www.­caridadsvich. com/plays/fulllength/the-way-of-water/. Pearson, M. (2018) If My Memory Serves Me Well. Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Special Performance: TAPRA Annual Conference. Slung Low (2017) Flood, by Phillips, J. Produced by Hull City of Culture and Slung Low. Available at: www.slunglow.org/flood/.

3 An Ecotheatrical Perspective on Dearth in Performance

There was not a tree in sight. Undefined stone arches reminiscent of Stonehenge loomed out of the mist (King Lear, DVD, 1983). The King’s throne was situated in a strange hybrid space. The uneven path up to the throne seemed to be made of rocks shaped by the elements rather than by any human hand, and Olivier as Lear had to move up and down them with care, giving him an air of instability and infirmity. Were these rocks, like the bricks in the crumbling walls of the Arcola Godot, ‘vibrant matter’ by design, placed there for their power to collaborate with the actor in the production of kingly senescence? Alternatively, were they placed on stage as mere scenery, unexpectedly operating independently to produce scenographic effects? Whether their interaction with the actor’s body was intended or not hardly matters, for the performance, an outcome of production chemistry observed in this brief moment, was effective either way. The key point is that the environment was present as more than mere scenery, in this important moment in the play in this production. The environment as vibrant matter entered yet again in the guise of a map of England’s fertile land made of animal skins, which was dramatically unfurled over a large area of the stage. Regan and Goneril trod possessively upon it. Regan followed her father’s command – the finger pointing down at the map – and fawningly kissed it. Goneril moved to kiss her father’s hand but thought better of it and kissed the map, then his hand. Lear strode around upon it, scoring out divides with the point of his sword. As Churchill’s (1994, p. 48) Skriker might have said on behalf of social and environmental ecologies so carelessly cut into pieces: ‘Now they hate us and hurt hurtle faster and master!’ Ecotheatre as defined in this book includes theatre in which the presence of the environment as an active presence is discernible in the overall structure of the theatrical event, in production or reception, or both, as in the above example. What struck me about the opening scene, as I watched the ‘live’ performance in recording over three decades later, was how clear it was that this was a staged performance, and how unnatural the environment as scenery was. Yet, the environment in this opening scene spoke clearly, notwithstanding the blatant artificiality of the scenography.1 As Black’s (at least) second-time experience and indeed my own first-time experience as a viewer of the DVD jointly

An Ecotheatrical Perspective on Dearth  63 suggest, a potentially important job for the theatre ecocritic is to identify the environment as an active presence. After all, if human beings cannot even recognise the ubiquitous presence of the environment on stage in the context of incumbent cultural traditions, it is hard to see how entrapment in persistent and increasingly obsolescent cultures such as fossil fuel-driven warming systems can be resisted. This chapter, which develops material published in an earlier version, in the dearth book edited by Ayesha Mukherjee (Hudson, 2019, pp. 193–7), explores theatrical productions that might not, at first sight, be described as ecotheatre, because they take place in conventional theatre buildings in a relatively commercialised segment of the theatre industry. I decided to focus on dearth (famine or food insecurity in modern parlance) as a palpable social phenomenon in which the environment as a living force could not be more evident, in this exploration of the environment on stage in conventional theatre spaces. King Lear, Coriolanus and Pericles all thematise the interaction of power imbalances and food insecurity in some way, but I identified Coriolanus as Shakespeare’s most important dearth play.2 In such plays, there is little doubt that the environment is on stage as more than mere scenery. The thought-experiment in this chapter takes its cue from Black, who had not previously ‘seen’ the environment in King Lear and yet, later on, could do so, even though the only thing that had changed was the context in which he saw it and the thinking he brought to his later viewing of the recording. My aim in this chapter (possible thanks to the availability of theatrical archives and reviews) is to go back and consider productions of plays performed in a number of contexts from the ecocritical perspective described in the Introduction and Chapter 1. Four questions explored later on in this chapter in the context of modern productions of Coriolanus are driven by the above-mentioned need to recognise the ubiquitous presence of the environment on stage in conventional theatrical productions. They are as follows, and indicated by sub-headings in the main body of the chapter. Is the positioning of the environment on stage determined by the balance between the star actor and the crowd (thus, indirectly, by economics)? Do financial bubbles (runaway warming systems by another name) mitigate against the empowerment of the environment as a shapeshifter? Does the so-called Shakespeare industry muffle its voice? Last but not least: is it necessary to break with convention, escaping from the cultural entrapment hinted at in Meeker’s description of Hamlet (see Chapter 1), to unleash the environmental shapeshifter on stage? The next paragraphs briefly compare modern and early modern social sensitivities.

Early Modern Dearth Sensitivities On and Off the Stage It is unsurprising that dearth should have been a regular theme on stage for the early moderns. Poor harvests driven by climactic shifts and

64  An Ecotheatrical Perspective on Dearth wars, high food prices and a high mortality rate are well documented (Hudson, 2019, pp. 187–8). There is, moreover, no shortage of instances of the effects of dearth on lives and livelihoods woven through play texts – an inevitable consequence of their presence in real life. The ‘rain it raineth every day’, sang Feste in Twelfth Night (Shakespeare 2008, V, i, 393) and Lear’s Fool in King Lear (1997, III, ii, 77). These plays are believed to have come to the stage in 1601–2 and 1605–6, respectively (play text introductions; Shakespeare 2008, p. 93; 1997, p. 89), when the after-effects of the late 1590s harvest failures were probably still being felt. Moreover, the ability to bounce back may have been reduced by the fact that this period also happens to be about a fifth of the way into the period known as the little ice-age, agreed by ‘geographers, geologists, glaciologists and […] climatologists to run from 1550 to 1800 (Lamb, 1977, p.  104)’. People would had suffered the likely effects of lower average temperatures (such as food shortages, and lower nutritional quality in food as well as the rigours of lower temperatures) for some time, requiring careful (political) management. An awareness of the interconnectedness of failed politics and failed agriculture is shown to run through this and earlier plays by Jayne Elizabeth Archer, Richard Marggraf Turley and Howard Thomas (2012, pp. 518–43). A few decades earlier, Kinney (1993) provided a fascinating example of the effect of food politics upon the early performances of The Merry Wives of Windsor, which is likely to have been written at a time of deterioration in food affordability. A relatively well-known illustration of the topicality of dearth and its connection to social unrest lies in the connection between events in Shakespeare’s own life, and the riots depicted in the opening scenes of the Coriolanus, and, indeed, other plays (Hindle, 2008, pp. 21–61).

Modern Dearth Sensitivities Even though social conditions in early modern England – the constant proximity of harvest failures, hunger and disease – bore no resemblance to those of experienced by many modern western theatre-goers, there are nevertheless some significant commonalities between early modern and modern England. The idea of profits made by food commodity traders are as sensitive now as they were then: so much so that some global banks have closed down their agricultural commodity funds (Ascher, Laszlo and Quiviger, 2012). Food security and nutrition have been regularly front of mind for politicians in the past decade for a number of reasons, including: prominent discussions in the 2007–2010 credit-crunch media of hunger produced by the economic downturn; long-standing discussions of climate change and its potential future effects on agriculture; regular debates on modern diets and obesity.3

An Ecotheatrical Perspective on Dearth  65 The presence of food insecurity as a contentious issue in modern times was tellingly connected to early modern sensitivities when Shakespeare was ‘outed’, in a prize-winning lecture given at the March 2013 ASLE-UK conference that caught the attention of the press (Turley, 2013), as an illegal food-hoarder and tax-evader in research by Aberystwyth University academics (Archer et al., 2014, p. 81). They argued that academe had been ‘complicit’ in covering up Shakespeare’s involvement in the ‘business of hunger’. It would be an exaggeration to say that 21st-­century readers called for the gibbet, but the press reaction suggests considerable excitement. The Shakespeare-as-capitalist-grain-trader story ran in a significant number of news publications including the Telegraph, Independent, Huffington Post, Daily News, Daily Mail, BBC, Fox News, LA Times and Forbes. (For an example, see Marsden (2013).) Considering that Shakespeare’s grain-trading activities have been there for all to read in Chambers (1930, p. 99) for many years, one possible explanation for this reaction is that the continuing effects of the 2007 credit crunch lent the issue relevance when the book was previewed in 2013 and published in 2014, because of rising levels of food poverty still visible several years on from the credit crunch. The Trussell Trust, the UK food bank charity, reported a fifty-one percent rise in the number of food parcels to 913,000 in the year in which the above-mentioned book was published (Milligan, 2014). One possibility raised by these events is that dearth resonance on stage is more likely when economic conditions are weak enough to produce significant unemployment at home, or in the event of commodity price shocks (when food and energy suddenly become more expensive) or indeed when there are accounts of famines or prominent food shortages in the media. (cf. Ingram et al., 2010, loc 554).4

Food Insecurity in Performance: Dearth in Modern-Day Settings Evidence that an unequal distribution of food insecurity can and does produce a response on modern-day stages is readily found. The 1973 play by Edward Bond – Bingo – retells the story of Shakespeare the landowner’s stance with respect to land enclosures in 1614/5. Bingo (directed by Howell and Dove, 1973, 1974) was first performed in the Northcott Theatre, Exeter on 14 November 1973 and in the Royal Court, London, in 1974 (Bond, 1987, p.  16), when the effects of the early 1970s oil crisis would be fresh in the memory. It was later revived in a highly acclaimed production by the Young Vic in February 2012 under director Angus Jackson (2012), not long after the 2007–2010 credit crunch, with the well-known Shakespearian actor Patrick Stewart cast in the role of Shakespeare. By identifying a sensitive point in both cultures, Bond and the directors of his plays are able to connect early modern English food politics to those of austerity Britain. The emotional feedback

66  An Ecotheatrical Perspective on Dearth loops needed for effective theatrical ecosystems are thus potentially forged through the ‘radically biological materialism […] that grounds the political and the economic in human corporeality’ in Bond’s theatre as described by Garner Jr. (1994, p. 177) in Bodied Spaces. In 2012, a modern post-script to King Lear appeared in the form of a new play by David Watson, The Serpent’s Tooth, directed by Michael Buffong (2012) for the Talawa theatre company. This play explored what ‘sustaining that “gored state” might mean’, in an epilogue to Lear. In Watson’s extension of the story, described on Talawa’s website as ‘a potent finale to King Lear set in the basement tunnels of Shoreditch Town Hall’, the ‘gor’d state’ seems to imply social collapse and dearth. (For further detail, see Hudson 2019, p. 191.) Other evidence includes an element of dearth awareness in critical responses to other plays. In Shakespeare’s (2004) Pericles the starving ­people of Tarsus are rescued by the arrival of ships ‘stored with corn’. The Globe to Globe Festival production (directed by Houvardas, 2012) was performed in Greek during a major (Greek) financial crisis thus might be expected to produce dearth-related resonance. Reviewer Alex Needham noticed the preoccupation with the Eurozone crisis as reflected in ‘threadbare costumes and props’ and in the cry (in English) of ‘I’m starving! I’m Greek!’ from one of the poor fishermen who rescued Pericles in Act Two (Needham, 2012). Purcell, reviewing the same production, added another invaluable crumb: ‘I’m starving, I’m Greek’ explained Pericles (Christos Loulis) to the groundlings as he begged them for food. Upon being presented with a sandwich by an obliging playgoer, one of the fishermen (Giorgos Glastras) ad libbed: ‘You’re so nice here in England, you should join the Euro.’ (Purcell, 2013, p. 162) These two accounts of this physical spectatorial reaction are quite different in tone. In the first, the poor starving Greeks and the audience seem to be in different worlds (as are the starving and the food-secure). In the second, groundlings and poor Greeks seem to be in one food-insecure world in which people share what they have, and the seated audience finds itself at one remove (not unlike the grain-hoarders of the 1590s or the food-secure watching the Irish famine unroll from afar), watching the interaction but constrained from responding in the same way.

Ecologies of Dearth in Coriolanus The above very brief tour of dearth-related Shakespearean adaptations suggests the potential for dearth to play an important role on the modern western stage, notwithstanding (or perhaps because of!) changes in

An Ecotheatrical Perspective on Dearth  67 food systems. Whether selected productions of Coriolanus did so or not can thus be seen as a litmus test with respect to the modern cultural and political positioning of the environment on stage, through the lens of food insecurity. The key scene I identified in this play (with reference to Shakespeare, 2013) as an informative focal point for modern attitudes to food security is Act One, Scene One. As I describe it below, it places dearth as an actant (cf. Bennett, 2010), a force having significant potential efficacy (cf. Kershaw, 1992), at the core of the action in the play overall. The riot in the opening scene is peopled by ‘mutinous’ citizens armed with ‘staves, clubs and other weapons’. These ‘plebeians’ are protesting against hunger, and its inequitable distribution between the well-fed patricians and the rest. Thus: ‘What authority surfeits on would relieve us. If they would yield us but the superfluity while it were wholesome, we might guess they relieved us humanely.’ (Coriolanus, I, i, 14–17). Later in this key scene, Coriolanus’ friend Menenius Agrippa successfully diffuses the citizens’ anger by explaining the benign role played by the state – the metaphorical belly – as a fair distributor of food stores (I, i, 91–158). Through this narrative, he assigns a physiological dimension to food power-politics, through the fable of the dominant stomach and the inferior extremities. The extended metaphor of the belly and the bodily members is important in being closely connected to key themes running through the play: food insecurity for the ‘have-nots’, imbalances within the body politic and food-related geopolitics. As will be seen, how the first scene of the play is handled in production tends to determine whether the interconnectedness of the ‘natural’ and social environments and dearth comes through clearly or not. In a balanced production that all-important first scene will be coherently embedded in the whole, or re-emphasised, rather than cut; and the balance between the two interwoven narrative arcs will be carefully maintained. Productions that de-emphasise Act One Scene One, and/or the crowd are weakening a deeply embedded part of the overall structure, and an important connection point (through the effects of dearth) to nature in culture and culture in nature.

Star Actor vs the Environmental Shapeshifter? I begin with an example in which the plebeians were clearly diminished relative to the star actor playing Coriolanus. David Farr’s 2002/3 Royal Shakespeare Company( RSC) Japanese dress production did not stop at cutting the number of plebeians right down. It also curtailed the amount of space they occupied on stage relative to the patricians, hinting at an unbalancing of the play’s ecosystem at a very early stage in the performance. This was particularly striking in the opening scene, which can be observed on a blurred DVD recording (Coriolanus, 2002) in the

68  An Ecotheatrical Perspective on Dearth Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Library and Archive in Stratford upon Avon. The lights went up on a polished red stage (the thrust stage of the Swan Theatre, Stratford upon Avon), in the middle of which stood a solitary rough-hewn wooden crate. This clashed oddly with the stylised set, and, appropriately enough, turned out to be a plebeian soapbox. At the back of the stage sat three imposing samurai figures with their backs to the audience, swords visible to the left of each figure. After a moment, I realised the middle figure was Caius Martius (Greg Hicks), ceremonially flanked by two senators. The leading citizen marched up to her soapbox and duly berated her fellow citizens. Many of her lines were (I thought) effectively emphasised and magnified by the chorus of shouts at appropriate moments from an offstage crowd somewhere up in the galleries to the right and left of the stage. However, this tactic did not fully offset the problem that she alone was speaking for all the citizens with occasional support from two citizen supernumeraries. The intention may have been to suggest symmetry between the citizen and her two henchmen, and Coriolanus with his two senators, as they stood with their backs to each other. If so this idea backfired. Its effect for me, as a spectator of the recording, was to reinforce the powerlessness of the citizen representative. The imbalance of power in favour of Caius Martius was enormous, even at this very early stage in the play. To the point, theatre critic Michael Billington described the citizens as upstaged even when they should have been centre stage: ‘Even as starving citizens are protesting “What authority surfeits on would relieve us”, we are arrested by the upstage presence of Hick’s Caius Martius’ (Billington, 2002). Academic critic Michael Dobson described the mob scenes in the production (which took place about three years on from the global stock market crash of 1999/2000) in a manner that put a finger on the irony running through this production from the perspective of the dearth narrative in the text: [I]n today’s economic climate, when two is a retinue and three is a crowd, this play’s inclusion of an angry mob as a main character can make it extremely difficult to stage with the sort of naturalistic violence for which its street scenes call. (Dobson, 2004) During economic downturns, less wealthy people can be harder hit than the relatively well off. The cost-cutting Dobson hints at seemed to have been wielded in the manner of the samurai sword, patrician weaponry cutting plebeians off at the neck. Meanwhile, critics described the battle scenes as ‘exceptionally gory’ (Spencer, 2003). This was no exaggeration. As shown in a production postcard (photographed by Harlan, 2002) filed in the SBT Library and Archive, Greg Hicks was not just battle-stained. His bare torso was slick

An Ecotheatrical Perspective on Dearth  69 with an unbelievable quantity of still-wet stage blood. As such photographic poses captured for spectatorial consumption after the event (and the title of Charles Spencer’s (2002) review, ‘He was borne to play this role’) suggest, the key point about this production was Coriolanus the character, and the actor playing the lead. Overall the heavy focus on the lead protagonist at the expense of the hungry citizens was decisive in mitigating against the active presence of dearth in this production. A well-known Japanese adage runs as follows: Deru kui wa utareru – the nail that sticks up gets hammered down. As explained to me when I lived in Japan many years ago, it reflects a culture in which collaboration is highly valued. I was reminded of this saying because, in Ninagawa’s Complete Works Festival production at the Barbican in April 2007 (a generously budgeted pre-credit-crunch production as reflected in the large numbers hired to swell the plebeian crowd),5 what most stands out is that Coriolanus did not seem to be the main point. This puzzled reviewer Peter Kirwan (2007). He found him ‘muddled’ – by turns ‘arrogant’, ‘misunderstood’, ‘heroic’ and ‘brutal’ – and he was not sure whether the homoeroticism taken to ‘brutal extremes’ earlier in the year at the RSC by Doran (see the next question, below) was ‘deliberately or ignorantly’ occluded. For Kirwan, who seemed to bring certain expectations with him as a spectator, Coriolanus the character came across as inconsistent. Lyn Gardner, on the other hand, had no such problem but described a ‘deeply flawed’ Coriolanus unable to understand the need for balance between ‘brute strength’ and ‘compromise’. She also described visually exciting scenes in which ‘bodies teem[ed] and tumbl[ed] with such precision, it seems as if there [were] hundreds of people on stage’ (Gardner, 2007). Dobson (2008, p. 345) also described a mob that was duly magnified: As the house lights faded, this immense, precipitous structure [resembling an ‘oriental ziggurat’] was suddenly populated by an entire brown-clad plebeian riot, twenty strong and doubled and redoubled again by the side mirrors, converging down the centre of the stairs, and all shouting at [enormous] volume. If the mob was prominent in Ninagawa’s balanced production, it was food that was centre stage in the Chiten Theatre Company’s World Shakespeare Festival production in Japanese at Shakespeare’s Globe, directed by Motoi Miura (2012). In this production, a cast of five performed Coriolanus chorus-style.6 This had two effects. Here, as in Ninagawa’s production, Coriolanus the character and/or the performance of the lead player did not come across as the main point. Rather, the production as a whole was what mattered. Secondly, with such a small cast, this came across as a frugal (post-crunch) production, however in this case cost-cutting was not exercised in favour of the patricians. The props

70  An Ecotheatrical Perspective on Dearth budget also seemed to be frugal. As described by Adele Lee (2013, p. 49), reviewing the production in A Year of Shakespeare: The use of baguettes as props was [a] notable feature of this production. All cast members brandished the baguettes as weapons while their constant consumption of the bread reflected not just greed, but the destruction and emasculation of Coriolanus (the baguette, after all, can be a phallic symbol). Watching a film of this production on Globe Player TV (Coriolanus, 2012), I found that the baguettes had interesting effects. Someone speaking powerfully and brandishing bread as a sword could look strong and vulnerable at the same time (a good description of the character of Coriolanus in the play); conversely a hungry person armed with a baguette (and brandishing it rather than eating it) is a reminder that hungry people can bring down governments. Thus, although significant parts of the play were excised because of Chiten’s choric approach, food insecurity is prominent, and consistently embedded, in this production. Returning to Farr’s 2002/3 Coriolanus, the contrast with these two Japanese productions suggests a possible misapplication of the idea of the samurai warrior in the Western, pseudo-Japanese version. Both Japanese language productions balanced the two sides of the story whereas in Farr’s production, the samurai setting – perhaps scenery for the star actor rather than shapeshifter for the production – served to imbalance the production even further away from dearth awareness.

Financial Bubbles vs the Environmental Shapeshifter? Financial bubbles are strong societal feedback loops, capable of side-­ lining dearth in performance as in real life even when this was not the direct intention of any identifiable individual. My next example of occluded dearth feedback loops is Doran’s March 2007 Coriolanus (briefly referred to in Kirwan’s review, above) in which Will Houston starred as the lead protagonist. It was a financial bubble production in two senses. It was, like the above-mentioned Barbican production, staged right before the peak of the pre-credit-crunch financial bubble,7 and it was also the last RSC production just before the substantial refurbishment of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre (Levy, 2010). A rich budget may well explain the set – a series of imposing marble arches, artistically streaked in colours ranging from red to grey. Critics did not much like designer Richard Hudson’s set. It was variously described as: ‘clutter[ing] the stage’, ‘big [and] old-fashioned’ (Dobson, 2008, p. 325), a ‘vast edifice of marble which, thanks to audible hydraulics, yields to the flat plain of battlefields’ (Marmion, 2007) and a ‘receding perspective of rows of meaningless marble and terra-cotta doorways’ (de Jongh, 2007).

An Ecotheatrical Perspective on Dearth  71 However, the problem of the set seemed to me to go deeper than such descriptions. As I watched the production on DVD in the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Library and Archive in Stratford upon Avon (Coriolanus, 2007), I felt that, had the citizens stopped in their tracks at any moment as they came running onto the stage at the opening, the resulting freeze frame would have graced any museum wall as an oil painting. In other words, from a visual perspective, this was no riot embarked upon in desperation. With the exception of the leading citizen, who wore a brown leather apron, the citizens wore flowing robes. Much thought seemed to have gone into the muted shades of red, russet brown, green or orange in which each individual was respectively garbed. As the citizens moved about the stage they generated a shifting demi-rainbow effect designed to harmonise gracefully with the marble back-drop. Beautiful as the scenes playing out on stage were, I thought their effect was to reduce dramatic tension. Almost as if the harmony exuding from their robes had dampened the ten citizens’ acting performances, passion and hunger were notably lacking. Dobson, similarly, described them as ‘woefully clean and polite […] dwarfed by the set and unable to make up in energy of menace what they lack[ed] in numbers’ (Dobson, 2008, p. 325). A mob diminished by the vastness of a set facilitated by plentiful production resources could be seen as deeply ironic considering the narrative of the dearth-related imbalances of power at the core of the play. The problem was exacerbated by the lack of nuance in Will Houston’s performance as Coriolanus. De Jongh (2007) described his ‘snarling contempt for the Plebs [as beginning] at top range and never abat[ing]’. Overall, this was a production of disempowered plebeians, thus dearth as a voice for the environment was mute in this production, in which hunger seemed to be far from phenomenologically experienced by anyone involved, cushioned as they were by plentiful resources.

Shakespeare Industry Conventions vs the Environmental Shapeshifter? My next example is different to all the above. The raw ingredients were in place for dearth to play a prominent role, but the necessary emotional chemistry between production and reception did not seem to be there until the very end, in an astonishing case of ‘dearth ex machina’. As described below, this step-change seems to have been produced, at least in part, by moving the production some two thousand miles away from its home location, to connect with a different audience chemistry in a different culture, where the production might be less weighed down by expectations of how Shakespearean theatre should be done. In Hall’s 1984 Coriolanus at the National Theatre, two points stood out about the production. First, the casting was stellar, with Ian ­McKellen as Coriolanus and Greg Hicks as Tullus Aufidius. Jack Kroll

72  An Ecotheatrical Perspective on Dearth (1985), also cited on Ian McKellen’s own website (2003), described McKellen’s Coriolanus as a ‘titanic study in arrogance’, while for Billington (1984) he was a ‘charismatic monster’. Secondly, the decision to put part of the audience on stage and to call upon some spectators to swell the ranks of the mutinous citizens at key points had the potential to offset the focus on star actors. It not only underlined and magnified the plebeians’ part in the whole, but also introduced an element of interactive theatre thereby bringing spectators and actors closer together. In terms of the introductory definition of theatrical ecosystems, this would be expected to have two effects. The citizens should have been able to provide balance against the star actor system also at work, thereby giving dearth, as a protagonist in the whole, a fighting chance of being heard. In another important strategy described by Kristina Bedford (1992, pp. 42–3), in her amazingly detailed archival record of the production, the promenade seats allocated to spectators who would ‘come to the central playing area when instructed by the actors’ were sold at a reduced rate ‘thus attracting a broader cross-section of society into the theatre’. Bedford’s rehearsal notes on Menenius’s ‘fable of the belly’ speech moreover show how important it was to the company to get this speech and scene right (Bedford, 1992, pp. 202, 207–8, 232). On the face of it, then, this was a production that treated the two sides of the story as an integral whole, giving full emphasis to the plebeians. It was dearth-aware. So, what went wrong? The answer seemed to lie in a collision of expectations and execution. For a number of the critics who reviewed this production, the treatment of the mob scenes seemed to backfire in London performances in the run, even though there were exceptions. Billington (an exception) saw the casting of non-actors to swell the crowd as underlining the message on the banners carried by the citizens (‘Corn for the people’) as well as reinforcing Hall’s message regarding the need for ‘compromise’ in good government (Billington, 1984). Others were less complimentary. Michael Ratcliffe (1984), reviewing the production for the Observer, described the casting of the plebeians as ‘a very dumb idea’ and asked whether the intention was to suggest that the citizens were ‘so wet, so indifferent, so dim’. For Stephen Wall (1985), a ‘hungry mob demanding corn at their own price’ was not adequately performed by ‘a miscellaneous group of theatre-goers who had only just finished reading their theatre programmes’. David Fingleton (1985) described a ‘hastily schooled posse of one hundred members of the audience […] [w]ith their handbags and scarves and the all-too-visible directions from the NT extras in charge of them’; and Benedict Nightingale (1984) described the ‘sheepish meanderings, half-hearted handclappings and forlorn bleatings for Coriolanus’s banishment’ of a well-dressed, prosperous crowd. The way the spectator-actors were dressed was seemingly not the only wardrobe error. The production was performed in the ‘modern equivalent’

An Ecotheatrical Perspective on Dearth  73 of the likely ‘Roman/Elizabethan’ configuration of costume when the play first came to the stage (a ‘melange’ singled out for resentment by ­Fingleton). To this end the actors in the roles of plebeian were asked to select lived-in clothing from their own wardrobe. The choice of clothing made by some actors jarred with the spirit of the production: ‘Hunger’ is a word much bandied about, especially at the opening of the play, yet [the] attire of several citizens plants them firmly in the ranks of the middle class. [This] dissipates the tension of acting ‘in hunger for bread, not in | thirst for revenge’. (Bedford, 1992, p. 31) Greg Hicks (Tullus Aufidius) was interviewed by Bedford (1992, p. 150) and, in a similar vein, thought that ‘[…] the director [hadn’t] made an opinion about what kind of citizens they are’. Inconsistency reflected in important details seemed to undermine an otherwise balanced vision of the play running through the production. What happened next to Hall’s production suggests that a single change somewhere in the production ecosystem (or perhaps in this case a single change that brought many other smaller changes in its wake) can unleash blocked dramatic forces.

Athens: Dearth Ex Machina! Indirect observation at a distance suggests that the complex system of ideas driving Hall’s production, having only partially succeeded for most of the run, came to fruition in a theatrical peak experience in Athens, in the Herodes Atticus Theatre in September of the following year (Hall, dir., 1985). As described by Bedford (1992): [T]he actors were treating the on-stage audience much more as though they were already committed members of the rebellion […]. Nor was the audience on stage […] visually distracting – even Greg Hicks, the company’s most vocal advocate for its removal, agreed that it significantly enhanced the overall look of the production. The audience-citizens were thus much more embedded in the production and the response from the seated audience was a huge standing ovation. Bedford (1992, pp. 159–60) finds several explanations for this: the involvement of the audience-citizens in rehearsal including a briefing on suitable clothing (so that the briefcases, business suits and evening wear ‘to which critics and cast members quite rightly objected’ were absent); the spectacular nature of the space right next to the Acropolis and the company spirit that had developed by then. What is interesting about these observations is the sense of increased connectivity between the

74  An Ecotheatrical Perspective on Dearth production team and the audience, and the strengthening of the spectatorial feedback loop in the form of spectators co-opted as citizens. Billington (1985) described an engaged audience (copies of the play sold out in bookshops), and a political context better suited to the magnification of political feedback loops: ‘In Athens it became a play about the dangers of military dictatorship.’ Billington’s review also suggested that, in Athens, the ‘melange’ of clothing that had been such a problem in London worked as intended, reinforcing rather than diluting dramatic tension. Overall, the hunger-­ politics dynamic at the centre of the play text (and embedded in Hall’s directorial vision) seemed to come to the fore once the overall performance ecosystem was working smoothly. Reading between the lines, the reason for the change might have been a shift in the company’s culture (towards a closer understanding of what hunger really meant for the plebeians), the change in the physical location, a completely different group of spectators and a change in the relationship between actors and audience. The production successfully generated an emotional runaway warming system, thus connected with and gave voice to the oppressed dearth-struck citizens. In Athens, this was an ecoeffective production in the sense defined in the Introduction. In London, it had not been, even though the potential for it to be so was structurally present. Athens is a very good example of the capacity of theatrical ecosystems to shapeshift in dramatic ways. In the above production, a change of location seemed to produce a minor cultural dislocation, thereby unleashing dearth as a shapeshifter embedded in the core of the production and the play.

Thacker (1994): Break the Rules to Unleash the Environmental Shapeshifter? In my next example, dearth is emphatically at the core. I identified ­David Thacker’s 1994 RSC production at the Swan Theatre as an instance of dearth-aligned feedback loops in part because of a chance encounter, many years later, with an employee of the Shakespeare Bookshop in Stratford upon Avon who had been a member of the audience. I mentioned the name of the play and he launched into a detailed description of the opening scene in this specific production, as if he had seen it the day before rather than two decades earlier. As he described it, this production was memorable in putting the issue of food security front and centre. The opening – in which corn ‘[poured] like gold from the flies when the play [opened] and [was later] carried off in wooden bowls after the protagonist’s banishment’ (Nightingale, 1994) – was striking. (See Figure 3.1; Davies, 1994.) What happened after the initial down-­streaming of corn – the doors to the grain hopper were closed, cutting off the corn from the hungry citizens – graphically and (all importantly) materially described dearth politics, setting the tone for what followed.

An Ecotheatrical Perspective on Dearth  75

Figure 3.1  Corn Pouring from the Sky into the Coffers of the Rich (Coriolanus Production Photograph). Source: Malcolm Davies Collection, Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Library and Archive, Stratford upon Avon. Image reproduced with permission.

This opening was enormously effective from the perspective of the dearth narrative at work in the play for several reasons. The immediate reason for this was clever timing. Watching the DVD in the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust (SBT) Library and Archive (Coriolanus, 1994), I noted that the grain fell in a steady stream, audible above the music, for about half a minute. A pause followed in which two shadowy figures entered stage left and stage right, closed the two trapdoors in one movement, and left. Next, hungry citizens rushed in, too late. All they could do was scavenge (and immediately devour) odd grains that had escaped, recalling people in television broadcasts gleaning grain on bare, dry fields in famine-struck regions of the world. Driving home the social tensions sketched out in these opening moments, the broken brick-wall and graffiti on another wall behind it (depicting an image of the French Revolution) hovered in the back ground, so that a reminder of the possibility of civil unrest leading to death and destruction was ever present. What was striking about this powerful visual opening statement was not just the falling grain itself, but what the grain left behind it. An empty space centre stage, in which the presence of food was quite literally occluded by two hinged lids, had become an important node in the theatrical ecosystem. As a physical representation of dearth, this device gave added meaning to everything that followed. As Menenius delivered the Fable of the Belly he stood exactly where the grain had fallen, with citizens in a

76  An Ecotheatrical Perspective on Dearth circle around him. How ironic that he should be standing on the coffer lid, thus sealing this metaphorical stomach shut with his own plump patrician weight, as he spoke these important words to the plebeian extremities: ‘For the dearth, | The gods, not the patricians make it […].’ Caius Martius (played by Toby Stephens) also strode across this same void. He stood upon it and paced arrogantly around upon it as he mocked the complaining citizens, wordlessly reinforcing the suggestion that politics, not nature, was the cause of the dearth, and dearth might lead to civil unrest. Meanwhile, in a minor but no doubt quite noticeable stage invasion, unruly grains of corn continued to invade the stage for some time after this key scene. They trickled down from the heavens at intervals in spite of efforts by the props team to stem the flow (Royal Shakespeare Company, 1994). In this beautifully crafted production, dearth as a dramatic force, neatly propelled by grains of corn as ‘vibrant matter’, was actively channelled in such a way as to put unspoken words into the protagonists’ mouths, and to inject subversive meanings running in opposition to what protagonists such as Menenius were saying. Thacker’s second innovation was to stage the play in France in the years leading up to the French Revolution, in which food insecurity brought out by crop failures in the summer of 1788 was one of the catalysts for social unrest (Neumann and Detwiller, 1990, pp.  33–41). This was a potentially powerful direction in which to take the dearth discourse, a dialoguing of text and life events woven into modern-day performance in search of contemporary meaning. It could be described (to paraphrase Jeremy Lopez (2010, p. 25) discussing theatre criticism) as ‘a construction and interpretation of Shakespearian staging and meaning [arising] out of a dialectical relationship between the immediate, vanishing present and once contemporary past’. Fragments of evidence available (in the shape of theatre critics’ reviews) with respect to the reception of this aspect of the production are noteworthy in objecting to the dialectics set up by Thacker. The cross-connection to dearth, hunger, politics and long-run historical cycles of violence was not appreciated by several newspaper critics such as Michael Coveney, Charles Spencer, Bill Hagerty and John Peter (Theatre Record 1994), who variously described this transposition as ‘fatuous’, ‘tiresome’, ‘incongruous’ and ‘quite the wrong setting’. However, all did not agree. For Irving Wardle (1994, p. 690), ‘[f]amine, warfare, plenty […] dominate[d] the stage’ from the moment the two stage trapdoors in Figure 3.1 closed over the grain, to the final blood-soaked moments of the play. Whereas several of the critics cited above resisted the dearth narrative, for Wardle the reverse was the case. Such ambiguity is unsurprising from the perspective in this book: theatrical events are ecosystems and can potentially have ambiguous effects. I now jump forwards almost quarter of a century, to the National Theatre Wales/RSC Pearson/Brookes (2012) production of Coriolan/us, performed in August of that year in Hangar 858, RAF St Athan, Vale

An Ecotheatrical Perspective on Dearth  77 of Glamorgan. The shapeshifter ghosts in this production ecosystem, an open secret no doubt visible to erstwhile spectators of Gododdin and PAX (a striking early 1990s eco-opera discussed in Chapter 5) were the four elements of the old Brith Gof performance alchemy. Action, scenography, music and text fused to produce ‘pell-mell, two hours of uninterrupted, headlong Shakespeare’. Carol Chillington Rutter’s Shakespeare Survey review (2013, p.  391) leaves no doubt about the treatment of the hungry citizens. Not only did they play a prominent role in the text (thanks to Brechtian material woven into the crowd scenes); but spectators got to feel their hot breath up-close and personal: We clustered round. They began a harangue. We backed off. But wanting distance from the ugly snarl, we couldn’t get it. […] We could see down the throats of the Citizens’ fury. Partly because of the injection of Brechtian material into the Shakespearean text, and partly because of the site-specific mode of production, this Coriolan/us gave hungry citizens a voice, thereby falling firmly into the camp of dearth-aware productions. As described above by Rutter, it transmitted that voice through the bodies of the spectators embedded in the very action and scenography of the production, thereby balancing the interests of patricians and plebeians in the whole. Coriolan/us was not ecotheatre defined as theatre that campaigns for the environment, but it can be described as ecoaware, even if unconsciously so, in having put dearth centre stage as an ecotheatrical presence. At first sight, as a scheduled performance based on a pre-existing text (albeit a combination of Shakespearean and Brechtian text constructed for the occasion), attended by at least some regular theatre-goers (theatre critics who reported on it), and performed as part of the World Shakespeare Festival, Coriolan/us recalls theatre staged in conventional spaces and contexts. On paper the environment looked doomed to stay on the page, never to ‘get out of the starting blocks’, to use Chillington Rutter’s (2013) phrase. What got the environment out of the blocks in Coriolan/us was its conception in site-specific, ‘environmental theatre’ mode (see Chapter 1 for the relevance of ‘environmental theatre’ to ‘ecotheatre’). Sketching out ‘provisional distinctions’ for the characteristics of site-specific theatre, Pearson refers, among other things, to the instability of ‘environmental conditions’ within the site, the variable arrangement of the audience, sometimes ‘fluid’, sometimes ‘negotiated in performance’; shifting distances between spectators and performers in the course of the action; the absence of concealment by ‘artifice’; the visibility of ‘previous occupations’ of the site; and the uniqueness of what is happening in performance where it is always as if for the first time’ (Pearson, 2010, pp. 16–17). As described in Mike Brookes’ online archive Coriolan/us was ‘a large scale located promenade theatre event, delivering the text of Shakespeare’s

78  An Ecotheatrical Perspective on Dearth Coriolanus, including extracts from Brecht’s unfinished Coriolan, within the vast space of a decommissioned 1930s aircraft hangar’ (Brookes, Undated). The reasons for ‘welding’ together Shakespeare and Brecht in the context of this play are clear to see. From a dearth-as-shapeshifter perspective the production brought together the writings of two hunger-­sensitised individuals by combining the two texts, thereby connecting this production to inter-generational memories. As discussed in my early draft of this dearth chapter in Ayesha Mukherjee’s (2019) edited volume (­Hudson, 2019), in Brecht’s 1959 post-war adaptation of the play, the opening scene dwells more on food than on the lead protagonist Caius Martius. The context in which Brecht’s adaptation of Coriolanus developed, post-war East Germany where people spent long hours queuing for food, seems to be topical to Brecht’s ideas on the dynamic driving riot. Siting the production in Wales, which was still suffering disproportionately from the effects of the 2007~2010 credit crunch in 2012, brought into the production ecosystem a series of dearth feedback loops likely to connect immediately to present day emotions, as well as potentially stretching back to early (wartime) memories, or extended family memories, for some spectators. The production did a tremendous yet frugal job of magnifying the mob, without employing thousands of extras, by co-opting spectators and their images as the hungry crowd campaigning for corn at the opening. To cite Rutter (p. 390) again: As the massive hangar sliding-door slid open and the 300-strong sell-out crowd […] surged forward, we met ourselves coming towards us. We were being filmed. We were being projected, onto the big screen on the far wall and two small screens closer to us. The physicality of the production was also captured by reviewer Alun Thomas, who described the mood as set from the moment spectators arrived at the performance by the site itself – a ‘hangar squat[ting] with a strange air of menace, bleak, industrial, forbidding’, flanked by abandoned, ‘gaping’ gun emplacements – and ‘subtly threatening, dark ambient music’ played through headphones. Thomas’s review also depicts a surging and ebbing of spectators throughout the performance as they followed the action up-close, and a surging and ebbing of feelings – from repulsion to intrigue to a sense of entrapment. A striking note in Thomas’s review highlights the extent to which spectatorial senses were engaged: Then the First and Second Citizens leap out [of the van] and address us directly, alternately haranguing and threatening. There’s a real air of menace as they brandish baseball bats inches away from us, their lank, greasy hair and unwashed clothes emitting a noxious smell. (Thomas, 2013, p. 52)

An Ecotheatrical Perspective on Dearth  79 Smells have played a regular part, by intention, in past productions of Brith Gof. It is unlikely the olfactory experience described by Thomas was an accidental product of badly stored damp costumes, but it hardly matters whether it was intentional, or not. What matters in this context is that it is a clear case of the environment speaking for itself, in a way that magnified the air of menace projected by the hungry citizens. Dearth, famine and hunger are a consequence of ecological volatility and politics in combination. Those affected by it, or by reperformances of it on stage, are sometimes mentally ‘disconnected’ (Morton, 2017, p.  141) from the inevitable presence of ecological feedback loops, and sometimes fully aware of them. The several productions discussed above can be described as representing different ‘mode[s] of ecological awareness’. Productions that unbalanced the play by giving too much emphasis to the figure of Coriolanus, or too little to the plebeians, can be argued to have pushed dearth to the margins, thereby ironically replicating an element of the problematic hubris at work in Coriolanus the flawed character. Productions that achieved a better balance by giving the plebeians a suitably prominent place in the whole not only made room for the environment on stage in a way that enhanced the production for its spectators. They also contested a culture in which the power systems that distort relationships between society and its ecologically provided food sources can also distort (eco)theatrical ecosystems. Short-run societal fluctuations (such as economic cycles) may sometimes have had an influence on the role played by dearth in these productions, but, as Ninagawa’s 2007 pre-credit-crunch production suggests, dearth-aware productions could also be produced at times of plenty, assisted in this case by a neat trick of visual recycling through mirrors. An interesting subtext in this chapter is the presence of a Japanese-style production in English hands in the group of inconsistent productions, the presence of two Japanese-speaking productions in the group of consistent, thus, dearth-aware productions, and the presence of the NT 1984/5 production in both groups (London and Athens respectively). In the opening sections of this chapter, I suggested that commonalities in early modern and modern food insecurity awareness would be supportive of the reappearance of dearth as an active presence on the modern stage. Another possibility suggested by the later sections of the chapter is that social inequalities embedded in English economic power structures were then and are now a feedback loop running against dearth awareness, thus also ecoawareness, in wealthier sections of society. Perhaps a cultural dislocation, analogous to what can happen when Shakespearian plays are put into completely different thus potentially disruptive contexts, is required to put the environment on stage as a shapeshifter, as opposed to mere scenery. The next chapter picks up the theme of disruption with an exploration of stage invasions, in which the role played by vibrant, sometimes subversive, and often mischievous matter is explored.

80  An Ecotheatrical Perspective on Dearth

Notes 1 Fletcher, A. (2011, p. 123) comments on a similar contradiction: ‘Romantic critics delighted in noting that the disasters of the play could all be traced to crimes against nature […]. [B]ut in performance the play’s artificiality was painfully exposed’. 2 See Mukherjee, A. (2015, p. 15), who refers to Hindle’s (2008) reading of Coriolanus as a ‘staging of debates about causes of dearth’. 3 See, for example, the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2018) Special Report No 15, published in the lead-in to the global climate change talks, COP 24 in Katowice in 2018. On food prices, see Wiggins et al. (2015), and for debates about the nutritional quality of processed food, see Hudson (2019, p. 189) and endnote 5. 4 Ingram, J., Ericksen, P. and Liverman, D. (2010) cite the FAO: a ‘rapid rise in food prices in 2007–8 […] increased the number of hungry people to 923 million’. 5 Ninagawa, interviewed in the Barbican Theatre Programme, observed that he had expanded the cast from 25–40 in order to ‘express’ the idea of the crowd. 6 Dai Ishida played Coriolanus; the ‘Choros’ was played by Satoko Abe, Shie Kubota, Sakai Kohno and Yohei Kobayashi. 7 15 September 2007 was the day UK savers queued round the block to try and get their money out of Northern Rock, thus dramatically marking the start of the credit crunch.

References Archer, J.E., Turley, R.M. and Thomas, H. (2014) Food and the Literary Imagination. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Archer, J.E., Turley, R.M. and Thomas, H. (2012) ‘The Autumn King: ­Remembering the Land in King Lear’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 63 (4) (­Winter), pp. 518–43. Ascher, J., Laszlo, P. and Quiviger, G. (2012) ‘Commodity Trading at a Strategic Crossroad’, McKinsey Working Papers on Risk. Available at: www. mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/dotcom/client_service/risk/working% 20papers/39_%20Commodity_trading_at_a_strategic_crossroad.ashx. Bedford, K. (1992) Coriolanus at the National. ‘Th’Interpretation of the Times’. Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press; London: Associated University Presses. Bennett, J. (2010) Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Billington, M. (2002) ‘Coriolanus Turns Samurai Warrior’, Guardian, 28th November. Billington, M. (1985) ‘Flying the Flag in the Acropolis’, Coriolanus Review, Arts Guardian, 24th September. Viewed in Hard Copy, NT Archive. Billington, M. (1984) ‘Coriolanus Review, National Theatre’, Guardian, 17th December, repr. Theatre Record, IV (1984) (25–6), p. 1129. Bond, E. (1987) ‘Bingo’, Bond Plays 3: Bingo, The Woman, The Stone. London: Methuen. Brookes, M. (Undated) Archives and Chronologies: Performances. Online blog. Available at: http://mikebrookes.com/shame/archive02.html. Chambers, E.K. (1930) William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems, II. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

An Ecotheatrical Perspective on Dearth  81 Chillington Rutter, C. (2013) ‘Shakespeare Performances in England (and Wales) 2012’, Shakespeare Survey Online, 66, pp. 354–94. Churchill, C. (1994) The Skriker. London: Nick Hern Books, repr. 2015. Davies, M. (1994) Coriolanus Production Photograph. SBT Library and Archive, Stratford upon Avon. Available at: http://collections.shakespeare.org. uk/search/rsc-performances/cor199405-coriolanus. De Jongh, N. (2007) ‘This Warrior is Too Wild’, Evening Standard, 7th March. Viewed in Hard Copy in SBT Library and Archive Cuttings. Dobson, M. (2008) ‘Shakespeare Performance in England, 2007’, Shakespeare Survey Online, pp. 318–50. Dobson, M. (2004) ‘Shakespeare Performances in England, 2003’, Shakespeare Survey Online, pp. 258–89. Fingleton, D. (1985) ‘Stage Design’, Arts Reviews, January 1985. Viewed in the NT Archive Press Cuttings. Fletcher, A. (2011) Evolving Hamlet: Seventeenth-Century English Tragedy and the Ethics of Natural Selection. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Gardner, L. (2007) ‘Coriolanus – Barbican, London, Review’, Guardian, 27th April. Available at: www.theguardian.com/stage/2007/apr/27/theatre3. Garner Jr., S.B. (1994) Bodied Spaces: Phenomenology and Performance in Contemporary Drama. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Harlan, M., photographer (2002) Caius Marcus, Greg Hicks in Coriolanus by William Shakespeare. Royal Shakespeare Company Series 23, No. 852. Hindle, S. (2008) ‘Imagining Insurrection in Seventeenth-Century England: Representations of the Midland Rising of 1607’, History Workshop Journal, 66 (1), pp. 21–61. Hudson, J. (2019) ‘Are We Performing Dearth or Is Dearth Performing Us, in Modern Productions of William Shakespeare’s Coriolanus? in A Cultural History of Famine: Food Security and the Environment in India and Britain, ed. by Mukherjee, A., 1st edn. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 185–98. Ingram, J., Ericksen, P., and Liverman, D. (eds.) (2010) Food Security and Global Environmental Change. London: Earthscan. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2018) Special Report No. 15. IPCC. Kershaw, B. (1992) The Politics of Performance: Radical Theatre as Cultural Intervention. London: Routledge. Kinney, A.F. (1993) ‘Textual Signs in the “Merry Wives of Windsor”’, Yearbook of English Studies, Early Shakespeare Special Number, 23, pp. 206–34. Kirwan, P. (2007) ‘Coriolanus (Ninagawa Company) @ The Barbican Theatre’, in UoN Blogs/The Bardathon, 30th April. Available at: http://blogs.­ nottingham.ac.uk/bardathon/2007/04/30/coriolanus-the-barbican-theatre/. Kroll, J. (1985) Coriolanus Review, Newsweek, 14th January. Viewed in Hard Copy, National Theatre Archive. Lamb, H.H. (1977) Climate: Present, Past and Future, 2. London: Methuen. Lee, A. (2013) ‘Coriolanus, Directed by Motoi Miura for the Chiten Theatre Company (Kyoto, Japan) at Shakespeare’s Globe’, in A Year of Shakespeare, ed. by Edmondson, P., Prescott, P. and Erin Sullivan, S. London: Bloomsbury, pp. 47–50. Levy, P. (2010) ‘Age shall not wither her’, Wall Street Journal, 26th November. Available at: www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527487041704045756243 41860535002.

82  An Ecotheatrical Perspective on Dearth Lopez, J. (2010) ‘Academic Theatre Reviewing and the Imperfect Present’ in Reviewing Shakespearian Theatre: The State of the Art, Shakespeare 6:3, ed. by Prescott P., and Smith, P.J. Taylor and Francis Online, pp. 349–55. Marmion, P. (2007) Coriolanus Review Daily Mail, 7th March. Viewed in Hard Copy in Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Library and Archive Press Cuttings. Marsden, S. (2013) ‘Shakespeare Was a Tax-Evading Food-Hoarder, Study Claims’, Telegraph, 31st March. Milligan, M. (2014) ‘Food Banks see “shocking” Rise in Number of Users’, BBC News, 16th April. Available at: www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-27032642. Morton, T. (2017) ‘…and the Leg Bone’s Connected to the Toxic Waste Dump Bone’, Anthology of Consciousness, 28 (2), pp. 135–42. Mukherjee, A, ed. (2019) A Cultural History of Famine: Food Security and the Environment in India and Britain. London: Routledge. Mukherjee, A. (2015) Penury into Plenty: Dearth and the Making of Knowledge in Early Modern England. Abingdon: Routledge. Needham, A. (2012) ‘Pericles in Greek, Shakespeare’s Globe, Review’, Guardian, 30th. Available at: www.theguardian.com/stage/2012/apr/30/ world-shakespeare-festival-shakespeare?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other. Neumann J. and Detwiller, J. (1990) ‘Great Historical Events that were Significantly Affected by the Weather: Part 9, the Year Leading to the Revolution of 1789 in France (II)’, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 71 (1) (January), pp. 33–41. Nightingale, B. (1994) Coriolanus Review, The Times, 26th May 1994. Nightingale, B. (1984) Coriolanus Review, New Statesman, 21st December 1984, repr. London Theatre Record IV (25/6), December 2–31, p. 1135. Pearson, M. (2010) Site-specific Performance. London: Palgrave MacMillan. Purcell, S. (2013) ‘Pericles: Directed by Giannis Houvardas for the National Theatre of Greece (Athens, Greece) at Shakespeare’s Globe’, Review, in A Year of Shakespeare, ed. by Edmondson, P., Prescott, P. and Erin ­Sullivan, S. ­London: Bloomsbury, pp. 161–6. Ratcliffe, M. (1984) Coriolanus Review, Observer, 23rd December 1984, repr. Theatre Record, IV (25–6), p. 1129. Royal Shakespeare Company (1994) Production Documents for Coriolanus, Held in the SBT Library and Archive. Shakespeare, W. (2013) Coriolanus, ed. by Holland, P. London: Arden Shakespeare. Shakespeare, W. (2008) Twelfth Night, or What You Will, ed. by Elam, K. ­London: Arden Shakespeare. Shakespeare, W. (2004) Pericles, Prince of Tyre, ed. by Gossett, S. London: Arden Shakespeare. Shakespeare, W. (1997) King Lear, ed. by Foakes, R.A. London: Arden Shakespeare. Spencer, C. (2002) ‘He was borne to play this role’, Coriolanus Review, Daily Telegraph, 28th November. Available at: www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/­ theatre/drama/3586373/he-was-borne-to-play-this-role.html. Theatre Record (1994) repr. Coriolanus reviews by Michael Coveney, M., Observer, 29th May; Spencer, C., Daily Telegraph, 27th May; Hagerty, B., Today, 10th June and Peter, J., Sunday Times, XIV (11) (29th May), pp. 689–93.

An Ecotheatrical Perspective on Dearth  83 Thomas, A. (2013) ‘Coriolan/us, Directed by Pearson, M. and Brookes, M. for the National Theatre Wales in Association with the Royal Shakespeare Company at Hangar 858, RAF St Athan, Vale of Glamorgan, Wales’, in A Year of Shakespeare, Reliving the World Shakespeare Festival, ed. by Edmondson, P., Prescott, P. and Sullivan, E. London: Bloomsbury, pp. 51–4. Turley R.M. (2013) ‘The Bankster Bard…’ R.M.Turley’s Blog, 1st April. Available at: www.richardmarggrafturley.com/blog/the-bankster-bard. Wall, S. (1984) ‘Problems of Power’, Times Literary Supplement, 28th December. Wardle, I. (1994) Coriolanus Review, Independent on Sunday, 29th May, repr. Theatre Record XIV (11), p. 690. Wiggins S., and Keats S. with Han, E., Shimokawa, S., Vargas Hernandez, J.A. and Moreira Claro., R. (2015) ‘The Rising Cost of a Healthy Diet: Changing Relative Prices of Foods in High-Income and Emerging Economies’, A Report of the Overseas Development Institute. London: ODI, May.

Productions and Performances Mentioned Buffong, M., dir (2012) The Serpent’s Tooth, The Almeida Theatre Company in Association with Talawa Theatre Company. Available at: www.talawa.com/ productions/the-serpents-tooth. Coriolanus (2012) by Shakespeare, W., dir. by Miura, M., Chiten Theatre Company at Shakespeare’s Globe for the World Shakespeare Festival. This Recording Can Be Found. Available at: https://globeplayer.tv/videos/ coriolanus. Coriolanus (2007) by Shakespeare W., dir. by Doran, G., Royal Shakespeare Company at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon [VHS tape and two DVDs]. Performance Recording Held in the SBT Library and Archive, ref. number RSC/TS/2/2/2007/COR1. Coriolanus (2002) by Shakespeare, W. dir. by Farr, D., Royal Shakespeare Company at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon [VHS tape and two DVDs]. Performance Recording Held in the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Library and Archive, ref. number RSC/TS/2/2/2002/COR1. Coriolanus (1994) by Shakespeare, W., dir. by Thacker, D. for the Royal ­Shakespeare Company at the Swan Theatre Stratford upon Avon. [VHS tape and two DVDs]. Performance Recording Held in the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Library and Archive, ref. number RSC/TS/2/2/1994/COR1. Doran, G., dir. (2007) Coriolanus, at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford upon Avon. Press Night: 6th March. Farr, D., dir. (2002/3) Coriolanus by Shakespeare, W., Swan Theatre, Stratford-­ upon-Avon. Press Night: 27th November 2002. Hall, P., dir. (1985) Coriolanus, Revival of the 1984 NT Production at the Herodotus Atticus Theatre Athens. Opening night: 20th September. Hall, P., dir. (1984) Coriolanus at the National Theatre (NT) London. Opening night: 15th December. Howell, J. and Dove, J., dirs. (1974) Bingo, by Bond, E., English Stage Company for the Royal Court Theatre, London. Opening night: 14th August. Available at: https://theatricalia.com/play/a8/bingo/production/n7d. Howell, J. and Dove, J., dirs. (1973) Bingo, by Bond E., Northcott Theatre, Exeter. Opening night: 14th November.

84  An Ecotheatrical Perspective on Dearth Houvardas, G., dir. (2012) Pericles by William Shakespeare, Performed in Greek by the National Theatre of Greece, for the Globe to Globe Festival, at the Globe Theatre London. Available at: www.shakespearesglobe.com/ discovery-space/previous-productions/pericles-1. Jackson, A. dir. (2012) Bingo, a Young Vic / Chichester Festival Theatre co-­ production. Opening night, 16th February. See directorsprogram.youngvic. org/whats-on/bingo. Accessed in November 2018. King Lear: Tyranny, Terror, Tragedy (1983) Elliott, M., dir., Olivier, L., prod. [DVD]. Granada Television. Miura, M., dir. (2012) Coriolanus in Japanese at Shakespeare’s Globe, Chiten Theatre Company for the World Shakespeare Festival. Ninagawa, Y., dir. (2007) Coriolanus in Japanese, at the Barbican, Ninagawa Company for the Complete Works Festival. April. Pearson/Brookes (2012) Coriolan/us, Hangar 858, RAF St Athan, Vale of Glamorgan. First performance: August. (Theatre Programme). Thacker, D., dir. (1994) Coriolanus, the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Swan Theatre Stratford upon Avon. Opening night: 24th May.

4 The Environment in Performance Stage Invasion or Deus ex Machina?

Watching the DVD of Home of the Wriggler (2006) on a small screen, as I did in 2018, is not the same as watching a live performance (Stan’s Cafe 2006–2010). The starring role played by the environment in the guise of the organic and inorganic ‘vibrant matter’ driving the lighting is nevertheless striking. The scenography is described as follows by Stan’s Cafe: The Home of the Wriggler is based on a host of entangled and fractured stories told in the pulsing beam of car headlights. An exploded view of a car’s transmission system serves as a backdrop. Names of the show’s 87-strong fictional cast replace car components. Four actors, dressed down in workwear and parka coats, drive the show on. An exercise bike and twelve speed racer have been customised with dynamos and switches to run seven lights, a kettle and a homemade turntable. A hand-cranked fly wheel powers four more lights mounted on stands, chest-high as if microphones. […] Shake to shine torches help navigate. […] A wind-up phone charger powers a single blue LED. An eco-legend is told. (Stan’s Cafe Blog, Undated. Cited with permission.) The prominent scenographic placing of the ramshackle energy rig described above physically separates stage lighting from fossil fuels in the moment, thereby reminding all concerned of our dependency thereon. In Lear, rocks underfoot shaped the actor’s body to produce senescence in performance. In Wriggler, vibrant matter and human bodies jointly generate a sense of physical vulnerability that could not be more appropriate in the context of this fossil fuel saga. Should the performers tire at any moment and stop moving the scene would be plunged into darkness. They are enslaved by and yet master of this scenography, driving and yet also relentlessly driven by the energy needed to reveal the tale they are telling. Bicycles appear regularly in the context of ecotheatre.1 What is unique about Home of the Wriggler is that the whole comes across as a literal representation of life itself, in the form of the never-ending struggle to produce and consume the wherewithal to stay alive. The story so powerfully told thanks to expanded scenographic effects is as ancient as

86  Stage Invasion or Deus ex Machina? earthly existence as we know it, and yet it is also modern. Theatre critic Terry Grimley (2006) described the production as reminiscent of ‘flies in amber’, but he also thought it was a ‘clever image of some future de-­ powered age’, a trope also in evidence in the final act of Hickson’s 2016 play Oil. Putting Stan’s Cafe’s ‘eco-legend’ in a nutshell, car transmissions and the factories in which they were built engendered a huge societal ecosystem driven by fossil fuel energy. Switch off the energy source and the whole system collapses, tearing into the soft tissue of innumerable human relationships. The legendary protagonists in the play struggled to survive the impossible (herein lies the emotional punch), and the presence of the ‘wriggler’ (an unborn baby, Stan’s Cafe, 2006, 2009, p. 33) begs the question of what is being left for future generations. Home of the Wriggler’s scenography turns electricity into something other than mere stage lighting produced by human technologies. In this play, it is part of the living ecosystem of this theatrical performance. Bennett (2010, p.  47) does not quite ask what would happen to our thinking about theatre: […] if we took more seriously the idea that technological and natural technical materialities were themselves actors alongside and within us – were vitalities, trajectories and powers irreducible to meanings, intentions or symbolic values humans invest in them? On stage, this is precisely what they are, whether proceedings are seen from an ecocritical perspective or not, and in this play, Bennett’s hypothetical scenario describes exactly what is happening. In Home of the Wriggler, electricity (both kinetic and cellular) plays an active part, alongside and within the bodies of the actors as protagonists and the bodies of the protagonists as actors. It is in itself ‘vitality, trajectory and power’. As spectators, we are likely to assign meaning to it, much as I have done in the above paragraphs, but it is not possible to ‘reduce’ the production to mere ‘meanings, intentions or symbolic values’ (Bennett, 2010, see above) because the irreducible, material fact is, the performance as conceived and delivered could not happen without electricity. Whether the show means anything symbolically, or not, is a side-effect of the whole. Moreover, the active presence of electricity precariously generated by human bodies through the medium of a mechanical infrastructure designed by human brains on the basis of physics and chemistry introduces another unspoken presence. This is the energy that usually inhabits 21st-century stage lighting but, in this production, is a ghost, refusing to be banished to the wings: fossil fuel energy. In Home of the Wriggler, the production team set up the scenography in such a way as to usher in environmental ideas. The ghost of fossil fuels is not directly present, in the sense that it is not named in the cast alongside the four actors.

Stage Invasion or Deus ex Machina?  87 Nevertheless, it is likely to be making its presence felt in other spectatorial brains as it did in my own. Considering that Stan’s Cafe may well have set up the ‘eco-legend’ of Home of the Wriggler scenography with the intention of projecting the shadow of fossil fuel energy onto the stage, it may be more accurate to describe it as a deus ex machina rather than a stage invasion. Which term best describes its presence may depend on the overall chemistry between production and reception, and the ecoawareness (or lack of) of all concerned. One person’s stage eco-­invasion can simultaneously be another’s environmental shapeshifter ex machina. In this chapter, I want to explore the idea of stage invasions in the form of the ‘vitality of matter’ as a force that often puts the environment on stage in striking ways, and at the same time thereby successfully drives ‘affect’ (McKinney and Palmer, 2017, p.  12). A stage invasion tends to denote the unexpected and unwanted crossing of the fourth wall by members of the audience, in the form of shoes and other objects thrown in protest or indeed people themselves entering the stage to make their feelings felt. (See, for example, Blackadder, 2003; M ­ cEvoy, 2016.) In this chapter, I argue that the term might also reasonably describe other material incursions, both organic and inorganic, that reshape theatrical events. Regular theatre-goers already know these to be ubiquitous. Examples I have directly and vicariously experienced include birds swooping down to devour spectatorial picnics in open air theatrical performances (exploited for comic effect by quick-witted actors); and a large drop of rain that landed with impeccable timing and an audible ‘splat’ on the head of an actor singing ‘The rain it raineth every day’ (The HandleBards’ Twelfth Night, Rufford Old Hall, 27th July 2018). The corn discussed in Chapter 3 in the context of Thacker’s 1994 production of Coriolanus seemed to have a life of its own, and smelly clothing in the 2012 production Coriolan/us (also Chapter 3) may have been growing mould or other cellular matter. The brief discussion of expanded scenography in the Introduction suggests the physical shape and composition of theatrical sets, together with the surrounding context and textual content (the typical elements of theatrical productions) contain a form of theatrical alchemy, in having the potential to produce the unexpected. There may be more scope for vibrant matter to make itself felt in live theatre outside, but even inside conventional theatre spaces the stuff of scenography is unlikely to be entirely under the control of theatrical production teams. In this chapter, it is my intention to argue for an extension of the definition of the ‘stage invasions’ beyond mere human beings because, from an ecotheatrical perspective, stage invasions must include the incursions such alchemy can produce in the form of the environment as a subversive presence having agency. I contend that ecoconscious productions teams and audiences are likely to be alert to such invasions and indeed to welcome them; other less ecoconscious participants might be surprised, and still

88  Stage Invasion or Deus ex Machina? others may not even notice. As Shakespeare did not say, some are born ecoconscious, some become ecoconscious and some have ecoconsciousness thrust upon them. I will illustrate what I mean by the idea of environmental stage invasions by taking a brief detour to the December 2013 National Theatre production of debbie tucker green’s 2013 play Nut (directed by the playwright in The Shed).2 As I experienced it, it provided a good example of vibrant matter that made itself felt, as a rather unpleasant stage invasion. On the basis that the unexpected presence of the environment, in the shape of smoke, potentially subverted (‘shapeshifted’) the main story line, it is best described as an unplanned, unexpected incursion. On the surface, then, this is a play about the relationship between dysfunctional families, destructive human behaviour and self-harm, thus having nothing to do with environmental politics. The cigarette is the highly sensory means by which self-harming burns are administered, and its visceral efficacy as a prop beyond doubt. In performance, the potential, however, was there for spectators – all too aware of sitting in a pall of secondary smoke – to follow an environmental train of thought. I found myself wondering if actors had to self-harm (start smoking) to get the part (but as a nonsmoker I was aware I might be confusing stage cigarettes with real ones). My sense of deteriorating air quality connected to The Shed as part of the redevelopment plan designed to ‘enhance [the NT’s] relationship with the environment around [them]’ (National Theatre website, Undated).3 Everything was in place to connect damaging human behaviour to environmental harm. I thought it unlikely that this sub-text was intended by the production team, but it was an unavoidable and highly effective ecotheatrical message for the ecocritical spectator uncomfortably aware of the key prop this production plays with – the lit cigarette. In the rest of the chapter, having explored the idea of stage invasions and ecotheatrical dei ex machina through several examples – smoky installations such as HeHe’s (2008) Green Cloud (see also HeHe (2016)) and Andrea Polli’s (2015) Particle Falls, selected ArtCOP21 (2015) climate change installations, particulate pollution as scenery in stage lighting, the 2018 (European Commission) regulatory threat to tungsten-­dependent lighting systems – I will return full circle to the original meaning (human bodies or other vibrant matter entering the performance space at human hands), with a discussion of stage invasions in the name of the environment.

The Ghost of Fossil Fuel Energy Systems – Past, Present and Future Site-specific theatre and installations often actively set out to put ‘technological and natural materialities’ centre stage. As such, they are also well designed to produce other unexpected intrusions. In this section of

Stage Invasion or Deus ex Machina?  89 this chapter, I focus on installations outside theatre buildings, in which human beings exploit ecopolitical sensibilities to let the environment speak for itself. Those discussed below, besides being stage invasions themselves (all the world’s a stage), shine a light on the profligate use of energy and other resources underpinning human society. In the following paragraphs, I thus explore productions in which the ghost of fossil fuel energy in several guises is actively encouraged to intervene by production teams. In my first and second examples, artists and production teams purposefully open the door for the environmental shapeshifter to play through their installations. In my third and fourth examples (reactions to a proposed change to EU stage lighting regulations, and the human stage invasions of the above-mentioned eco-campaigning theatre troupe) the sudden presence of the future ghost of fossil fuels as a shapeshifter acquiring agency at human hands is an uncomfortable experience for some of those involved. As the chapter progresses, it will become clear that Home of the Wriggler is a parable for both. In my first example, a photograph in a reprinted newspaper article (Hehe, 2016, pp. 394–5) from the French newspaper Liberation dated 2 June 2009 (a year of failure in the long sequence of United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC) climate talks (Helm, 2017, p.  43)) looks down on illuminated factory buildings. Above them, the shadowy image of a factory chimney is barely visible against the purple-grey night sky. Hovering over the chimney is a forked green plume of smoke edged in grey, looking for all the world like a giant ghost. Hehe’s (2008) Green Cloud was one of many such site-specific installations by the same team of artists.4 Smoke and other particulate and vaporous matter as shapeshifters in so many senses (in the moment as well as symptomatic of the pollution caused by human energy and resource consumption) are imaginatively performed by artistic installations team Helen Evans and Heiko Hansen. Green Cloud is both described in and represented by their literally and figuratively combustible book Man Made Clouds. As described by Noortje Marres (2016, pp. 357–410) in her Man Made Clouds essay ‘Who Is Afraid of the Green Cloud? Environmental Rendering of Controversy’, the green cloud, which appeared over smoking chimneys in several cities, was connected to energy usage data. The intention was to have the cloud expand as energy usage dropped, and shrink as energy usage expanded. In the presence of the environmental shapeshifter, the best laid plans go astray, and, as Home of the Wriggler suggests, electricity has a life of its own, especially from the ecological perspective in which everything is connected to everything else. Marres (2016), in his essay in Man Made Clouds, cites the text of a 2005 email sent to Helen Evans by a representative of Helsinki Energy, who explained that the green cloud could not contain the intended idea, because ‘all consumption is offset, second by second, from a common “pool”, so that the entire network

90  Stage Invasion or Deus ex Machina? is interconnected’ (p. 368). The Green Cloud at first sight seemed to be a deus ex machina, deliberately produced by means of an arrangement of electrical equipment attached to a power generation plant, thus, an installation plot device literally engineered on the basis of sophisticated machinery to change the course of the action. For some of those who saw it, it may well have had the effect of having them reflect on their energy consumption and subsequently make changes in their relationship with electricity. However, a much bigger and more powerful force for change is under way in real life, facilitated by the above-mentioned network arrangement. This is the parallel shift towards electrification and green energy, a world in which ‘almost everything [is] electric and most electricity [is] solar’, described by Helm (2017, p.  70). If this systemic shift continues, it has the power to change the material substance producing the green cloud, literally turning it into the green ghost of fossil fuel energy past, present and future. This same shift would also produce a new ambiguity in the meaning of the cloud. If all the energy driving the cloud were solar energy, should the green cloud grow or shrink with more electricity usage, and grow or shrink with less usage? It depends on the point of view. The idea of smoke as a vibrant theatrical presence is also in evidence in my next example. American artist Andrea Polli’s installation Particle Falls (ArtCOP21, Paris, 2015) was a stream of light reflecting levels of air pollution in the city. It was set up in such a way as to appear to be cascading down the side of the American Centre for Art and Culture like a waterfall each evening. It was a thing of beauty to look at, but horrific to contemplate as indicative of pollution levels in the air breathed by its spectators. Paris city dwellers might be inclined to describe both kinds of pollution (greenhouse gases and particulate matter) revealed by such installations as an invasion of the city. The smallest of the particles revealed by Polli’s installation also invade human bodies, possibly even reaching in to brain tissue, and into the placenta of expectant mothers. Thus, this radical, ecocampaigning ArtCOP21 installation was not only a stage invasion in its own right, but also threw light on politically sensitive societal ‘stage invasions’. Stepping back to look at the broader context, ArtCOP21 (2015) was an astonishing artistic movement that ran alongside and surrounded the COP21 climate change talks in Paris.5 It was nothing less than an entire ‘site-specific’ ecofestival in which ecoinstallations and other climate-­ change-related cultural activities seemed to take over the city of Paris.6 Over 550 events took place in Paris itself, and the reach of this festival extended internationally: 54 other countries also staged performance events and artistic activities immediately before and during the talks. Some of the artistic installations that were purposefully put in the way (thus, invaded the ecopolitical stage) of a large global group of politicians in Paris in December collectively and individually had the effect of

Stage Invasion or Deus ex Machina?  91 empowering the environment to speak for itself, in effect calling attention to the human invasion of many planetary systems. It is impossible to do justice to this event here, for it deserves a book of its own. A few examples can suggest just how important this event was and indeed how vibrant performative environmental art is as a field. Several ArtCOP21 water installations were among those I found striking on the basis of photographs and recordings on the internet. Pedro Marzorati (2015) plunged into a beautiful pond in the Parc Montsouris watched by white peacocks, to install a curving line of blue human figures, in the creation of Where the Tides Ebb and Flow. A line of human heads and torsos gracefully rose and fell in a still body of water, in a mirror image of Gormley’s (2005) Another Place, but with a different meaning: the human race of the future not patiently waiting tidal ebbs and flows, but drowning under the effects of anthropogenic global warming as future water-levels rise. In another aqueous installation artist Michael Pinsky (2015) had divers collect pieces of rubbish from the bottom of the Ourcq canal, raising each one so that it broke the surface, in an installation entitled Breaking the Surface. These pieces – abandoned shopping trolleys, refrigerators, bicycles and other objects – were illuminated at night with floodlights on either side of the bank and accompanied by a sound track produced by the same objects, available to spectators through their mobile phones.7 A punning installation contrived by Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, together with geologist Minik Rosing and tugboat captain Kuupik Kleist (a former prime minister of Greenland) was Ice Watch (Eliasson and Rosing, 2015). It consisted of 12 ice-bergs set out in a circle in the Place du Pantheon. Spectators literally and figuratively watched time run out for icebergs and humans, in a powerful trope for global warming. This was not the only project to focus on ice. At the Place de Fontenoy, in a striking installation, Rechauffement (warming) composed by artist Rafael De Pool, the 13 letters of the word ‘rechauffement’ were formed of water taken from the world’s 13 most polluted rivers (the Salween, Danube, Rio de la Plata, Ganges, Indus, Nile, Murray-Darling, ­Mekong, ­Yangtse, Citarum, Amazon and ­Orinoco) and frozen. I did not see this myself but in my imagination, as the ice melted, polluted water, bubbles of putrid air and pieces of microbe-infested plastic rubbish would be slowly released. Human beings in Paris engaged with non-human organic and non-­ organic matter arranged by human artists with the aim of letting the environment speak, and demanding a response, but the movement did not stop at producing an environmental spectacle. The Ice People (The Bone Ensemble, 2015), for instance, were found ‘roaming Paris, looking for help in solving one of the world’s most important problems’ (The Culture Trip Website, 2015). This initiative was described to me by Adam Ledger (Artistic Co-director) as ‘a playful stage in a much larger project’,

92  Stage Invasion or Deus ex Machina? which culminated in a six-month UK tour of a participatory, family theatre piece called Where’s my Igloo Gone? (Bone Ensemble 2017–2018). As I write, this production is still on tour. One Heart One Tree (Naziha Mestaoui with music by Philip Sheppard, Here Now, 2015) a ‘citizen work of art’ took a problem-solving approach: a light-show projected from the Eiffel Tower, which was ‘transformed into a virtual forest of light’ for five days. Here, spectator-actors could contribute ten euros to contribute a tree to a global network of seven reforestation programmes round the world. Their name would appear briefly in lights on this iconic monument, leaving behind a physical arboreal legacy of over 50,000 trees.

Let There Be Light What happened to me as a spectator in Nut, together with HeHe’s (2016) green cloud and indeed their book (made of tobacco leaf paper readers are invited to ‘smoke’ on the back cover), and Polli’s ArtCOP21 particulate installation collectively provide an ironic reminder of the vexed history of smoke as an element of scenography on stage. In my third example, shapeshifting vibrant particulate matter reshapes itself as a stage invasion, having initially been invited onto the stage as part of the scenery. Svoboda welcomed air-borne impurities as an element of lighting design in his 1969–84 production of Verdi’s Sicilian Vespers. Christopher Baugh (2005, 2013) describes the dramatic impact of 1960s technology developments in quartz halogen lighting some years before anyone began to worry about energy intensity and CO2 emissions: [L]ight not only achieved the material quality of a wall, but also and primarily achieved the aim of becoming a potent dramatic force within the drama. Impurities, dust and residual smoke in the atmosphere enhanced the visibility of the beams of light. (p. 139) Between 1969 and 1984, the air became cleaner, and, without vibrant particulate matter light no longer had the ‘material quality’ of a wall. Instead, water and electricity combined, in the form of ionised water droplets, allowed production designers to play creatively with atmospheric hazes, but Svoboda reportedly looked longingly back to the days when people were allowed to smoke in theatres (p. 140). In some contexts, cigarette smoke (or perhaps something masquerading as cigarette smoke) might be regarded as an unwanted and potentially irritating stage invasion, but in the 1970s and early 1980s, this literal scenographic actant was welcomed onto the stage. Its deeper effects on human society, which arguably went a very long way beyond the status of mere scenery, seemingly went unnoticed.

Stage Invasion or Deus ex Machina?  93 Fast forward from Home of the Wriggler (2006) through ArtCOP21 (2015) to 2018, and a new development for lighting technology. Outrage was expressed by theatre designers, two years on from an EU proposal, Ecodesign Working Plan 2016–2019 (European Commission, 2016), as the implications of these 2016 plans for the theatre industry hit home. 2018 was the year when newly manufactured tungsten halogen bulbs could no longer be sold, and the theatre industry would lose its exemption from replacing energy-hungry tungsten bulbs with newer, energy efficiency technology – light-emitting diodes (LEDs). The replacement of incandescent light bulbs with energy-saving light bulbs has become a fact of life in people’s homes (thus is part of the culture spectators bring with them to the theatre) in the UK and Europe. The body of European legislation driving the transition towards green lighting in 2018 was merely taking a further step towards the roll-out of low energy lighting. As described by the EU, swapping new lamps for old will save energy, reduce energy emissions and reduce lighting costs for the user (European Commission, 2018). Moreover, thanks to the publicity of theatres themselves; at the time of writing, theatre audiences are likely to be familiar with theatres ‘greening’ their operations through the adoption of efficient lighting technology such as LEDs. They might find the several reactions reported in the press surprising. Why was this proposal, that all lighting equipment sold after September 2020 must meet stringent energy efficiency targets thereby spelling the death knell for tungsten filament lighting, regarded as so disastrous in theatrical circles? Here, I explore two answers to this question. My first response is likely to come across as a provocation, but it is not the end of the story. All will be revealed below. First, then, the potential provocation. Enter the environment as a shapeshifting stage invasion, alias tungsten and halogen as vibrant matter, onstage and offstage in the theatre design industry. Over many years, some theatre buildings and the productions within them have become heavily invested in tungsten-dependent lighting systems, thereby building up an entire ecosystem of potential vulnerabilities for which the narrative in Home of the Wriggler turns out to be a paradigm. If this, the story of the role played by tungsten in theatrical scenography, were a whodunnit, the answer might be that the theatre industry itself (rather than the EU regulator) unwittingly dunnit. (I realise this is an extremely provocative thing to suggest, but, read on.) Baugh (2005, 2013, pp. 93–143) describes the transformation of the role of light on stage in two chapters entitled ‘The Century of Light’, thanks to technological developments in the last two decades of the 19th century when gas was replaced by electricity in stage lighting. Electric lighting prompted scenographers to play with colour, even to developing ‘sound and vision’ scores. By 1916, ‘tungsten-filament gas-filled electric bulbs’ produced sufficiently intense light ‘to enable Prometheus to be produced according to the instructions of the composer’ (p. 98).

94  Stage Invasion or Deus ex Machina? The above morsel of history is a reminder that tungsten filaments combined with gas have been part of the theatrical furniture for just over a hundred years, which is about as long as car manufacture was part of the furniture in Longridge, Birmingham, thematised in Home of the Wriggler. Tungsten filaments, gas and other chemicals have also been significant change-agents for human society and of course the environment. With the benefit of hindsight, long-established habits based on an old infrastructure can be said to have put in place the mechanisms for a regulatory stage invasion like the one now feared by theatre companies and theatre practitioners, from the moment tungsten lighting was widely adopted. In the second of his two chapters on lighting, Baugh (2005, 2013) examines the trajectory of development followed by light in the theatre, thereby identifying vibrant matter in its more obvious guise: […] ways in which light in theatrical performance has gone beyond its function of illumination, of creating atmosphere and even dramatic revelation, and has taken on a material quality in its own right, and in a variety of ways, has become a collaborator in the creation of performance. (Baugh, 2005, p. 118) How ironic, then, that Baugh, describing energy intensive lighting, in terms that recall environmental theatre and expanded scenography (see Introduction), could also be describing exactly what was afoot on the Stan’s Cafe stage in the form of the ramshackle energy rig in Home of the Wriggler. There, too, the lighting was a ‘collaborator in the creation’ of the production. As a player in the performance, it was symbiotically present, driving the energetic pedal-turning, hand-cranking, arm-­shaking actions of the human performers, in exchange for visibility furnished to them so that spectators could participate fully in the performative ecosystem. As a player in the performance, electricity (Bennett’s ‘technological or natural materialit[y] as [actor]’) also shaped the human bodies in performance, much as production-line labour had done in the past in requiring of the protagonist-employees the tedious repetitions of the production line. The second (less provocative) answer to the question of why the proposed EU change is regarded as so disastrous in theatrical lighting circles is also found in the Stan’s Cafe’s energy parable. As Home of the Wriggler suggests, sudden change – the closure of the Longridge plant and the loss of thousands of jobs in that case – can be extremely damaging. Stage invasions in the form of sudden regulatory shifts can, similarly, do harm because one of their effects is to introduce step changes for which the very system that produced those invasions may not be ready. A letter to the Guardian from Richard Pilbrow (2018), President of the Association of Lighting Directors, suggested that the speed of the change,

Stage Invasion or Deus ex Machina?  95 allowing no time for adaptation, was problematic. He also thought that the legislation took no account of energy efficient adaptations that had already been made, in an industry that has (as reported by the London Mayor a decade earlier, in 2008, for instance) been working on its carbon emissions for some time. A number of voices in the theatre industry embarked on a campaign against the tungsten-halogen ban. The Stage described the ‘shock £180mn’ (Smith, 2018) replacement and scrappage cost. The Wired network commented ‘The EU’s new lighting rules are physically impossible for theatres’. Smith (2018) cited London theatre producer and co-owner Nica Burns as referring to the demise of halogen tungsten lighting as a ‘catastrophe’. Julie’s Bicycle (2018) described potential ‘conflict’ between energy efficiency targets and ‘overall aims to improve resource efficiency’. The problem thrown into the limelight by the proposed change in theatre lighting regulation is captured in microcosm in Home of the Wriggler. In the Birmingham auto manufacturing industry, we see damage done to people caught up in the sudden change wrought by the closure of a major car factory. However, the stories told by the protagonists in Home of the Wriggler and the manner in which they are told also demonstrates that people and families are capable of strenuous adaptations to new conditions, given the opportunity. Stage lighting rigs in traditional theatre buildings are not dissimilar to manufacturing equipment, in requiring a substantial capital investment up front. They then last for decades unless rendered obsolete by a significant change in operating conditions, which could include the shrinkage or disappearance of audiences, a rise in energy costs, a change in function of the theatre building itself, or a new regulation, as in this case. It is not the intention of this chapter to make a case for or against the EU proposal, but rather to point out that the potential for sudden change (whether in the form of manufacturing closures in the auto industry or the potential regulatory obsolescence of high energy lighting on stage or indeed the so-called ‘stranding’ of fossil fuel assets discussed in the finance industry (Helm, 2017, p. 39, 61, 198)) is present as soon as a ‘system’, be it industrial or theatrical, becomes large and potentially inflexible in the context of widespread societal dependencies. The challenge, however, is that energy and lighting systems are complex enough to be described as metaphorical ecosystems, and that means environmental regulation of such systems can have potentially ambiguous effects, as pointed out in the theatrical media (Masso, 2018). The tragedy of environmental destruction, or indeed that of societal damage arising from measures undertaken to protect the environment, needs to become the ‘comedy of survival’ (Meeker, 1972). The playful manner of the human stage invasions conducted by a witty eco-campaigning troupe of performers, in my next example, may turn out to be a potentially constructive eco-paradigm.

96  Stage Invasion or Deus ex Machina?

Stage Invasion or Deus ex Machina? Two years on from the Deepwater Horizon disaster, a group of players known initially as the Reclaim Shakespeare Company, and more recently calling themselves ‘BP or Not BP’, initiated a protest (still ongoing) about the Royal Shakespeare Company’s (RSC) funding relationship with the oil company BP. (In the following, I follow the naming convention adopted by S. Bennett (2016, pp. 166–76) and refer to the troupe as Reclaim Shakespeare.) The ecotheatrical activities of this troupe of campaigners seem, at first sight, to be nothing more than a series of stage invasions by human beings. Yet, from the ecological, ecosystemic perspective discussed in the introduction, it can be said that theatrical alchemy in the overall ecosystem of the RSC’s ‘shipwreck plays’ (Comedy of Errors (dir. Zuabi, 2012), Twelfth Night and The Tempest, (dir. Farr, 2012) prompted a fossil fuel-driven crossing of the fourth wall that began in the audience and propelled the environment onto the stage itself. In this and several of the other examples discussed in this chapter, the stage invasion is nothing less than fossil fuel energy, or perhaps its ghost, treading the boards thanks to the neatly devised ventriloquism of human actors. In 2012, the group staged their inaugural protest against oil company sponsorship of the World Shakespeare Festival and other activities by intervening theatrically just before live performances. What was Reclaim Shakespeare responding to? Pages four and five of the official Royal Shakespeare Theatre (RSC) World Shakespeare Festival Guide (2012) are a good place to start in the search for a catalyst. These pages describe three plays presented within the Festival as a trilogy – the ‘shipwreck plays’ – comprising The Comedy of Errors, Twelfth Night and The Tempest, under the rubric ‘What country, friends, is this?’ The corporate logo is just to the right-hand site of this title, with a picture of a stranded, rusting boat on a beach immediately below. This single fact about the programme connects to the terms defined in the Introduction in a number of ways. The logo in this context becomes an ecotheatrical shapeshifter in itself. In revealing the ecosystem in which oil drilling and theatre are both situated, it does nothing new or surprising. It does so, however, in a context designed to connect the idea to emotional feedback loops in the audience, much as described in Chapter 3 in the context of Shakespeare’s ‘outing’ as a grain trader in times of austerity. In both examples, the environment spoke out in unexpected ways thanks to a shift in the (human) emotional landscape. The World Shakespeare Festival Guide (2012) describes this production of the trilogy as exploring themes of ‘migration, displacement ansd exile’. Two natural disasters in which human energy systems (oil exploration and nuclear generation) played a part took place in the two years before the Festival. Deepwater and Fukushima both brought

Stage Invasion or Deus ex Machina?  97 about deracination, displacement and, for those directly affected, exile from their former way of life. It is thus difficult not to see irony running through this framing of the plays. Reviewer Kate Bassett (2012, p. 478), describing the Twelfth Night stage invasion by two protesters, referred sympathetically to funding pressures arts organisations encounter during economic downturns. She nevertheless found it ‘ironic that an offshore disaster triptych should be backed by BP.’ She neatly captured cognitive dissonance running through the production when, in the same review, she described the approach of director David Farr (2012b) as ‘politically correct’. Here she seems to be referring to the fact that the production covered the full gamut of reactions to incomer-protagonists thrown onto the mercy of incumbents by environmental turbulence (a theme revisited in Chapter 5), ranging from ‘xenophobic persecution’ to acceptance. It is unlikely others did not also experience conflicting feelings. Indeed, a short video explaining the origins of Reclaim Shakespeare suggests they lay in the audience – the introductory speaker on the Reclaim Shakespeare video describes how angry she felt about the sponsorship. Her feelings might not have developed to take the ecotheatrical format described below had she not met a friend who was looking for an opportunity to do some acting after a ten-year break (Reclaim Shakespeare, 12 November 2012). Enter Reclaim Shakespeare, representing the outraged spectator, with a series of imaginative stage invasions cleverly positioned as curtain-­raisers to the main performance. Each of the interventions was itself a small theatrical event. Immediately before a main house performance a small number of their performers staged a short piece of radical theatre. The players played with the words of Shakespeare in the short songs and scripts. Their playfully conceived peaceful protest was flexibly accommodated by the RSC whose stage they briefly encroached upon. At the same time, on behalf of those holding similar views to their own in the playing company and the audience, they contested the idea that large fossil fuel corporations should fund the arts. The timing of their interventions made them noteworthy: the first (Performance One on the company website) took place on 23 April (the day on which Shakespeare’s birthday is conventionally marked) at the start of the World Shakespeare Festival. The Tempest (Farr, 2012a) was, perhaps appropriately, the launch of the campaign. The aim, as described by Reclaim Shakespeare itself, was ‘to challenge the RSC over its decision to accept sponsorship from BP in the wake of the Deepwater drilling disaster and […] decision to start extracting […] tar sands in Canada’ (Reclaim Shakespeare, 23 April, 2012a). The second (Performance Two) took place on Press Night, 25 April, at the performance of Twelfth Night, the third (Performance Three) on 27 June just before the Comedy of Errors at the Roundhouse, Camden, and there was another on 29 September (Performance Six), once again just before Twelfth Night. Woven around the Shipwreck Plays were other

98  Stage Invasion or Deus ex Machina? stage invasions made in the same spirit: One before Romeo and Juliet in Baghdad (Performance Four, London), another before Much Ado About Nothing (Performance Seven, London), and further two stage invasions that can reasonably be described as site-specific eco-interventions in the British Museum in London. The full list of performances in the troupe’s inaugural year is listed in Table 4.1. There is enough evidence from three sources to suggest that they succeed in making their point and sparking debate: the reports of Reclaim Shakespeare, comments in reviews and comments in production documents of the RSC. Theatrical protest, to be effective, needs to engage spectators in the auditorium. Reclaim Shakespeare had an important point working in their favour from the first moment: their connection to something people already cared about. This, in this context, is nothing less than the widely respected British institutions of William Shakespeare and the RSC. The 23rd April intervention just before The Tempest can still be viewed on

Table 4.1  Reclaim Shakespeare – Eight Stage Invasions in 2012 Performance No. and 2012 Date

Venue/Occasion

Title

Performance One, on 23 April

Royal Shakespeare Theatre (RST), Stratford upon Avon, Shakespeare’s birthday performance of The Tempest RST, before Twelfth Night

BP or Not BP? The Debut Performance of the Reclaim Shakespeare Company.

Performance Two, on 25 April Performance Three, 27 June

The Roundhouse, London, before Comedy of Errors

We strike again, with green and yellow melancholy. ‘Out damn logo!’ The Reclaim Shakespeare Company at the Roundhouse. Stage invaded at ‘Romeo and Juliet in Baghdad’ performance to challenge BP sponsorship. RSC at the British Museum.

Performance Four, 28 June

Riverside Studios, London, before Romeo and Juliet in Baghdad

Performance Five, 20 July

Inside the British Museum’s ‘Shakespeare, Staging the World’ exhibition Back at Stratford upon Avon Alas, poor RSC! How hath for Twelfth Night BP Baffled Thee! Noel Coward Theatre, in Much Ado about BP. the Interval of Much Ado about Nothing Shakespearean flash mob, in ‘Out damned logo!’ the British Museum Theatrical flash mob hits British Museum.

Performance Six, 29 September Performance Seven, 23 October Performance Eight, 18 November

Source: bp-or-not-bp.org/performances-and-films.

Stage Invasion or Deus ex Machina?  99 Reclaim Shakespeare’s website (Reclaim Shakespeare, Undated, Performances and Films, Performance One). From the evidence on the recording, there seems to be little doubt it was an effective performance from the perspective of the audience. The odd chuckle is audible as the performance begins. There is no heckling during the speech – the audience is listening in between the small noises of people still coming to their seats and settling down before the main performance. On the final words of the speech, ‘Out damned logo’, laughter, a few cheers and a few booing noises are audible on the recording. When the audience hears the invitation to tear the logo from their programme, there are a few shouts (hard to say whether positive or negative), several cries of ‘No’, a sound that could have been ‘shhh’ or ‘sssss’ and a cry of ‘Rubbish’, along with the general buzz created by this invitation. Perhaps the most telling point (apart from the silence during the short performance) is that the final applause (in response to ‘We hope you liked tonight’s show’) was enthusiastic and smiling faces were visible on camera. Whatever their view on the subject matter (and views both way seemed to be present), the audience seemed to have enjoyed the interlude. Another perspective is provided by reviews. Newspaper critic Clare Brennan (2012, pp. 479–80) described the Twelfth Night 25 April performance (Reclaim Shakespeare, 2012b) as ‘embarrassing’ albeit holding a ‘certain charm’. The recording (Performance Two) is no longer available on the troupe’s website. Even if the quality of the singing performance was what she found embarrassing (having seen it, I can say it was not as polished as the other performances), I note that she is not the only critic to be embarrassed by environmental campaigning. The environmental dimension of The Skriker was described as embarrassing by a 1994 critic, as discussed in Chapter 8. Not all were so luke-warm about the intervention. Libby Purves (2012, 6 May 2012, p. 478) found the entry of two eco-campaigners singing about ‘green and yellow melancholy’ and ‘Deepwater Despair’ an experience to remember. Patrick Carnegy (2012, p. 479) wondered if it was an unusual beginning to the performance proper until the usher intervened. For Jane Edwardes (2012, p. 479), their intervention seemed not to detract from the enjoyment of the event overall. She commented favourably on the RSC’s letting them complete their mini performance, and it seemed to add an element of excitement immediately before the striking opening in this production, in which the protagonists emerged from a tank of water under the stage. The 29 September recording on the troupe’s website (Performance Six) confirms a similar pattern of reactions. Appreciative audience noises are audible on the recording as the yellow-gartered lead player strutted around and spoke his lines undeterred by an usher who can be seen trying to persuade them to leave the stage at the edge of the picture. There were occasional booing noises but overall the audience seemed to enjoy the short performance. There was laughter on the lines ‘Some

100  Stage Invasion or Deus ex Machina? are born green some achieve greenness, and some purchase greenness by sponsoring cultural events.’ There was also an occasional belly-laugh on lines such as ‘Oil’s not as sweet now as it was before,’ and on the lead protagonist’s dramatic fall to his knees on ‘Out damned logo’. At the end, there were laughs and claps and a decent final applause with a few whistles. Overall, then, Reclaim Shakespeare succeeded in delivering performances that worked as theatre, in the context of something people cared about on the evidence of strong reactions both ways – heckling to protest against the protest as well as cheers and laughter.

Noises Off – How One Production Company Perceived the Other Evidence as to the potential efficacy or otherwise of the troupe’s ecotheatrical interventions is also found in RSC (2012a) production documents, in which the 23rd April performance just before The Tempest, described above, was annotated. This backstage perspective briefly described the company’s use of Shakespearean quotations, the Elizabethan costume of one of the performers, the filming of the performance by another member of the company from the auditorium and heckling from the audience. This is consistent with what can be seen on Reclaim Shakespeare’s recording, except that moments of applause went undocumented. Later commentary (RSC 2012b), six months on, with regard to a September stage invasion (Performance Six) before Twelfth Night, suggested some progression in the dialogue created by this event. The relaxed reaction of the creative team included someone with the presence of mind to be expected of a smoothly functioning theatre company removing the shotgun as the stage invasion began. The improved audibility of the Reclaim Shakespeare actor was noted, and the green and yellow ruff favourably described. The impression conveyed by the above is that the RSC’s company of actors and production team had become used to the stage invasions. Practiced adaptation to the unexpected (this is after all the very bread and butter of theatre companies) suggests that the protest might have been brushed off by its targets, had the stage invasions stopped in 2012.

Ecotheatrical Ecosystems at Play: A Comedy of Survival Reclaim Shakespeare carried out a total of eight interventions in the context of the World Shakespeare Festival and the Olympic year in 2012 (See Table 4.1). Their ‘grand finale’ was an eye-catching ‘double, double, oil and trouble, tar sands burn and greenwash bubbles’ performance accompanied by a chanting flash mob at the British Museum (Performance Eight, 11 January 2013). However, they did not stop here. By the end of 2018, they had executed an impressive total of 52 performative interventions.8

Stage Invasion or Deus ex Machina?  101 The formula at work in 2012 – short, dynamic, witty performances designed to appeal to spectators and, at the same time, carrying a strong message in respect of relationships between fossil fuel industries and the funding of the arts – continues to characterise the troupe’s theatrical stage, museum, gallery and concert hall invasions. They are often eye-catching, humorously delivered performances as a glance at any of them will show. In Performance Nine (Tate Britain, 19 January 2014), a painting of actress Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth came to life, and wellknown Shakespearean lines were adapted in the scripted six-minute discussion. The usual Macbeth paraphrase in the final words was followed by enthusiastic applause from the spectators who had gathered to watch. In the documentary-style recording of Performance Thirty-­One, (18 April 2016) the troupe is described as having gatecrashed a performance of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet. They presented their own LGBT performance of Ramira and Juliet. Juliet stood up in the balcony and pleaded emotionally of the violinist on stage: ‘Ramira, ramira, wherefore art thou Ramira,| ‘Deny thy sponsor and refuse thy shame.’ Shots panning across the audience suggest some clapped and some did not, hinting, once again, at views running both ways in the audience. Some theatre protests described by theatre historians, such as McEvoy (2016) and Blackadder (2003) are generally not long-lived, and they can be violent affairs. This long-running protest is characterised by good humour and charm, and this, following Meeker’s argument, may be conferring staying power. It is thus not entirely surprising to find the troupe still going strong seven years on from their first 2012 performance at the time of writing. The troupe itself seems to be composed of an energetic team of acting, singing, scenographic and dramaturgical talent. Not only that, but it is connected to a network of like-minded organisations (on their website the company lists Art Not Oil Coalition, Liberate Tate, and PCS Union (Reclaim Shakespeare, Undated, About)). The group is ready to support others in their campaigns. Overall, their activities recall the ecosystem discussion of Chapter 1. A small organisation or theatre company by itself might not have the power to change anything other than what is directly under their control. As a group, this and similar organisations may be able to build up significant influence in the overall energy ecosystem by means of their long, collaborative, humorous campaign of stage invasions.

Environmental Stage Invasions and Site Specificity Looking back on this chapter, an important point about the ecological ‘stage invasions’ embedded in many of the productions and installations discussed above is that the context in which they ‘happen’ shapes the role played by the environmental shapeshifter. In this respect, they are reminiscent of site-specific performances (discussed in the next chapter).

102  Stage Invasion or Deus ex Machina? They are as described by Pearson (2010, p. 4, cited in Chapter 1): ‘conceived for, and conditioned by, the particulars of found spaces’ and inseparable from their sites, the only contexts in which they are ‘readable’. Theatrical protests are not the same as site-specific theatre: the ‘found spaces’ are after all theatres themselves rather than ‘former sites of work, play and worship’. Nevertheless, meaning is inseparable from the site in which stage invasions happen, whether they are human or non-human in origin.

Notes 1 Bicycles feature regularly in the context of theatre companies seeking to be ecotheatrical. Meg O’Shea (2012, p. 137) describes a Canadian cycling theatre company that took a play about sustainability on tour. She examines ‘multiple layers of “performing Sustainability” (as actors on stage, as cyclists, as members of a collective, as public figures “walking the talk”). In the course of the London Cultural Olympiad, Tree of Light (dir. Stewart Collins, 2012) a ‘gigantic industrial 50ft structure’ was lit by LEDs powered by means of bicycles and rowing machines set up within the structure by Electric Pedals. Chapter 7 describes the work of cycling theatre company The HandleBards, formed in 2013. Angelaki (2019, p. 38) notes that Katie Mitchell (2013) directed Macmillan’s climate change play Lungs in Berlin (renamed Atmen) powered by the actors and back stage staff on static bicycles. (See Chapter Six.) Mark Arends (2014) directed At the End of Everything Else, carbon neutral puppet theatre driven by pedal power (also engineered by Electric Pedals) for theatre company Make Mend and Do. 2 The Shed was National Theatre’s temporary replacement for the Cottesloe during refurbishment. I saw Nut on 5 December 2013. 3 ‘The Shed: About Us’ on the National Theatre website, at: theshed.­ nationaltheatre.org.uk/about-us#.UqRe3TIgGSM. Accessed 8 December 2013. This link no longer exists. For further information about The Shed see: www. haworthtompkins.com/work/the-shed and https://www.thestage.co.uk/ news/2013/nts-shed-named-winner-2013-empty-space-peter-brook-award/. 4 Hehe (artist partnership Helen Evans and Heiko Hansen) took Cloud Crash to the Manchester Science Festival (MSF) 2016; three installations (Airbag, Burnout and Diamonds in the Sky) recreated, respectively, a microclimate, air pollution and artificial clouds (MSF website.) 5 From an ecological perspective, a key point about ArtCOP21 is that it was launched by a collaboration of organizational nodes: Cape Farewell, COAL and Julie’s Bicycle. These networks connected to yet other organisations involved in ARTCOP21 including NoPassport, The Arctic Cycle, and Theatre without Borders. Since 2003, Cape Farewell (‘committed to the notion that artists can engage the public in this issue’ (Cape Farewell website/about)) has organized expeditions designed to look at ‘arctic science, sustainable island communities, urban regeneration and cleantech industries’ (Cape Farewell website/art.) Artists join the expeditions alongside scientists. The Cape Farewell website lists some one hundred and fifty ‘creatives’ – artists, poets, writers, broadcasters, musicians and performers, who joined twenty-six scientists and twenty-two ‘informers’. 6 There were many striking theatrical productions and installations in the arts festival that ran alongside COP21. Ecotheatrical productions included Doppelgangster’s TITANIC (a large-scale site-specific performance);

Stage Invasion or Deus ex Machina?  103 Doppelgangster (DEAD) (an online video series), The Eleventh Hour and Oxygen Support (‘radical protest performance’ at the Grand Palais during the ‘controversial COP21 Solutions Exposition’) (Cape Farewell website, Doppelgangster). 7 The consumerist trope of the shopping trolley appears in other ecotheatrical performances such as National Theatre’s production of Greenland (2011) and Brith Gof’s Los Angeles (1990–93). 8 The numbers refer to the numbered list (latest at the top) at https://bp-ornot-bp.org/performances-and-films/.

References Angelaki, A. (2019) Theatre & Environment. London: Macmillan, Red Globe Press. Bassett, K. (2012) The Shipwreck Trilogy (The Comedy of Errors, Twelfth Night, The Tempest) Review, Independent on Sunday, 29th April, repr. Theatre Record, XXXII (9), p. 478. Baugh, C. (2005, 2013) Theatre, Performance and Technology. The Development and Transformation of Scenography. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. Bennett, S. (2016) ‘Sponsoring Shakespeare’, in Shakespeare’s Cultural Capital: His Economic Impact from the Sixteenth to the Twenty-first Century, ed. by Shellard, D. and Keenan, S. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 163–79. Bennett, J. (2010) ‘A Vitalist Stopover on the Way to a New Materialism’, in New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency and Politics, ed. by Coole, D. and Frost, S. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 47–69. Blackadder, N. (2003) Performing Opposition: Modern Theatre and the Scandalised Audience. Westport, CT: Praeger. Brennan, C. (2012) Shipwreck Trilogy Review, Observer, 29th April, repr. Theatre Record, XXXII (9), pp. 479–80. Carnegy, P. (2012) Shipwreck Trilogy Review, Spectator, 5th May, repr. Theatre Record, XXXII (9), p. 479. Edwardes, J. (2012) Shipwreck Trilogy Review, Sunday Times, 6th May, repr. Theatre Record, XXXII (9), p. 479. European Commission (2018) Memo – New Ecodesign Rules for Lightbulbs, Applicable from September 2018. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/energy/ sites/ener/files/memo-light_bulbs_applicable_from_september_2018.pdf. European Commission (2016) Communication from the Commission: Ecodesign Working Plan 2016–2019. Brussels: EC, 30th November. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/energy/sites/ener/files/documents/com_2016_773.en_.pdf. Grimley, T. (2006) ‘Home of the Wriggler Review’, Birmingham Post, 27th January. HeHe (2016) Man Made Clouds. Orleans: Editions HYX. Helm, D. (2017) Burnout: The Endgame for Fossil Fuels. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Hickson, E. (2016) Oil. London: Nick Hern Books. Julie’s Bicycle (2018) ‘Response to the New Draft Regulations on Lighting ­Proposed under the Ecodesign Directive 2009/125/EC as Part of the ­E coDesign  Working Plan 2016–2019’, 30th April. Available at: www.­ juliesbicycle.com/news/eu-stage-lighting.

104  Stage Invasion or Deus ex Machina? Marres, N. (2016) ‘Who Is Afraid of the Green Cloud? Environmental Rendering of Controversy’, in Man Made Clouds, ed. by Evans, H. & Hansen, H. (HeHe). Orleans: Editions HYX, pp. 357–410. Masso, G. (2018) ‘EU Offers Concessions on Lighting Proposals that threatened to “devastate” theatre’, The Stage, 26th October. Available at https:// www.thestage.co.uk/news/2018/eu-offers-concessions-lighting-proposalsthreatened-devaste-theatre/. Mcevoy, S. (2016) Theatrical Unrest, Ten Riots in the History of the Stage, 1601–2004. Abingdon: Routledge. McKinney, J. and Palmer, S. (eds.) (2017) Scenography Expanded: An Introduction to Contemporary Performance Design. London: Methuen Drama. Meeker, J.W. (1972) The Comedy of Survival: Studies in Literary Ecology. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Pearson, M. (2010) Site-specific Performance. London: Palgrave MacMillan. Pilbrow, R. President, Association of Lighting Directors (2018) ‘EU Rule Could Leave Theatres Dark’, Letter to the Guardian, 29th April. Purves, L. (2012) Shipwreck Trilogy Review, The Times, 28th April 2012, repr. Theatre Record, XXXII (9), p. 478. Reclaim Shakespeare (2012a) ‘Protesters take to the Stage at RSC Over BP Sponsorship’, 23rd April. Available at: https://bp-or-not-bp.org/2012/04/23/ protesters-take-to-the-stage-at-rsc-over-bp-sponsorship/. Reclaim Shakespeare (2012b) ‘We Strike Again, with Green and Yellow ­Melancholy’, 26th April. Available at: https://bp-or-not-bp.org/2012/04/26/ we-strike-again-with-green-and-yellow-melancholy/. Reclaim Shakespeare (Undated) About. Available at: https://bp-or-not-bp.org/ about/. RSC (April 2012a) The Tempest Production Documents. Files held in SBT ­Library and Archive. RSC (September 2012b) Twelfth Night Production Documents. Files held in SBT Library and Archive. Viewed in Hard Copy on Site. Smith, A. (2018) ‘Editor’s View: The Lamps are Going Out All Over Europe’, The Stage, 19th April. Stan’s Cafe (2006, 2009) The Home of the Wriggler, Unpublished Play Script. Obtainable in Hard Copy from the Company. Stan’s Café (Undated) Home of the Wriggler. Stan’s Cafe Blog. Available at: www.stanscafe.co.uk/project-home-of-the-wriggler.html. World Shakespeare Festival Guide (2012) Royal Shakespeare Company.

Productions, Performances and Installations Arends, M., dir. (2014) At the End of Everything Else, Make Mend and Do. Available at: www.makemendanddo.com/at-the-end-of-everything-else.html. ArtCOP21 (2015) A Global Festival of Cultural Activity on Climate Change. Cape Farewell and COAL, September–December. Available at: www.­ artcop21.com. Accessed in November 2018. Bone Ensemble (2017–2018) Where’s My Igloo Gone? Co-directed by Adam Ledger, A. and Dowse, J. UK tour. Available at: www.theboneensemble.co.uk. Bone Ensemble (2015) The Ice People. Paris: ArtCOP21. Available at: https://­t heculturetrip.com/europe/france/paris/articles/21-unmissableenvironmental-art-events-at-cop21/.

Stage Invasion or Deus ex Machina?  105 Collins, S., dir. (2012) Tree of Light, London Cultural Olympiad. Music by ­Orlando Gough. Available at: www.electricpedals.com/tree-of-light. De Pool, R. (2015) Rechauffement, Gardens of Unesco. Paris: ArtCop21. ­Available at: www.artcop21.com/events/rechauffement/. Eliasson, O. and Rosing, M. (2015) Ice Watch. Place du Pantheon, Paris ­A rtCOP21. Available at: www.artcop21.com/events/8122/. Farr, D., dir. (2012a) The Tempest, as Part of the Shipwreck Trilogy, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford upon Avon. RSC. First night: 30th March. Press Night: 25th April. Farr, D., dir. (2012b) Twelfth Night, as Part of the Shipwreck Trilogy, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford upon Avon. RSC. First night: 8th March. Press Night: 25th April. green, d. t. (2013) Nut. London: Nick Hern Books. Gormley, A. (2005) Another Place. Crosby Beach, visited in July 2018. The HandleBards (2018) Twelfth Night, Rufford Old Hall, Lancashire, 27th July. HeHe (2008) ‘Green Cloud’, in Curating Cities, a Database of Eco Public Art. Available at: http://eco-publicart.org/nuage-vert-green-cloud/. Home of the Wriggler (2006) by Stan’s Café. This DVD recording is available from the company. Marzorati, P. (2015) Where the Tides Ebb and Flow, Parc Montsouris, Marzorati and Global Warming Producciones, for Paris ARTCOP21. Available at: www.artcop21.com/fr/events/where-the-tides-ebb-and-flow/. First installed in Holland in 2008, Kielzog Festival, Waterlopboos Park. Mestaoui, N. (artist) and Sheppard, P. (musician) (2015) One Heart, One Tree, for Here Now, NGO Actor of Citizen Mobilization. Paris: ArtCOP21. Available at: www.1heart1tree.org/COP21/. Mitchell, K. dir. (2013) Atmen (Lungs by Macmillan), Schaubuhne Berlin. Pinsky, M. (2015) Breaking the Surface. A co-production of La Villette and COAL. La Villette – Canal de L’Ourcq, Face a la Geode. Paris ARTCop21. Available at: www.artcop21.com/events/leau-qui-dort/. Polli, A. (2015) Particle Falls. Mona Bismarck American Centre. Paris: ­A rtCOP21. Available at: www.artcop21.com/events/particle-falls/. Reclaim Shakespeare (2012) ‘New Film: Behind the Curtains of the Reclaim Shakespeare Company’, 12th November. Available at: https:// bp-or-not-bp.org/2012/11/12/new-film-behind-the-curtains-of-the-reclaimshakespeare-company/. Reclaim Shakespeare (Undated) Performances and Films. Available at: https:// bp-or-not-bp.org/performances-and-films/. Performances One, Two, Six, Eight, Nine, Twenty-Eight, and Thirty-One are discussed in this chapter. Stan’s Cafe (2006–2010) The Home of the Wriggler, dir. by Yarker, J., mac Birmingham and Warwick Arts Centre (2006); A.E. Harris, Birmingham (2009) and on tour (2009–2010). Available at: www.stanscafe.co.uk/project-homeof-the-wriggler.html. Stan’s Cafe (2003–) Of All The People in All The World. First Performances: Coventry (Warwick Arts Centre) and Birmingham, 2003. Available at: www. stanscafe.co.uk/project-of-all-the-people.html. Zuabi, A.N. dir. (2012) The Comedy of Errors, as part of the Shipwreck ­Trilogy, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford upon Avon. RSC. First night: 16th March. Press Night: 25th March.

5 Environmental Theatre, Site Specificity and Theatre Ecologies

Those who enter a Meadow Meander (Kershaw, 2014) to follow random pathways in the maze created by other humans wandering through plant life growing underfoot are asked to follow two simple rules. At crossroads in the meandering maze, the only direction of travel is straight ahead. At T-junctions, the meanderer can choose between left and right. Should he or she choose correctly, they may discover the open secret of the ecological aspect of Earth drawn in the pathways of the Meander as a puzzle. A birds’ eye view would disclose the answer immediately. From the ground, it can only be guessed at, but important clues to its identity lie in the two above-mentioned rules. On this occasion, still other clues lay in strategically placed display cases in which seeds and grains stood in for animal life forms. In a fusion of engineering and representation, an installation entitled Of All The Creatures Across the Globe (Stan’s Cafe, 2014), a variant on the more widely known touring installation Of All the People In All the World (Stan’s Cafe, 2003–), punctuated spectators’ trajectory through the maze-like Meadow Meander. In this chapter, the reader is invited to meander with me through the 2014 creative labyrinth of ideas devised and conjoined by Kershaw and James Yarker (Artistic Director, Stan’s Cafe), as an entry-point to this chapter’s exploration of relationships between site-specific theatre and installations, environmental theatre and ecotheatre. At the core of the chapter is an ecocritical exploration of selected site-specific productions of the theatre company Brith Gof, founded by Lis Hughes Jones and Pearson. The chapter turns full circle in coming back to Stan’s Cafe, to take an ecological perspective on the company’s touring installation Of All The People In All The World. The superficial disconnectedness of juxtapositions in this chapter about environmental theatre and site specificity is deceptive. In the ecosystem of ideas in play in this book, a grassy maze on Warwick University Campus in 2014 spun off in the direction of Stan’s Cafe’s ‘Rice Show’; grains of rice connected to grains of wheat falling into the coffers of the rich in Coriolanus and Coriolan/us, grains of wet sand sucking at the feet of Brith Gof’s Gododdin warriors and sand blowing in the wind in Antony Gormley’s (2005) Another Place on Crosby Beach. The environmental shapeshifter – simultaneously stage

Environmental Theatre, Site Specificity  107 invasion and deus ex machina in these ‘alternative and uncompromising ways of representing the world in which we live’ (Pearson, 2019) as I ­directly and vicariously experienced them – is what brings such productions together in this stage of my ecotheatrical journey. Walking round the fragrant, softly sonic pathway of Kershaw’s Meadow Meander in the summer of 2014 on the campus of Warwick University, I stared down and drank in textures and patterns, looking for subtle signposts – mostly crushed stems and ears of grass pointing the way to go. I ignored distractions – buzzing insects, a ladybird scrambling out of the way, other meanderers in my peripheral vision, a fox peeking through the fence, two girls taking a break to plait their hair and transparent boxes of seeds standing in for animal life from other continents. Gradually, I recognised the secret as the rhythm of blood coursing round a living body, carrying oxygen and unexpected human passengers with it. As those who have experienced a Meadow Meander will know, this was not the ecological open secret enclosed in the envelope handed out to participants, which I shall not disclose. The Meadow Meanders as I experienced them, and as they are described in Kershaw’s writings, are a good example of phenomenologically experienced ecotheatrical performances, in which everything is connected to everything else. Kershaw (2015, p. 130) captured spectatorial responses to the experience, in a sequence of text that reads like a stream of consciousness experience. In ‘Earthrise Repair Shop, Devon, 2011’ people described feeling an ‘urge not to follow the path’; a sense that things might be ‘gathering towards a spasm that never comes’, a sense of ‘being pulled along’. A 2012 St George’s Field Meander in Leeds evoked the following reaction: the soles of my feet open out, tingling as though in touch with the rhythm of the field. […] I feel as though I were touching the scalp of the earth through the fronds of grass leaving damp on my fingertips. (p. 130) Someone else, in Devon, imagined a mass migration northwards of people ‘looking for a habitable climate’, and in Warwick, someone else said of the animals in Stan’s Cafe’s installation, in a very different reaction to my own: ‘in my imagination pigeons, jaguars and locusts formed their own dance […]; a fox exchanged a keen enquiring look with us’ (Kershaw, 2015, p. 282). Kershaw’s Meadow Meanders are shapeshifters in a very physical sense for their participants, and the participants are also shapeshifters of the earthly system they form by the collective pressure of footsteps. The Meanders are ecological, thus profoundly ecotheatrical in conception, as well as in their effects on those who travel through them, which potentially go far beyond whether or not they solved the puzzle. I did

108  Environmental Theatre, Site Specificity not do so, but the answer I came up with turned out to be an amusing instance of ecoefficacy on the oblique. If I could live through my first Meander experience again, I might take more notice of the fact that I had not read the question properly. Bodily circulation systems are not usually described as an aspect of earthly ecological systems, notwithstanding the point that physics, chemistry and biology all play a part in the way matter in flux, organic other otherwise, behaves. However, getting the answer wrong turns out to be even more interesting in the context of this book. With hindsight, I can see that the seeds in display cases, ‘distractions’ I had dismissed to the margins of my attention span, were doing their job as ‘vibrant matter’. Seeds, grains and other foodstuff stood in for animals – ‘all the world’s wild jaguars’, ‘one of each species known to live in the oceans’ (Stan’s Cafe (Undated) website photographs) – in Of All The Creatures Across The Globe in this joint meandering installation devised by Kershaw and Stan’s Cafe (2014). In a perfect example of ecological dei ex machina, seeds in display cases standing in for all the creatures across the globe had invaded my subconscious and led me down the garden path, so to speak, to the wrong answer to the Kershaw’s ecological puzzle. As ecoconscious theatrical engineers, Kershaw and Yarker could be said to have created an ‘installation plot device literally engineered on the basis of [a sophisticated ecological design] to change the course of the action’ (cf. the description of Hehe’s Green Cloud in Chapter 4 of this book). Neither Kershaw nor Yarker could have predicted the pathway such engineering might lead spectators down, but the outcome for me – an unleashing of the environmental shapeshifter to play tricks on human imaginations – is a classic example of ecotheatre in the all-round sense discussed in this book. Sadly, the ecosystemic structure drawn by hundreds of pairs of feet including my own on Tocil Fields, Warwick University, was occluded, as I directly observed in 2016, by building-site fencing and ear-splitting earthmoving equipment in a spectacular example of one system overwhelming another. However, all the feedback loops it created have perhaps not been obliterated. Firstly, because the Meander remains etched in the memory of those who took part and in the archival material in Kershaw’s writings. Secondly, because when one Meadow Meander ends several more can begin, and ideas can travel. The Meander conceived and constructed on the prairie in Iowa by Kershaw and Susan Haedicke (2015–6) is a case in point. Thirdly, because, as I discovered for myself, the spectator-actors who participate in the Meanders can be affected by them in unexpected ways. When the term site-specific theatre was originally coined in the 1980s, it was intended, commented theatre critic Andy Field (2008), to describe ‘the relationship to the local environment’ drawn out in some performances, but not imposed on that same environment by the terms

Environmental Theatre, Site Specificity  109 of the production. Had Field written his article in 2014 he could have used the same words to describe the Meadow Meander experiences discussed above. However, Field refers to the ‘amazing’ work of Brith Gof in site-specific theatre. The surprising discovery I made in in the equally amazing Brith Gof archive (held in the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth) was an alliance between two seemingly disparate ideas. Ecotheatre effectively harnessed to environmental theatre turned out to be characteristic of some of Brith Gof’s early 1990s site-specific work. The ‘operational’ definition of site-specific performance cited at the end of Chapter 4 in this book (Pearson, 2010, p. 4) emerged from Brith Gof’s experience of putting together several large-scale works such as Gododdin (Brith Gof and Test Dept., 1988), PAX (Brith Goff, 1990, 1991a, 1991b) and Haearn (1992).1 PAX is directly relevant to this book as a ground-breaking ecotheatrical production, and Gododdin as the battleground out of which the search for ecological peace (‘pax’) grew. These two large-scale events were conceived and formed over a long period of time in an intensely creative crucible in which the found and the fabricated, the material and the ethereal, produced a powerful performance ecosystem and, indeed, a performative runaway warming system for performers and spectators. In the following paragraphs, I am going to tease out the development of the environmental shapeshifter present in two guises within the Brith Gof ecosystem: as a material presence in the scenography, and as small seed which germinated and grew sufficiently from around the late 1980s to play the lead thematic role in the absolutely stunning eco-opera, PAX, produced by the company in the early 1990s. The environmental shapeshifter is still identifiably at work in both forms over quarter of a century later in more recent work by Pearson and Brookes, in productions such as Coriolan/us (see Chapter 3) and a production that has begun (Pearson and Brookes, 2018a and b) and will come to fruition (Brookes, Forthcoming) through 2020 – the Storm Cycle.

Brith Gof: Ecotheatrical Environmental Theatre? Archival evidence indicates that PAX’s creative roots reach back to a time of turmoil as reflected in the famous sketches by Francisco Goya (1967), Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War). These grim, ironically captioned drawings (published in 1863, thirty-five years after Goya’s death) inspired the substantial cycle of twelve Brith Gof ­(1987–1989) productions, Disasters of War. Documents in the company’s archive suggest that PAX and the experimental work Los Angeles which laid the ground for it and toured internationally (e.g. Brith Gof, 1990–1993a, 1990–1993b, 1990–1993c) were an attempt by the company to escape the clutches of the grim, brutalising war theme. Thus, it

110  Environmental Theatre, Site Specificity seems to have been conceived as a change of register, from war as the core theme to peace. However, the content of some scenes in both works recall torture inflicted in the name of war, and indeed PAX itself was described by the company as the ‘culmination’ of the Disasters cycle (Brith Gof, Undated, b). What was completely different about both Los Angeles and PAX, relative to the earlier productions, was the overt environmental message. What do I mean, then, in stating that Brith Gof’s ‘ecotheatrical opera’ came out of their Disasters series? Let me be quite clear about this: I found no evidence in Brith Gof’s archival papers in the context of the development of Disasters of War (1987–9) to suggest that an overt environmental message was intendedly embedded in Disasters, notwithstanding inevitable environmental embeddedness of warfare in general, and Brith Gof’s specific scenography, further discussed below. H ­ iroshima, the second in Brith Gof’s series of twelve Disasters, did not seem to contain any directly intended note of ecoconsciousness, notwithstanding the point that fears of nuclear contamination in the broader context of the time played an important role in the development of the environmental movement. With the advantage of twenty-twenty hindsight, and from the particular perspective at work in this book, the well-known Goya sketch of Men Fighting with Cudgels is conspicuous by its absence in the production devising-notes in the company’s archives, considering the widely read 1990 ecological reading of it by Michel Serres (pp. 1–2) that was about to appear in print in French even as Gododdin’s final performances took place, and Los Angeles and PAX were in the wings. As described by Serres, ‘The painter, Goya, has plunged the duellists kneedeep in the mud. With every move they make, a slimy hole swallows them up’. He describes two dualisms – the two individual combatants, and the ‘pugnacious subject’ fighting his corner versus the ‘bond of combat, so heated it inflames the audience’. He goes on to identify a third protagonist in the fight: But aren’t we forgetting the world of things themselves, the sand, the water, the mud, the reeds of the marsh? In what quicksand are we, active adversaries and sick voyeurs, floundering side by side? Perhaps grains of wet sand sucking exhaustingly at the feet of Brith Gof’s tired, cold, mud-besmeared Gododdin actors played a part in shaping the eco-operatic direction the company would follow. Such speculation is not verifiable, but I thought the sheaf of press clippings held in research and preparation papers kept by Lis Hughes Jones hinted at ideas already in the air somewhere. I found an article cut from The Times in which naturalist Alex Shoumatoff (1989) reports back on the high-­profile 22 December 1988 death of environmentalist Chico Mendez. (Book reviewer James Brooke (1990) discussing new titles by science reporter

Environmental Theatre, Site Specificity  111 Andrew Revkin (1990, 2004) and Shoumatoff (1990) in the New York Times described the shot that killed Mendez as having ‘echoed round the world’.) Also in the same Brith Gof file is an article by the well-known environmental journalist Charles Clover (1989) entitled, ‘Where There’s Smoke…’ in which photographs taken by the crew of the space craft Discovery (Nasa website, 1988)2 captured the ‘colossal’ extent of rainforest burning ‘described by one Brazilian conservationist as nothing short of “biological holocaust”’. Just as pictures of planet Earth taken from outside the planet have helped foster environmentalism (Kershaw’s Earth Rise Repair Shop above-mentioned recalls Earthrise, first photographed from space on Christmas Eve 1968), a collision of environmental destruction and arm-chair space travel may mark early creative seeds from which PAX would grow. At the core of Brith Gof’s 20th-century work (including Los Angeles and PAX) were the terrible things people do to other beings in their determination to obliterate those who are different. An early work of the company, Gernika! (Brith Gof, 1983) captured a narrative frame that was at work through the lifetime of the company: disproportionate force is used by one group of people to exterminate the other in the name of racial homogenisation, wiping out all in its path – civilians, women, children, language, culture and environment – with as much pain and humiliation as could be contrived. Gododdin, a collaboration with the music group Test Dept (evocatively described as an ‘industrial percussion group’ by Pearson (2019)), was also based on the true story of a massacre, preserved in an important morsel of Welsh literary history, Y Gododdin. 3 Some of the ideas in this production also echo through Stan’s Cafe’s (2006–2010) Home of the Wriggler (see Chapter 4): Gododdin […] was created to be presented in the 100 by 40-meter engine shop of an abandoned car factory in Cardiff – at least in part because the site represented the disappearance of the industrial economy, which echoed the decline of the ancient civilization giving way to new forces. (Aronson, 2018, loc 3526) So far, so human, apart from the materials that went into this ­production – huge iron sheets, old cars lined up like tanks ready to do battle and copious amounts of water and wet sand. (Heavy-duty earthmoving equipment was required to arrange the sand before performances.) These ingredients combined to forge an inevitably resource-heavy environmental setting. Considering that Gododdin drew inspiration from Desastres de la Guerra it seems all too appropriate that PAX, the battle for the planet, should have followed on from a duelo a capotazos (with apologies to Goya).4 For Gododdin was a running battle in water and

112  Environmental Theatre, Site Specificity wet sand in which humans waged war on other humans and the stuff of the Gododdin scenography was the third protagonist, the environmental shapeshifter against which performers literally (thus all the more performatively) battled. Then, once the war was lost and won, came the hard grind of rearranging the physical elements of the scenography for the next night. From a 21st-century perspective, with several decades of climate change talks now in the past, this can be seen as deeply ironic. Whether this point was apparent at the time is known only to those who were present. The preparation work for PAX took place through a series of smaller, earlier site-specific productions. Core to trialling and developing the ideas in PAX was Los Angeles, which premiered in a disused brewery deep in the valley of South Wales in March 1990, and the following year travelled to the Glasgow Mayfest. The narrative arc in Los Angeles is simple: two angels fall to earth, they encounter two manipulators who educate feed, clothe, physically abuse and generally train them for dysfunctional ways of life on earth. The angels try to get their message across, but, frustratingly, do not speak in a language mere earthlings can understand.5 In the end, they return to their immortal life in the heavens, leaving behind them the trappings of the consumerist human existence. In a neat ironic touch, one angel was carried up in a shopping trolley and the other in a cardboard box, dropping material possessions they no longer needed behind them as they went. Theatre critic Joseph Farrell, reviewing the Glasgow Mayfest 1991 production for The Scotsman thought that the show had ‘nothing to do with the Californian city and everything to do with the arrival of celestial beings’. However, information brochures provided for potential partners or hosts in the same year in Brith Gof’s archive include a description of the American city Los Angeles as a place where ‘communities build endless cities in their image’, ‘where everyone is an alien’ and where the city, which ‘stretches to the horizon’ is a ‘desert in which to carve a landscape where survival is possible’. This thread of meaning was not invisible to all critics. Pablo Zunino, writing for Diario de la Nacion (Argentina) suggested in response to the November 1992 Buenos Aires production, that such terms could describe ‘Los Angeles or any other big city’. Even if everyone in the audience did not appreciate the pun, there is little doubt that audiences of Los Angeles saw an ecological message and engaged with it. Michael Coveney (1991), reviewing the Glasgow Tramway Mayfest production and constrained by limited space, was relatively factual in describing Brith Gof as ‘a Welsh company of ten years standing who create sculptures in space and light, with an ecological message’. Nevertheless, a quasi-poetic moment in his brief, compressed description of Brith Gof’s representation of planet Earth as a ‘wind-strewn wasteland’ hints at a deeper emotional engagement.

Environmental Theatre, Site Specificity  113 For  critic  Penny Simpson (1990) who reviewed the very first performance of the company in the old Whitbread brewery in Rhymney for the iconic Performance Magazine (1990, pp. 73–4),6 flying angels Marc Rees and Mike Pearson ‘managed to sustain an extraordinary impact on the audience’ by ‘working in the elements of air and earth’. She also noticed bats ‘flitting in and out of the rafters’, and ‘natural ­elements – water, rocks, lilies’ in contact with the ‘technical world’ in Cliff ­MacLucas’s ‘distinctive scenography’. Ways in which the environmentas-­protagonist played through the striking aerial choreography, music and scenography is at the core of her review and suggests a spectator carried along by the performance, and unconsciously conscious (cf.  Gormley) of the embeddedness of the ‘performance environment’ (to borrow A ­ ronson’s 2018 phrasing) in the natural environment. In another example of an emotionally engaged in response to the Argentinian production, Z ­ unino (1992) wrote: The audience is enveloped in a stifling cloud, formed by gushes of smoke from a ventilator […]. Sheets of newspaper pile up […] and are hopelessly swept up with brushes. The hall is saturated with the smell of disinfectant. He conveys what he saw in factual mode – ‘smoke from a ventilator’, ‘swept up with brushes’ and ‘smell of disinfectant’. However, he goes well beyond this to convey an emotional, visceral reaction (‘enveloped’, ‘stifling’, ‘gushes’, ‘hopelessly swept up’, ‘saturated’). He does not merely explain what the message was for him, as a spectator, but reperforms for the reader how it got through to him in phenomenological terms. Ecosystems, including performative ones, can overshoot, and sometimes, for critics in Argentina, watching the groundworkers torture the angels was an experience that was too intense to tolerate. From the ecotheatrical perspective in this book, Brith Gof’s modus operandi, in the example of Los Angeles, engages the environmental shapeshifter in the form of performative ‘runaway warming systems’ created by a powerful fusion of human bodies, sound and scenography. There could be no more powerful way of communicating the environmental message – itself a visceral response, on the part of the company, to inter-racial conflict and the disasters of war. Los Angeles went on tour several times, nationally and internationally, between 1990 and 1993, whereas the large-scale production for which it prepared the company ran just three times between 1990 and 1991. PAX was devised for promenade performances in existing cathedral buildings or in other found spaces with room to create a scaffolding cathedral. It premiered as a seated production in St. David’s Hall Cardiff on 20–21 September 1990, and two important promenade productions followed. It ran for four nights in the former shipbuilding factory of

114  Environmental Theatre, Site Specificity Harland and Wolff for the Tramway Theatre Glasgow (19–22 September 1991); next, PAX came to Aberystwyth Railway Station for three performances, running from 16 to 18 October 1991. PAX was designed to produce awe in its spectators by dint of its amazing vertical scale, and yet, at the same time, to deliver an up-close personal experience for individual spectators on the ground. In Cardiff, as described by Pearson, the scenography was constructed to project the performance towards spectators, perhaps as a middle path between a seated performance (of necessity in Cardiff) and Brith Gof’s more usual participatory promenade style: The aisle of a gothic cathedral was built to scale in scaffolding, jutting obliquely from the stage into the auditorium, the suspended performers hanging in the arches and swinging out over the heads of the audience. (Pearson, 2010, p. 69) The subject matter of this ecological opera was, as discussed above, intended as a step away from disasters of war towards peace. However, the company encountered the environmental entanglement Goya depicted, as a feedback loop running in the opposite direction: PAX depicted humans directly doing battle with the environment, only to find themselves sinking into warfare with each other and other beings trying to invade their space. Grainne O’Kelly (1990) cited PAX librettist Lis Hughes Jones in a preview just before its premier as describing a conundrum: ‘how we could talk about world peace if we are constantly at war with our own planet’. She also observed that PAX would not necessarily provide answers. In its theatre programmes PAX was subtitled as ‘A reflection on the state of the planet in ten movements’. The rubric just under this heading was the above question: ‘Can we speak of world piece when we have declared war on the planet?’ Its impact, as a piece of ecotheatre, is beyond doubt on the basis of direct reference to the environmental subject matter in reviews. ‘PAX gave a daring visual treatment to environmental issues, turning performance into parable in exhilarating and at times quite stunning ways’, commented Simpson in a long-form review published several months after the event (1991, pp. 51–2). ‘The ecological crisis has rarely been so forcefully or imaginatively portrayed’, wrote the Western Mail’s Nicole Sochor (1990), of the Cardiff production, in an immediate response. She noted that the audience, seated in St. David’s Hall, rather than standing as they would normally be, gave this performance a standing ovation. The question is, what was it about this production that made it so ecoeffective from the perspective of spectators? In the following paragraphs, drawing further on production archives, I briefly describe the

Environmental Theatre, Site Specificity  115 production in terms of the four elements running through Brith Gof’s archive documents – text, music, scenography and action.7 The text at the core of the PAX narrative is the story of angels who descend through a hole in the ozone layer to return to Earth, only to discover that it has become poisonous to them.8 Land, air and water have become toxic. They are captured, tortured and imprisoned – helplessly slung from the scaffolding in plastic bags. They break free and take their revenge, wreaking havoc on the earth’s environment before returning to heaven. Woven through this narrative are two further elements: a dialogue in song between a Welsh mother in the last years of her life, and her astronaut son; and a spoken recitation of facts drawn from climate change science. The PAX libretto was sung by four vocalists to music composed by John Hardy (1991): the angel, the scientist, the mother and the astronaut. The angel, who is ‘the voice of the physical performers’, draws on the words of other earlier biblical messengers, sung in soprano in Welsh, the language of the angels, understood by few. The scientist ‘recites the scientific facts of the carbon cycle and global warming’, in ‘the majority language, but will the majority hear them?’ The astronaut (who has forgotten his mother tongue) sings about his new perspective on the planet: I didn’t really see you |Until I stood a long way from you.’ […] ‘When we were at Alltuchaf | I used to look up at the sky and think | I’m looking at infinity. | It isn’t infinity at all. | It’s a thin seam of dark blue light. (Brith Gof, 1991a, Theatre Programme) His mother, back on planet Earth, grapples with the new perspective provided by her son’s words, as she moves towards the end of her life. At the end of the libretto, mother and son each sing in their own language, the same words given a different meaning as they each move on to different futures: A phan ddaw gwlith ar ddiwedd nos, | Fyddwn ni’n barod am heddwch? And when the dew comes at the end of night | Will we be ready for peace? Simpson noticed the rich texture of the music and the ecological thread woven through the soundscape, much as she had noticed the fusion of nature found and fabricated in Los Angeles: ‘Choral sounds were played alongside rock tracks and recordings of whales and elephants in a powerful collage of sounds which brilliantly underpinned the actions of the angels, from their opening balletic movements that took place 40 feet [up].’ The scenography made a clear demarcation between the spiritual

116  Environmental Theatre, Site Specificity world of heaven and the environmental hell on earth created by humans. As described by Simpson (1991, pp. 51–2): There was no questioning the huge gulf between the two worlds above and below: what was marked was the degree of unnaturalness prevalent in the polluted earth below the pared-away purity of the aerial dimension, evoked in the spiritual symbol of a medieval cathedral. The scenography of PAX was carefully structured. At the core, physically and poetically, was the cathedral, ecotheatrically transformed and reinforced by the liturgy of the cathedral, ancient and modern, in music and words. Thus, the perimeters of the world of PAX were set by ideas embedded in earthly ecologies: the structure of planetary physics (revisited in Chapter 6), the passage of time and cultural representations of them in human society. Hence: the architectural placing of musicians and the four key vocalists. These four occupied high stages at the four points of the compass and, together with the other live musicians, make up a circle with twelve components. (Brith Gof, Undated, a) The sheer scale of the Cardiff scenography can be understood by the effort needed to build it: a team of twenty-four scaffolders took some fifteen hours to create the astonishingly beautiful cathedral depicted in Figure 5.1. Optical distortion allows the imagination to reperform, many years later, what the St. David’s audience may have experienced, thanks to scenographer Clifford McLucas’s striking axonometric line-drawing. In real-world cathedrals, the laws of physics improbably suspend tonnes of stone in soaring ethereal designs. McLucas’s bare-bones design turns out to be nothing less than biomimicry improbably revealed by scaffolding poles. When I visited Aberystwyth Railway Station in 2018, also in pursuit of PAX on-site, it was to experience yet another time slippage, thinking back to the astonishing ecotheatrical transformation imaginatively engineered by Brith Gof in October 1991. A railway station at the end of the line – what location could be more symbolically appropriate for a production that cries out about planetary degradation and over-­ exploitation. After all the railway system is an integral part of the fossil fuel-driven cultural and physical infrastructure that eventually became so damaging. Yet it could also (by dint of being an infrastructure) deliver the opposite, on the basis of low carbon fuel. Making such comments some quarter of a century later, I may be imposing ideas on the event that were not there. On the other hand, the newspapers cited above in

Environmental Theatre, Site Specificity  117

Figure 5.1  PAX Cathedral Designed and Drawn by Clifford McLucas, Brith Gof. Source: Brith Gof Archive, National Library of Wales.

the context of Amazonian rainforest destruction hint at an active, emotional environmental debate under way at the time. Calls for action on climate change were in the media then, too. It is unlikely PAX failed to connect to an active contemporary environmental debate. An extract from production notes in Brith Gof (1991) archive papers describes the theatricality of a setting in which the (consumerist, fossil fuel-driven) trappings of everyday life were neatly repurposed: Prelude, train standing in the station, engine ticking over. Lit by theatrical lights, passengers getting on, long violin notes. Audience led

118  Environmental Theatre, Site Specificity into side of station through car park in coal yard […]. Train departure (curtain drawing back) reveals platform one, shopping trolleys standing about […] and the performance begins. In all three productions, the angels, swinging aloft, were ethereal but their ‘extraordinary physicality’ evoked religious icons. In If My Memory Serves Me Well, Pearson (2018) described what it was like as a performer to swing high up, suspended on moving wires without a safety net: it was dangerous (there were no safety features) and terrifying. It is unlikely that the sight of naked, fragile human bodies flying high above spectators’ heads failed to produce palm-sweating empathy. Beyond this, light, sound, blowing wind and smells were key elements in the scenography, hinting at a constant fusion of spiritual, metaphysical, metaphorical, physical elements, with constant reminders of the groundedness of the stuff of the theatre production. The ‘groundworkers’ sometimes came face to face with the audience as they went about their business of ‘building or altering the e­ nvironment – spreading coal dust, chalk, water – loading and unloading materials from wheeled vehicles – planting trees – treating surfaces with smoke, light and spray’ (Brith Gof Archive, Undated, a). From an ecocritical perspective, what is interesting about these scenes is the focus on polluting activity undertaken for no obvious reason. Building, altering, spreading, smoking, lighting, spraying are usually the by-products of modern consumerism – hence the action serves to question the purpose of a highly destructive, ecologically dysfunctional human society. Critic Joyce McMillan (1991) evocatively described the actions of the small mob of groundworkers who, running in teams or swinging through space on smaller scaffolding structures, spray the promenade audience with earth, fire, wind and water, raise trees and destroy them, persecute and torture four strange, trapeze-borne angels who bring a final warning. These words suggest absorption in a fast-running dynamic performance in which the audience sometimes became physically involved. PAX comes across as having been a memorable experience for those who attended, and for people from the local community who joined the production team.9 Returning to the question of what made Los Angeles and PAX ecoeffective (in the sense that the environmental message connected emotionally and bodily to its spectators) the above suggests that the complex production ecosystem of the Brith Gof company (a mesh of text, music, scenography, action) played an important part in the ecoefficacy of the company’s overtly ecological productions, perhaps to an extent not fully appreciated by the company itself, in an example of Gormley’s ‘unconscious [eco]consciousness’.

Environmental Theatre, Site Specificity  119 PAX broke through walls and out of traditional staging conventions. It deeply involved its spectators in the environment created by the production, and set out to produce a bodily awareness of the physical and material aspects of the production. In one sense, the fusion of site-specific and environmental theatre in Los Angeles and PAX could not be better designed to address environmental (that is to say, ecological) themes. The flip side is that such theatre, being itself potentially a product of a particular environmental culture at work in the broader context in the early 1990s, risks unintentionally reproducing that same resource-­intensive culture if productions are not consciously devised with their impact on the environment in mind. As implied by Pearson himself (2010, p. 102), the site specificity of large-scale ‘environmental’ theatrical productions does not automatically imply an ecological mode of continuity, recycling and frugality (cf. Chaudhuri) in resource terms, notwithstanding the presence of these elements in the narrative. Whenever and wherever staged, large-scale ecotheatrical ‘environmental’ productions might unwittingly and ironically recall Goya’s Duelo a Garrotazos – sinking into a large environmental footprint even while arguing for the planet. However, this configuration of meaning reflected, and still reflects, real-­world human behaviours. This might (ironically) make them all the more effective in getting an ecotheatrical message across from the perspective of spectators, thereby recalling Morton’s (2017) perspective on ecological awareness, as described in the Introduction. Overall, it must be said that, in the early 1990s, Brith Gof was at the forefront of the environmental debate with these productions. Themes of environmental degradation, dysfunctional human behaviour and new perspectives on the planet produced by space travel were deftly combined by a team well practiced in weaving ideas and elements (text, scenography, action and music) together. Moreover, in happening to harness environmental theatre and ecotheatre together, in a manner that highlights the power of one system (environmental theatre) to shapeshift another (ecotheatre), Brith Gof accurately reflected real-world conditions, in which people worried about environmental degradation but no one seemed to know how to stop the rainforest burning. The question, decades on, is what, if anything, has changed, and whether contemporary theatrical productions, performances and installations can produce a more ‘responsible’ (Kershaw, 2015) relationship with the earthly ecologies we all depend on. I therefore now want to change gear, to explore the work of another company that breaks through walls and out of traditional staging conventions. This company also, albeit in a very different way, involves its spectators in the environment created by the production. In Of All the People in All the World, Stan’s Cafe (2003~) connects its participants directly with the physical, material and human aspects of the production through a single grain of rice.

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Substitutions: Swapping One Form of Vibrant Matter for Another The theatrical conundrum facing Yarker, devising Of All the People in All the World, was how to represent the huge number of ‘people he shared the planet with’ so that it could be grasped within the limits of a single human brain. The answer was a substitution of one form of vibrant matter for another: rice grains for people. An idea regularly encountered in the course of this book is that changing the stuff of theatrical production can unexpectedly allow the environment to speak for itself. Yarker, seeking a mode of representation, was forced to grapple with the vagaries of planetary matter right from the beginning. Humans could not be represented in grains of sand or sugar or salt because they would not maintain their form, in an ironic metaphor for entropy, grains to dust. His eye ran along market stalls selling granular foodstuffs  – ­peppercorns, pulses and so on – in search of something vaguely humanoid in shape. He found rice and the rest is still-living theatre history. In 2003, the Stan’s Cafe performance installation, Of All The People In All The World, came to fruition and, as described by Mark Crossley and Stan’s Cafe Founder James Yarker, ‘has been a global phenomenon, seen in cities all across Europe as well as North America, Argentina, Japan and Australia’ (Crossley and Yarker, 2017, loc 644): [H]uman statistics [relating to the venue, current affairs, historical events, or selected themes] are weighed out, […] one grain [of rice] per person, [and] presented on labelled sheets of white paper. Audience members are free to explore the installation in their own time and talk to the performers about their response. Stan’s Cafe’s Rice Show Of All the People in All the World premiered on 15 May 2003 in the foyer area of the Warwick Arts Centre in Coventry, a short walk from the future 2014 Meadow Meanders sites. The year 2018 saw the ‘Rice Show’s seventy-sixth production in Madrid’s Conde Duque cultural centre.10 (Stan’s Cafe, 2003–). By my calculation, the company’s output by the end of 2018 amounted to a cumulative seven hundred and eighty-two performance days over a fifteen-year period. The first show embraced the relatively modest challenge of deploying just under one thousand kilograms of rice to represent the population of the UK and the ambition for the show’s creators was to deploy over one hundred tonnes of rice to represent the world population. This was achieved for the first time in 2005 in Stuttgart, on the occasion of a major European theatre festival, Theater der Welt 2005, and for the second time in the company’s home city of Birmingham in 2008: This show [used] 120 tonnes of rice to represent the 6.7 billion inhabitants of our planet […]. Three years had elapsed since the only

Environmental Theatre, Site Specificity  121 previous World version of the show [requiring] an extra 8 tonnes of rice to represent the growth in the world’s population. (Stans Cafe, 2003–) An exhibition consisting of piles of rice mounted on pieces of paper with an explanatory rubric is an unlikely theatrical runaway warming system (a run of well over seven hundred performances in the course of seventy-­ five productions) at first encounter. However, at the core of this show is a fundamentally theatrical idea: the urge (so beautifully expressed at the opening to Shakespeare’s Henry V) to grasp very big ideas in a small space. Yarker, seeking ways to grasp the meaning of billions of people on the planet and, in that huge mass of people, of the individual, is asking a question that goes straight to the heart of the environmental conundrum facing humanity. In each production, different piles of rice represent different groups of people. Each staging has its own site-­specific and community-­specific narrative. The storylines running through individual productions are hinted at in an overview of the show on the company website, which lists the following as typical of the thematic statistics explored by the show: the populations of towns and cities; the number of doctors, the number of soldiers; the number of people born each day, the number who die; all the people who have walked on the moon and the number of deaths in the holocaust. The story of each individual Rice Show is known only to those who were there, and each show is unique, responding dynamically to interactions with spectators and happenings in the surrounding context. However, using the archival evidence of seventy-­six short articles describing each show (seventy-six Rice Shows and one ancillary (2015) Climate Change performance) on Stan’s Cafe website, I attempt to ‘reperform’ the dynamic shaping and reshaping of the story told in piles of rice and short pieces of text, and this is the basis on which I will identify the environmental shapeshifter at work in the Rice Show in several guises.

Environmental Themes in the Rice Show Environmental themes were regularly addressed in Of All The P ­ eople In All The World. At a superficial level, a straight reading of the short (therefore thematically incomplete) blogs finds that they refer to a range of environmental challenges represented in certain shows: climate change, food security, energy, waste, water pollution and environmental degradation. In twenty-out of seventy-five shows, climate change or an aspect of the environment can be identified on the evidence of textual information in the blog, as directly present in the statistics deployed in piles of rice. In seven hundred and eighty-two performance days, two hundred and seventy-two were identifiably connected in the language of the company blogs to the environment. In some cases, this is because

122  Environmental Theatre, Site Specificity the headline theme was climate change or the environment. In others, mentions in the blog of topics some spectators particularly noticed, or themes the performers focused on, are the only evidence to suggest the environment in general and climate change in particular were present. However, direct blog mentions are not the only means by which the presence of the environment as an active entity can be identified. The first show, which took place in the lobby of Warwick Arts ­Centre in 2003, is a good place to begin. Here, the creative team wanted to find a better balance between floor and ceiling, and the answer was to borrow a large inflatable globe from Friends of the Earth and suspend it above the heads of those passing through the show. It is highly unlikely this representation of planet Earth was mere scenery in the p ­ erformance – pictures sent back by space travellers depicting a beautiful, fragile planet (or the wreckage thereof as in the 1988 Challenger photographs above-mentioned) have seen to it that representations of planet Earth are redolent with ecological meaning. What is not clear from the company website is whether the globe travelled to all shows. However, whether the globe is directly represented or not, the show’s title (World) and contents (the physicality of the rice itself) make it highly unlikely the planet would be out of mind even if it was out of sight. Not only that but the broad themes described by the company – population distribution and population growth, life and death, sickness and health, and the damage inflicted on human beings in the name of difference (see also the Pearson and Brookes’ 2012 production of Coriolan/us, discussed in Chapter Three, and Gododdin and PAX) are as ecological as they are human. The nexus of themes surrounding migration, the refugee crisis, inequality and injustice and their opposites, poverty and wealth, travel, land rights, homelessness, communication, peaceful protest and activism are deeply enmeshed in the relationship between human beings and their environment. The main thrust of some shows was climate change, or the environment, or sustainability or an aspect thereof. On the evidence of the blogs, the most important of all the shows, from the perspective of overt environmental content, took place on the weekend of 18–20 September 2015. Theatre Bonn ran Save the World II weekend, in the run-up to the all-important climate talks, Paris COP21. As described by Pearson (2010, p. 17), site-specific theatre draws attention to the stuff of theatre underpinning the performance by putting it ‘in plain view’; appropriately, then, the technical workshops of Theatre Bonn hosted the event. The Rice Show itself ran in a theatre carpentry workshop. Photographs in the blog show piles of rice set out on work benches and in between tools. In one case, a few rice grains appear to be in the sink. The label is not legible in the photograph, so the reader of the blog after the event can only imagine who might be at risk of flooding, should someone else switch on the tap and cause water levels to rise.

Environmental Theatre, Site Specificity  123 This impact of this climate change Rice Show is likely to have been magnified by what took place next door, in the huge room in which Yarker was commissioned to work with climate scientists to put together a fifteen-minute participatory production on the subject of climate change. This Stan’s Cafe (2015) piece was entitled Small People with Big Feet. The company’s unnamed blogger describes the vast expanse of floor space in the huge bare warehouse they were working in as having inspired the physical shape of the production. A map was laid out on the floor in coloured ribbon which marked polar regions, oceans, deserts and agricultural land, scaled according to the ratio between the size of the space and the size of the planet. Spectators and production team were then able to play with numbers in the manner typical of the Rice Show, albeit in a different language. In a neat reversal of the usual casting, spectatorial human bodies sometimes stood in for rice grains, in standing in for other humans or groups of humans. As the players haggled over who should do what to redress huge imbalances in ownership of and responsibility for bricks-as-carbon-emissions, an alarm sounded, signalling that time had run out. ‘The lights go out and away in the distance a model Earth is illuminated. We are told of how Armstrong and Aldrin stood on the moon and looked back on the earth.’

Emotional Reactions in Spectatorial Responses Thirty-two of the seventy-five of the blogs on Stan’s Cafe website have attached to the bottom of them a cumulative total of one hundred and seventy-­four short spectatorial comments, amounting to an average of about five comments per article. A simple word count finds that five individuals directly described piles of rice as having provoked tears. Twenty-­ seven spectators described embodied feelings or physical sensations: the show was ‘eye-opening’ (seven); it made some people ‘feel small’ (four); others described ‘feeling the exhibition’, feeling responsible, embarrassed, and as if they were reading a newspaper. Someone felt the urge to jump into the India pile, someone else felt as if they had been hit in the solar plexus, and someone else was merely breathless. Someone else described liking ‘the sensation of holding my grain of rice while walking round the installation’, and another person neatly expressed their experience of a transition between a physical object, a metaphorical idea and an emotional state: I walked in today by chance…and in one small room, holding a simple grain of rice, I had the impression that I held the world in my hand. (Stan’s Café 2003–, in Milan) A significant number of the spectators whose comments were captured on Stan’s Cafe blog responded emotionally to the Rice Show. Words used by forty-five spectators included black, disturbing, devastating,

124  Environmental Theatre, Site Specificity dreadful, embarrassing, emotional, engrossing, haunting, frightening, horrifying, inspiring, overwhelming, poignant, sad, scary, shameful, shocking, stunning, terrifying, touching and worrying. Others described it as ‘powerful’ and ‘emotional’ and another felt ‘disgust’. There is little doubt that piles of rice, as deployed by Stan’s Cafe, elicit strong emotions. The above paragraphs suggest that ecotheatrical forces are behind this in a broad-brush ‘systems’ sense. The question is, are spectators consciously conscious, consciously unconscious or unconsciously conscious (cf. Gormley) of the environment in the world depicted in the shows? A spectator of the show at the 2007 Holland Festival perhaps unconsciously hinted at the idea of rice piles as vibrant matter with the following comment: ‘Fine to see statistics brought to life, and yet with a material that once lived but lives no more.’ Rice is seemingly dead and yet can light up the imagination – rice lives no more, yet, long live rice! Of course, it could be argued that, as it is manipulated into different piles representing population subgroups by the Stan’s Cafe rice ‘puppeteers’, it is, to use Kershaw’s phrase, performed by the performers. Does this mean that the Rice Show is merely anthropocentric, representative of humans making sweeping changes to the environment (rice mountains and rice-scapes) to suit themselves, thus ‘unavoidably embroiled in the ecological mess that is climate change?’ (Kershaw, 2007, p. 10). In the sense that all involved in the Rice Show, spectators travelling to the show, producers trucking rice around and searching the internet for statistics (and this author writing about it in a book that entails the visiting of archives, websites, theatres, performances and installations) are embedded in the theatrical system that is in turn embedded in the social and economic systems that drive climate change. Of course yes, we are all embroiled.11 The question is whether we are, as Gormley might say, ecoconsciously unconscious or unconsciously ecoconscious of our embroilment. From an ecotheatrical perspective, unconscious ecoconsciousness lies in the very presence of the rice itself as a protagonist figuratively and literally representing All of the People In All the World. The Rice Show is no environmental one way street. The very presence of this material that ‘lives no more’ allows the environment to talk back. Indeed, it is likely that the performers are also being performed by the rice. Stan’s Cafe’s brown-coated performers wielding brushes with aching backs, or corralling escapees propelled away from their rightful place by the wind, insects or careless human feet, no doubt felt, at times, that the rice had them in its grip. Moreover, as described by Stan’s Cafe, rice (not lentils, salt, sugar, sand or other granular stuff) was chosen to represent humans because of its physical qualities. Size, weight, stability, translucence, shape, flow, structure, agricultural origins, cultural presence in food and symbolic redolence were well suited to what Yarker wanted to

Environmental Theatre, Site Specificity  125 do, which was to find the means for the individual human brain to grasp the idea of a human population of 6.7 billion, and what that means for individuals and groups within it. In the ecosystem of interconnections at work in this book, an ironic subtext is provided by the presence of the Rice Show in the Paccar Room at the RSC for three months as part of the World Shakespeare Festival in 2012. The life and times of William Shakespeare, and which plays were on stage as the festival progressed, shaped and reshaped the rice piles. The blog contains no record of what, if anything, was said in rice on the subject of human involvement in fossil fuels and climate change, but performance ecosystems work in mysterious ways. ‘Old favourite statistics on topics such as immigration, asylum and travel reflected themes in plays such as The Tempest, Twelfth Night and Comedy of Errors.’ The very Shipwreck Plays that set moving the climate change campaign of Reclaim Shakespeare, discussed in Chapter 4 of this book, were represented in the Rice Show. Stan’s Cafe’s blog does not record whether the number of climate change campaigners who invaded the RSC stage was also represented in rice.

The Ghost of Fossil Fuels Fleetingly Glimpsed? The idea that all ecosystems are ambiguous, first encountered in the Introduction to this book, was apparent in the collision between two key ideas – environmental theatre and ecotheatre – in the work of Brith Gof. This ambiguity in PAX (and indeed in productions explored in earlier chapters) is not a critique of PAX itself – it merely confirms that theatrical ecologies, such as stage lighting explored in Chapter 4, are a product of their time. Thus, the Rice Show also contains societal challenges (hinted at in the volume and weight of rice needed for the global versions of the production) with respect to the need to move to a new model in which we perform ‘exponentially more responsively with Earth’s environment’ (Kershaw, 2016, p.  270).12 Even the ecologically-engineered Meadow Meanders, which left few material traces other than ideas and memories in their wake, could not entirely escape fossil fuel-driven societal infrastructures their participants were inevitably reliant on outside the maze. Overall, this chapter suggests that a frugal mode of performance and story-­telling separated from contemporary energy- and resource-intensive infrastructures and cultures is needed if ironic environmental stage invasions are to be avoided in site-specific eco-productions. Environmental theatre, described above as tending to be resource-intensive, could nevertheless be ecotheatrical in an all-round sense if engineered in the broader context of an ecoconscious culture: theatrical productions in different decades have chameleon qualities in tending to reflect prevalent cultural norms and their resource footprints. The next chapter of this book explores frugal modes of performance and runaway ecotheatrical warming systems.

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Notes 1 Haearn (Iron in English) premiered at the British Coal Works in Tredegar, explored the ‘creation of Industrial Man during the Industrial Revolution’. 2 Shuttle missions 1988: 29 September to 3 October and 2 December to 6 ­December. See: www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/shuttleoperations/­archives/ 1987-1992.html. 3 In its physical form, this is a thirty-eight-page medieval parchment, Llyfr Aneirin (The Book of Aneirin) held in the National Library of Wales (NLW) containing a manuscript copy of a much earlier text that tells the tale of the battle of Catraeth. 4 Car bonnet covers (capotas in Spanish) removed from their moorings were used as military shields in Goddodin. 5 The idea of language as (yet another) ambiguous shapeshifter capable of producing or obliterating divides is present throughout Brith Gof’s work. ‘One of Brith Gof’s later aims was to foreground the [Welsh] language particularly in international contexts without need for explanation but without engendering any feelings of exclusion’ (Pearson 2019). 6 Performance Magazine was published between 1979 and 1992, and is available online thanks to the Live Art Development Agency (LADA). www.­ performancemagazine.co.uk/pdf/issue-61-sept-1990. 7 A 1989 information booklet, entitled ‘Brith Gof, PAX: An Eco-Opera’ (Brith Gof Archive, PP3/4) describes, for the benefit of future site hosts, four clear elements at work in PAX: the scenography (a performance for the nave of a great cathedral or a performance in a cathedral ‘which we will create’); the music (for ‘triple quartets plus quartets’); the text of the libretto to be sung to the music (Letters from Heaven); and the action – messengers, fighters, interveners and flyers. The four elements of this structure correspond to four talented individuals, taken in the same order: Clifford MacLucas (scenographer), John Hardy (composer), Lis Hughes Jones (librettist and singer) and Pearson (conceptualiser and acrobatic flyer). 8 Brith Gof seems to have been one of the earliest users of the idea of angels descending to earth through a hole in the ozone layer. The Ashden Directory cites such a usage in Tony Kushner’s (1992) play Angels in America: Millennium Approaches. www.ashdendirectory.org.uk/intro.asp. 9 The embedding of special needs theatre companies in the team of performers could be interpreted as a subtle offset to the narrative of destructive behaviour rooted in difference in PAX productions, for spectators who noticed the involvement of Jigsaw in Glasgow, and dance company Cyrff Ystwyth in Aberystwyth. 10 Seventy-seven if Small People with Big Feet (Bonn, 2015) – strictly speaking a side show to the Rice Show – is included. 11 When I presented An Ecological Perspective on the “Rice Show” (Hudson, 2018) at the TAPRA Annual Conference 2018, a member of my audience pointed out the difficulty of disconnecting even relatively bare-bones modes of production such as Of All The People In All the World from energy-­ intense social systems such as the internet. 12 The rice is reused from one performance to the next and, at the end of its performative life, is given to charity to be used as animal feed (Stan’s Cafe, Undated).

References Aronson, A. (2018) The History and Theory of Environmental Scenography, 2nd edn. London: Methuen Drama, first published in 1981.

Environmental Theatre, Site Specificity  127 Brith Gof (1991) PAX, Aberystwyth, British Rail Station, Theatre Programme. Brith Gof Archive PP3/3. Brith Gof (1990) PAX: A User’s Handbook, St. David’s Hall Cardiff, Theatre Programme. Brith Gof Archive PP3/3. Brith Gof (Undated, a) PAX, Draft Prospectus for Potential Production Partners. Brith Gof Archive, PP3/13. Brith Gof (Undated, b) PAX, Dramatic Cantata for Cathedrals, Draft Proposal. Brith Gof Archive, PP4/1. Brooke, J. (1990) ‘Why they Killed Chico Mendez’, New York Times, 18th ­August. A digitised form of this article is available in the New York Times Archive. Available at: www.nytimes.com/1990/08/19/books/why-they-killedchico-mendes.html. Clover, C. (1989) ‘Where There’s Smoke…’, Sunday Telegraph, 7 days, 30th April, p. 3. Viewed in hard copy in Brith Gof archive papers, PD6/5. Coveney, M. (1991) ‘New World of Sex and Politics and Fallen Angels’, ­Observer, 19th May 1991. Viewed in the British Library Newspaper Archive in November 2018. Crossley, M. and Yarker, J. (2017) Devising Theatre with Stan’s Café. London: Bloomsbury. Farrell, J. (1991) Review, Los Angeles, Brith Gof, Glasgow Mayfest, The Scotsman. Hard Copy Article Held in Brith Gof Archive, PP1/10. Field, A. (2008) ‘“Site-specific Theatre?” Please Be More Specific’, Theatre Blog, Guardian, 6th February. Available at: www.theguardian.com/stage/ theatreblog/2008/feb/06/sitespecifictheatrepleasebe. Goya, F. (1967) Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War). New York: Dover Publications. Hardy, J. (1991) PAX. Brith Gof CD. Words: Hughes Jones, L. Cyhoeddiadai Sain. Hudson, J. (2018) An Ecological Perspective on the “Rice Show”, unpublished paper presented by the author at the TAPRA Annual Conference in Aberystwyth. Kershaw, B. (2016) ‘Projecting Climate Scenarios, Landscaping Nature, and Knowing Performance: On Becoming Performed by Ecology’, Green Letters, 20 (3), pp. 270–289. Kershaw, B. (2015) ‘Performed by Ecologies: How Homo Sapiens Could Subvert Present-Day Futures’, Performing Ethos, 4 (2), pp. 113–134. Kershaw, B. (2007) Theatre Ecology: Environments and Performance Events. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kushner, T. (1992) Angels in America: Millennium Approaches. London: Nick Hern Books. McLucas, C. (Undated drawing) Cathedral (One Bay) – Axonometric. Brith Gof Archives PP3/17. McMillan, J. (1991) Pax/The Patriot Game, Glasgow Tramway, Guardian, 24 September 1991. Viewed in Photocopy in Brith Gof Archive, PP3/5. Morton (2017) ‘…and the Leg Bone’s Connected to the Toxic Waste Dump Bone’, Anthology Of Consciousness, 28 (2), pp. 135–142. O’Kelly, G. (1990) ‘Theatre Angels Declare Peace’, Guardian, 17 September. Viewed in August 2018 in Proquest Historical Newspapers, The Guardian 1969–2003, in the British Library, London. Pearson, M. (2019) Unpublished email. Pearson (2010) Site Specific Performance. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

128  Environmental Theatre, Site Specificity Revkin, A. (1990, 2004) The Burning Season: The Murder of Chico Mendes and the Fight for the Amazon Rainforest. Washington, DC: Island Press. Serres, M. (1990, 1995) Le Contrat Naturel, trans. by MacArthur, E. & ­Paulson, W. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; Editions Francois Bourin. Shoumatoff, A. (1990) The World Is Burning: Murder in the Rainforest. ­Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company. Shoumatoff, A. (1989) ‘Rainforest Martyr’, The Times, Section 3, pp. 29–30, Saturday 29th April. Viewed in hard copy, Brith Gof Archive, PD6/5. Simpson, P. (1991) ‘Brith Gof, PAX, St. David’s Hall’, Performance Magazine, March, No. 63, pp.  51–2. Available in the Digital Archive of Performance Magazine. Available at: www.performancemagazine.co.uk/wp-content/­ uploads/2017/03/Performance-Magazine-63-March-1991.pdf. Simpson, P. (1990) ‘Brith Gof, Los Angeles, Old Whitbread Brewery, Rhymney, Gwent’, Performance Magazine, September, No. 61, pp.  ­73–74. Available in the Digital Archive of Performance Magazine. Available at: www.­performancemagazine.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/PerformanceMagazine-61-September-1990.pdf. Sochor, N. (1990) ‘Angels Bring Warning for Us All’, Western Mail, 21st September. Printed from British Library Newspaper Archives, August 2018. Stan’s Cafe (2015) Small People with Big Feet, Theater Bonn: Save the World II. Available at: www.stanscafe.co.uk/project-small-people-with-big-feet.html. Stan’s Cafe (2014) Of All The Creatures Across the Globe, Blog. Available at: www.stanscafe.co.uk/project-of-all-the-creatures-warwick.html. Accessed December 2018. Stan’s Cafe Theatre Company (2003–) Of All The People In All the World, Blogs. Available at: www.stanscafe.co.uk/project-of-all-the-people.html Blogs for Individual Years and Cities are Found at the Links to the RightHand Side of the Main Page. Stan’s Cafe (Undated) ‘Suggested Brochure Copy’, Of All The People in All the World. Available at: www.stanscafe.co.uk/images/people.pdf. Zunino, P. (1992) Review, Los Angeles, Brith Gof, Buenos Aires, Diario de la Nacion (Argentina). Photocopy Held in Brith Gof’s Archive files, PP1/10.

Productions and Performances Mentioned Brith Gof (1992) Haearn, Premiered at the Former British Coal Works, Tredegar, Wales. Brith Gof (1991a) PAX, in the Old Shipbuilding Factory of Harland and Wolff for the Tramway Theatre Glasgow, 19th–22nd September. Brith Gof (1991b) PAX, Railway Station in Aberystwyth, Wales 16th–18th October. Brith Gof (1990–1993a) Los Angeles, Buenos Aires, Argentina, November 1992. Brith Gof (1990–1993b) Los Angeles, at Glasgow Mayfest, May 1991. Brith Gof (1990–1993c) Los Angeles, in the Former Whitbread Brewery, Rhymney, Wales, March 1990. Brith Gof (1990) PAX, St. David’s Hall Cardiff, 20th–21st September. Brith Gof (1987–1989) Disasters of War, Twelve Works Created and Performed Over a Two-Year Period, Including Hiroshima.

Environmental Theatre, Site Specificity  129 Brith Gof (1983) Gernika! National Esteddfod, Llangefni, Wales. Brith Gof and Test Dept. (1988) Gododdin, Premiered at the Old Rover Factory in Cardiff. Travelled to a Quarry in Italy, a Crane Factory in Germany, an IceHockey Stadium in Friesland and the Tramway in Glasgow. ‘Re-performed’ in 2008 at an Open Day, National Library Wales. Available at: www.remotegoat. com/uk/event/63323/gododdin-brith-gof-archive-project-between-memoryarchive/. Brookes, M. (Forthcoming) ‘Storm 3’ and ‘Storm 4’, The Storm Cycle, National Theatre Wales. Available at: www.nationaltheatrewales.org/ntw-projects/ the-storm-cycle/. Gormley, A. (2005) Another Place, on Crosby Beach, Merseyside. Kershaw B. and Haedicke, S. (2015–2016) Prairie Meander. Conceived and Constructed on the Prairie in Iowa. Kershaw, B. (2014) Meadow Meanders. Warwick University Campus. Pearson, M. (2018) If My Memory Serves Me Well. Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Special Performance at TAPRA Annual Conference. Pearson, M. and Brookes, M. (2018a) ‘Storm 1: Nothing Remains the Same’, The Storm Cycle, National Theatre Wales. Available at: www.­ nationaltheatrewales.org/ntw-projects/the-storm-cycle/. Pearson, M. and Brookes, M. (2018b) ‘Storm 2: Things Come Apart’, The Storm Cycle, National Theatre Wales. Pearson, M. and Brookes, M. (2012) Coriolan/us, World Shakespeare Festival, Hangar 858, RAF St. Athan, Vale of Glamorgan. Stan’s Cafe (2015) Small People with Big Feet, Theater Bonn: Save the World II, Halle Beuel, Bonn, Germany, 19th–20th September. Stan’s Cafe (2014) Of All The Creatures Across the Globe. Warwick University Campus. Stan’s Cafe (2006–2010) Home of the Wriggler. Stan’s Cafe’s (2003–) Of All the People In All the World. Touring Production.

6 Frugal Modes of Storytelling as Ecotheatre

Lungs, the climate change play by Duncan Macmillan (2011), is a conversation between two people – M and W. They are nameless, but not faceless: the play carries a powerful emotional punch. As I first experienced Lungs, in the intimate space of the Paines Plough Roundabout on its UK tour, the actors were so close to spectators, wherever seated, that body language could be read in detail. Every embodied reaction of the players – shocked gasps, uncomprehending stares, breath indrawn in pain, suppressed sobs, falling tears, uncomprehending silence – was intimately shared. As an audience, we were collectively living the emotional ups and downs of this play with the couple. The strength of Macmillan’s writing was also an important factor in driving emotional feedback loops experienced by all involved in this production. Actors speaking his lines in this play mimic the rhythms and patterns of every day speech as people deal with the fears and longings prompted by the vagaries of everyday life. The couple squabbled ridiculously in the Ikea car park about having a baby (carbon-intensive car engine running as they talked), heartbreakingly suffered a miscarriage, broke up, crashed back together, unintentionally produced the weight of the Eiffel tower in lifetime carbon emissions (the baby) and, eventually, in the course of lives that passed in the blink of an eye, wrecked the planet. The Roundabout, as described by the company, was a solution to a practical problem: how to take ‘the best new theatre’ to as many places as possible without also requiring fully fledged theatre buildings and infrastructure everywhere: For the first time in touring company Paines Plough’s 37-year history, we’re building our own theatre, albeit one that travels. The Roundabout Auditorium is a portable in-the-round-space in which we’ll perform a repertory of new plays using a single ensemble of actors. It’s going to revolutionise the way we tour […]. (Grieve and Perrin, 2011) Ecological imperatives of frugal narrative also describe The Roundabout, a beautifully designed portable auditorium. Its irregular crenulations are reminiscent of battlements. Its shape thus doubly recalls the

Frugal Modes of Storytelling  131 economical ‘wooden O’, as Shakespeare put it in the Prologue to Henry V, in the context of another rounded wooden construction within which words produced spectacle in the imagination. Roundabout, described by the company as a ‘plug and play auditorium’ (Paines Plough, Undated, c), has delivered a wide range of different works – for example, Out of Love, Ten Weeks, Black Mountain and How to Be a Kid in the 2017 Roundabout season (Paines Plough, 2017). It also provides the perfect set for the climate change play seeking to be unburdened by extraneous baggage in the form of conventional theatre infrastructures, props and grams of CO2 . It can be easily shared between cities without the need for a purpose-built theatre. Any large empty space, such as a tent, as in Edinburgh, will do. Ecotheatrical themes in Lungs – climate change, and planetary degradation under the weight of human consumption – are complimented by what seems to be (on the evidence of the recycling and resource frugality that are built in) a relatively low environmental footprint achieved by the combined approaches of the playwright ­Macmillan and the theatre company Paines Plough. Operationally speaking the Roundabout is designed to permit touring performances on the basis of low resource requirements, and ­Macmillan’s (2011, p. 22) stage directions play along with this idea in banning anything that could be extraneous to the dialogue: The play is written to be performed on a bare stage. There is no scenery, no furniture, no props, and no mime. There are no costume changes. Light and sound should not be used to indicate a change in time or place. The play text also served as the theatre programme, thus, for spectators who chose to purchase the play, as I did, the above could be read before the play began, thereby reinforcing ideas of frugality in a play about planetary wreckage driven by resource over-consumption. What is interesting about the stage itself in this ecotheatrical context is the part the portable wooden auditorium palpably played in the delivery of a lived experience of planetary wreckage. Lungs, performed in the Roundabout, can be described as a form of site-specific theatre in which meaning is an integral part of the site in which it is experienced (cf. Pearson, 2010). It is also a powerful example of ‘expanded scenography’ in which the entire auditorium is ‘a central component of the performance, and not merely a backdrop to the play’ (McKinney and Palmer, 2017, p. 1). The act of so visibly embedding the shape of the stage itself in the emotional whirlwind in the play neatly harnesses ‘green’ theatrical operations to aesthetics. Playwright Simon Stephens is cited by Paines Plough artistic directors James Grieve and George Perrin (2011) in their article on the new auditorium as saying ‘there’s no theatrical architecture in the world that challenges or interrogates what it means to be a human being than theatre in-the-round.’ Rounded theatre architectures could not be better designed to cross the

132  Frugal Modes of Storytelling nature/culture divide, by physically, visibly, wordlessly embedding human beings in the cosmic infrastructure they inhabit in real life, too. In the two productions of Lungs I have seen, the two actors forged an intense crucible, a pressure cooker of emotions, physically represented by the shape of the tiny round of the stage. A deliberate, circular choreography in the blocking helped draw out each stage in the slow maelstrom of this stormy relationship. Perpetual motion in the actors’ bodies is itself product in the round stage, where constant movement is required to keep the entire audience engaged all the time. (Yet again, the environment shapeshifts the actors.) In this play, this had similar effects to the bicycles in Home of the Wriggler (Chapter 4) in reinforcing meaning in the play by reflecting life itself, where constant movement is needed to stay alive. (This ecological dimension of the play was also picked up in Mitchell’s pedal-powered production; see Angelaki, 2019, p.  38.) The Roundabout also added a further symbolic dimension: the narrative arc was drawn out as a dance to the music of time, the actors seeming to position themselves as if as different points on a clock face at each stage in the argument. In the premier in London (directed by Richard Wilson (2011–2013) with Alistair Cope and Kate O’Flynn as M and W), and the 2015 Edinburgh Festival production (directed by George Perrin, with Abdul Salis and Siân Reese-Williams), returning to the outside world was a shock, after such an intense interlude. An important consequence of the approach taken in this play is that it puts the human voice at the core, recalling the frugal mode of storytelling described by Chaudhuri (1995, p. 84) in the context of the work of Spalding Gray (See Introduction), also encountered in this book in the fifty play readings of Svich’s Deepwater Horizon play The Way of Water (NoPassport, 2012) briefly mentioned in Chapter 2. In the several productions explored in this chapter, narrative, memory and frugality can be said to describe ‘ecological imperatives’ shaping the whole. Ways in which the human voice and scenographic effects, intended or otherwise, come together in the imagination is exactly what frugal modes of storytelling are about. Good storytelling on stage wrests the maximum emotional punch from the bare minimum of ‘stuff’. In this way, this production of Lungs resolves the quandary encountered in earlier discussions of the Arcola Godot and After Miss Julie: if green theatrical operations and an ecotheatrical dimension in themes in the text (however defined) are separate, does it matter? An alternative to separation is to combine them so that they feed into each other within the ecosystem of the theatrical performance ‘in the round’, so to speak. When this imaginative feat of engineering is achieved, production chemistry works simultaneously in several modes: site-specific theatre (unreadable away from the ‘site’), a mode of environmental theatre in which resource usage is self-limiting (spaces as ‘active players in complex systems of transformation’; Schechner, 1973, 1994, p. x) and ecotheatre. Whether ecotheatre is

Frugal Modes of Storytelling  133 defined as frugal theatre, or theatre that foregrounds climate change or some other environmental shapeshifter ceases to matter because, in the complex, systemic Roundabout productions of Lungs, they are the same thing. This production thus performs in microcosm the cultural shift humanity needs to achieve to address the climate change problem. It is, however, highly unlikely spectators sat in the auditorium thinking ‘this is a play about what I need to do about climate change’. From my perspective as a spectator, the performances of Lungs I saw were a good example of Eversmann’s (2004, p. 139) peak theatrical experience, ‘etched in the memory’ for a long time afterwards. The play is likely to have carried its spectators away because of the intense ‘performance environment’ (Schechner, 1973, 1994, p. ix–x) produced by the close relationship between the audience and the actors in the small circular interior of the Roundabout. Pace Schechner (1973, 1994, p. xx), Lungs in the Roundabout is a good example of a complex ecological interweave (cf Schechner (1973, 1994, p.  xx)), produced in environmental theatre mode, in the sense that the spectator is ‘incorporated within the frame, surrounded by the frame’ (Aronson, 2018, loc 256). I think this happens, in this specific production, because the Roundabout, in the context of this play, physically stands in for the planet, in form and function, in effect eliminating the fourth wall. As a theatrical production, Lungs, delivered by Paines Plough in the Roundabout, is a runaway warming system in several senses. Each performance can be so described on the basis of its emotional intensity. The series of productions since its first performance, as a mark of its success with audiences, is indicative of the momentum it generated.1 As an ecosystem in itself, the production is fully aligned with the ecotheatrical theme in the play. It does not preach, but combines the phenomenological experience of a destructive relationship with the lived experience of planetary catastrophe, and the whole is magnified by ecological design of the stage. The imperfection of the two protagonists – ecoaware yet unable to extricate themselves from their consumerist existence – is a metaphor for the culture that needs to change yet carries on regardless while the planet burns (see the title of Shoumatoff’s 1990 volume, discussed in Chapter 5). The stage itself contains a solution to the problem of resource profligacy. I am not a mathematician; yet, having experienced Lungs in the way described above, I feel equipped with enough insight to describe this production of this play as a beautiful equation. Later on in this chapter, I discuss another play by Macmillan that also turns out to contain a mathematical structure. Coming down to practical matters, the author’s insistence on a minimum of (resource-hungry) props combined with Paines Plough’s ecological wooden ‘O’ is perfectly designed to drive home the message that, even when we are watching a play in a production that does the minimum to implicate the audience in resource profligacy, we cannot help contributing to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. In the radio production, Lungs (Wilson, 2013), the scenographic impact of the Roundabout was

134  Frugal Modes of Storytelling lost, and I expected to be disappointed by this format, before the event. It was replaced by something arguably even more powerful, for lungs (the real thing) were suddenly centre stage. The radio audience could hear every breath taken by the actors, whether a simple drawing of breath to speak, more breath in the voice as excitement levels rise, a shocked gasp, a change in breathing patterns as the emotional tempo heated up or the sound of someone straining to weep quietly. Throughout this audio production, it is unlikely anyone was unaware of their own respiratory physiology. This production of this play worked perfectly on the radio, and the medium reinforced the climate change message, here, too. As Mike Bartlett (2011, p 103) so aptly suggested in his climate change play, Earthquakes in London, ‘If you want to be green, hold your breath.’ Striking auditory effects sprang from human physiology in this production. This is not a ‘site-specific’ theatre or ‘environmental theatre’ as defined by Schechner or Arons (there is no physical space other than the human body and the airwaves), and yet it contains such effects. It seems perverse to describe Lungs on Radio Three as delivering ‘expanded’ scenographic effects, and yet, from my ecocritical spectatorial perspective, this describes what happened, for the same lungs that drive the human voice also exhale CO2 , thereby drawing attention to the embodied environment. Listening to other sound effects, I wondered at the directorial decision to add auditory props. At first, they seemed to run counter to Macmillan’s wish for a bare set, but not for long. The irony introduced by these sounds was worth their weight in CO2 . In the scene in which W reacts in shock to the idea of having a baby, ‘it’s like you’ve punched me in the face then asked me a maths question’ (p. 29), the noise of a car engine was faintly audible. They may worry about giving birth to an Eiffel Tower’s worth of CO2 , but somehow fossil fuels from the car exhaust are forgotten. Time and time again, the small sounds that brought the listener right into the room with the protagonists reinforced this theme. When they were in bed, talking and talking, every gesture was audible because we could hear the quilt moving with them (p. 40). In the kitchen, W offers to make coffee, and we heard furniture and crockery. In one memorable scene, M and W talk about how lucky the child will be to have parents who (aside from loving ‘it’ very much) will do all the right things such as recycling, or not leaving the tap running when they brush their teeth, but as they talk they see nothing strange about indulging in a hot bath (p. 49), and the sound of running water reinforced the irony for the listener. Later, M leaves the tap running to help W use a testing kit to see whether her strange mood is something to do with being pregnant: M Sorry., Shouldn’t keep it running like this. W Can we not think of the planet for one second? This, of course, is exactly the point. They never stop talking about the planet and yet never really seem to connect to it. Thus, the auditory

Frugal Modes of Storytelling  135 props are the perfect counterpoint to Macmillan’s unerringly accurate depiction of human behaviour. They remind the listener of the trail of material possessions we carry with us through life, the gallons of water we unthinkingly use, as we play our part in the consumer society, even as we worry about climate change. Paines Plough self-describes (Paines Plough, Undated, b) as touring ‘the best new theatre to all four corners of the UK and round the world’. The Roundabout was not Paines Plough’s first attempt to grapple with the challenge of taking different plays to inaccessible places. Another project, Come to Where I’m From, which was launched in 2010 (Paines Plough, 2010 onwards), is striking in also happening to follow the above-mentioned ecological imperatives. It takes new plays to as many people as possible and does so by drawing on local writing talent. Playwrights are asked to write and perform short plays (mostly monologues) about their home towns, and these performances are recorded so that, after the event, they can be streamed to anywhere with internet connectivity. Between the launch in 2010 and the end of 2018, over one hundred and sixty playwrights have contributed to this ‘theatrical tapestry of the nation’ (Paines Plough, Undated, a) in a run of thirty-six live shows. By my calculation, eighty-two percent of the plays premiered in cities, towns and villages other than London. My interest in Come to Where I’m From, as ecotheatre, was prompted by the accidental yet nevertheless effective ‘ecological’ mode of frugality of the production model. Shows require a small cast of three to five actor-playwrights, each of whom performs a short play in monologue. Neither the production team nor the audience is required to travel, although, of course, some people may choose to. At a stroke, a heavy source of carbon emissions for the theatre sector – from theatre audience travel – is hugely reduced. Moreover, as Macmillan, cited at the heading of this chapter, might have said, these plays are written to be performed on a bare stage, with the minimum of scenery, furniture, props and mime. There are no costume changes. Light and sound could be used to indicate a change in time or place, but as the Glasgow Tron theatre review cited below suggests, the actor-playwright’s voice was generally sufficient to communicate scene changes. There is, moreover, no star actor system shaping the economics of these productions. They produce a democratisation of theatrical resources having the potential to run counter to market-driven feedback loops encountered in Chapter 3. There is also no openly stated objective of delivering ‘green theatre’, whether defined as theatre with a low carbon footprint or theatre speaking an overt environmental message. However, the economics of the productions are driven by the core idea running through the theatrical ecosystem. When the idea is to open theatrical doors to as many writers and audiences in as many places as possible, constraining the resource input to individual productions must be intrinsic to the production system, so that it does not run out of financial steam. From financial constraints, constrained

136  Frugal Modes of Storytelling resource-use practices leading to powerful scenographic effects can potentially spring. Reviewer Matthew Keeley (2017) describes the scenography of the Glasgow production at the Tron Theatre as consisting of ‘no real staging’ other than chairs in which the writers sat to read their plays. From the first moment, spectators knew they were there ‘to focus on the performers, their voices and their words. Nothing else is needed’. This audio treasure trove is available to spectators and audiences such as myself after the event on the Come to Where I’m From App. I decided to travel through the entire sequence of productions from start to finish, even though this was perhaps not intended by the designers of the App, which permits searches by author and city but not date. This trajectory (only one of many through the plays) runs from Liverpool, Sheffield, Ipswich, Newcastle, Birmingham, Belfast, Swansea, Watford, Bristol, Coventry, Nottingham and Manchester (2010), to Jersey (2011), to Chipping Norton, Brighton, the Isle of Wight, Cheltenham and Kendal (2012); moving on to Plymouth and Leeds (2013), to Edinburgh (2015), to London (six theatres and thirty plays in 2016), to Middlesbrough, Hull, Glasgow, Gloucester, Aberdeen and Dublin (2017), and Northampton (2018). I have thus armchair-travelled hundreds of miles, to many theatres, without moving an inch. Nevertheless, this does not mean that I have disconnected myself from potentially carbon-intensive theatrical infrastructures, thus, as a virtual audience member I am potentially still trapped, culturally speaking. It must be acknowledged that streaming also has a CO2 cost, which can be broken down into two components: an allocation of the fixed cost of my infrastructure, including the warm room, armchair, iPad, tea-making equipment and communications infrastructure; and the running cost of the streaming itself in terms of CO2 emissions from remote servers, electricity to run the iPad and kettle, gas for space heating, and raw ingredients for refreshing cups of tea. Even when all costs are fully taken into account and properly shared through each individual production, I think it highly unlikely the CO2 costs came close to those of a physical theatre visit. Moreover, direct production-related CO2 costs per spectator fall as they are shared between the physical and virtual audiences. Nevertheless, this paragraph reveals two important points. Firstly, there is no easy way of adding up my individual contribution to the CO2 emissions generated by Come to Where I’m From. Secondly, this experience leads, once again, to the tug of war between absolute and relative ecotheatrical objectives. There is no doubt in my mind that this frugal model of production and reception is ‘greener’ than many other performance models – in relative terms it is a resounding success. What it might mean for the environment in absolute terms is another, much more complex question. Each individual production of plays is frugally delivered. However, the act of streaming the plays turns them into an ecosystem connected by energy and materials.

Frugal Modes of Storytelling  137 Electronic  connectivity means that they remain (albeit without this intention) embedded in the very human behaviour that drives climate change and other environmental degradation, unless the broader energy and resource ecosystem should undergo a fundamental change. Cultural change is a possible answer. The question is whether this should take the form of self-separation from fossil fuel-heavy infrastructures (including the internet), or a collectively driven ‘greening’ of the infrastructures themselves (cf. Helm, D., cited in Chapter 4), or something in between. Whichever form this might take, the other side of the ecotheatrical coin is the capacity of live theatre to change the way people think, thereby potentially helping to change the way they relate to the environment. I now consider where, in this sequence of one hundred and sixty-three plays, the environmental shapeshifter is revealed, and when its presence might be sufficient to move some spectators to change the way they think about the environment, and to confirm others in their conviction. Come to Where I’m From was not conceived with the aim of staging ecological themes, and yet, as I shall describe below, they are present in the mix. All of the plays are about ‘where I’m from’, thus they can be described as ecological in the sense that, individually and as part of the whole, they are about narrative, continuity and memory, serving to recycle and conserve narrative content. Some are autobiographical and the content seems to be relatively factual. Other plays seem to jump off from an autobiographical starting point, to tell a story that might be part fact, part fiction, entirely fictional or a creative fusion of the two. As Matthew Bulgo’s (2010, Swansea) narrator says: There’s a thing you remember which is not just one thing but a thousand tiny particles of different things which add up to this one big thing. Even memory is composed of an invisible dust of tiny particles of vibrant matter, it seems. One of the first things I noticed, as an ecoaware spectator, is that many of the plays draw on environmental metaphors to explain themselves, in an accidental ecopoetic fusion of nature and culture. Hence, this town is ‘like an unmanageable weed, the place grows on you’ (Jersey, 2011). A student at a fresher’s ball in Oxford ‘danced like a bird on a beach, covered in oil, trying to fly’ (Bartlett, 2010). In a neat touch of irony, metal letters on a pavement reading ‘ambition is critical’ were ‘barnacled to the ground’ (Bulgo). Gordon Steel (2017), in Middlesbrough and Me, describes the back-street house of his childhood as ‘nestled against cooling towers spewing out clouds of industrial waste’. Hannah Silva (2013, Plymouth) weaves together wind, bombs, a parrot, music and a piano, Darwin’s drawing, tunnels and a fusion of water

138  Frugal Modes of Storytelling and sky, grey clouds and the sea, in this ‘scooped out throat of a city’, in a story about the death of her father. There is ‘nothing but air passing through, wind passing through, the fingers stop working, the articulations stop articulating’. Her words follow each other, point and counterpoint, mimicking musical forms. ‘He is a musician and I am his daughter, reading his first letter. In his brain was a clot in the shape of a treble clef.’ In London’s Park Theatre, Isley Lynn (2016), in Totty, describes a seemingly unconquerable infestation of flies in the house she has moved into and is trying to make into a home. The source of the flies, which she identifies as drain flies, is a wet patch under the stairs. Once this is cleared up a large crack starts working its way up the s­ taircase. That unhealthy pool of wetness turned out to be ‘holding the whole house up’, and this experience reinforces the narrator’s sense of not really belonging anywhere. Others weave an awareness of place and time (and even space-time) through a more prosaic human story. In Timothy X. Atack’s (2010, Bristol) punning play, the ‘M32’ is simultaneously an elliptical galaxy, an artery feeding the beating heart of Bristol, and (in the final three words of the play) ‘also a motorway’ (and the Bristol hum is a chord, then a triad, shifting its cadence a hundred years at a time). In this cosmic narrative, such ideas save the life of the narrator by frightening off a mugger armed with a knife. Coburn Gray (2017), who performed Alas | Alias in Dublin, used a musical metaphor to describe narrative itself as an alias for something else: ‘If a [musical] wave-form transforms more often than you [digitally] snapshot it, […] [i]t ends up sounding like something it isn’t.’ The narrator thus depicts nature as running through, and shaping, culture: human senses are limited physiologically and psychologically, in terms of what they can absorb, remember and reproduce. In Brick, by Scarlett Pink (Middlesbrough, 2017) the three-way relationship between people, time and place is ecopoetically articulated in full. At the opening of the recording, which I transcribe below, she intones: Chrysalis, colours fly, orange pip, butterfly. |My home town pulls me down | Builds me up brick by brick, piece by piece |I transform, who am I? Thus, she captures metamorphosis constantly under way in the two-way comingling of life-forms, what they are made of, and the habitat they form that also forms them. As would be expected, many of the plays foreground family life, school, the angst of teenage growing up. Others document struggles through grinding poverty past and present, or through efforts to be accepted as an incomer from another country or another town, and some address the challenges of being different in terms of gender, race or social positioning. In a neat crossing of the nature/culture divide, Robin Soans

Frugal Modes of Storytelling  139 (Northampton, 2018) revisits childhood memories in Boot Boy. Here, a ‘rooks’ parliament’ mobs a single crow and tears it apart because, as explained by an adult, it ‘tries to be different’. (On the subject of difference and environmental degradation, see Brith Gof’s Los Angeles and PAX, discussed in Chapter 5.) Others recognise a parent in their own body thereby connecting to nature in yet another guise. In a deceptively simple interweave of past, present and future, dream and reality, the (time) travelling narrator in My Father’s Hands (Bulgo, 2010), takes the train home to visit his mother, never arrives, but phones and we know he will return. Part waking, part day dreaming, he is drawn along by a force beyond his control, finds himself on the beach and relives the childhood sensation of being swung up to the sky and back down to the sand, and then onto his father’s shoulders, securely held in his father’s hands. Back on the train, travelling back from his childhood hometown (via his father’s grave), he resolves to be a better son. In the train window, he sees the reflection of a seemingly older person – he is resting his chin on his father’s hands, and he smiles. Heredity as a matter of nature and culture runs through this play and indeed many others. Several people tell tales of childhood games that imaginatively coopted woods, trees, beaches, the wreckage of abandoned buildings, parks and gardens. Ian McHugh, in Yarmouth (Ipswich 2010) embeds love story and youthful self-discovery in the amazing natural ­landscape – marshes, drainage ditches, blue skies, reeds, mudflats, fields, salt flats, mud, waves, the river, sediment, estuary – that was his playground. In childhood wargames with his best friend Phil, the marshes were their fiefdoms and the crows, their unwitting warriors. When he is tonguetied with a girl (and the expected albeit improbable avian star turn, a flamingo, fails to step into the picture on cue), birds – gulls, waders, crows, sanderlings, herons, avocets, lapwings – give him a language to speak in. Water is everywhere in these plays, as both scenery and shapeshifter of the humans growing up alongside it. Many of the cities the playwrights are from are situated on rivers, coastlines and estuaries – ­seeming scenery. Yet, rivers and seas formed the places people are from and the people themselves. Morna Young’s narrator in She of the Sea (2017, Aberdeen) ‘watch[es] the sea and feels the salt blood in [her] veins’. Neil Cargill, in Tattoo, Photo, Floating World (2017, Aberdeen) describes his words as ‘tumbling[ing] over each other like the spume over rocks on the day |Quartz and mica, salt airs, seawater, soil and oil’. Liverpool, in Land, Sea and Sky (Nunnery, 2010), is ‘a place made from the water’. For Joel Horwood, in Leiston Knights (Ipswich, 2010), Sizewell B, the sea, the land and childhood friendship are interwoven. John Goodwin (2012, Isle of Wight) tells the story of a sick man arriving at the 19th-century Ventnor hospital and looking out at the sea. At a stroke, we see human old age and death, and we can imagine panorama through the window: it had

140  Frugal Modes of Storytelling a ‘wrinkly blue texture like the skin of an old man or woman’. The play River Patrol, in Newcastle (Chaplin, 2010) is a wonderful humorously told depiction of childhood games in a decaying industrial city that nevertheless furnished its children with an unforgettable playground. These children unwittingly followed a tributary of the River Tyne the wrong way in search of its source, reached the Tyne itself, and then had to come back to earth to go home for their tea after a gloriously muddy, spine-tingling adventure. Much later the narrator returns to the river to find that many people have moved away from the river as the city de-­industrialised. He describes the visible happiness of people who remained: they are in tune with ‘the great hydrological cycle’. Ironically, one of the effects of de-­industrialisation may have been to disconnect people from the natural environment by distancing them from the river.

Fragments, Interweave, Embodiment As suggested by the above examples, the environment can be described as woven through Come to Where I’m From in three ways. Fragments of the natural environment appear as a back drop to childhood play, early years, or the present, where people noticed in passing the beauty of a hill, the sky and trees, or think deeply about what is under their feet. The environment also comes through as part of an interwoven tapestry of experience that shaped the people who were immersed in it, sometimes in their formative years, sometimes in the present, and sometimes in a more universal sense as part of life on the planet. The environmental shapeshifter also plays bodily through the humans in the story in a fusion of nature and culture. All three modes are further explored in the paragraphs below, in which I home in on a handful of plays in the full knowledge that I am not doing justice to the ecosystem of ideas in the whole. All I can do, in the face of many hours of material, is hint at the riches within. I return to a playwright I should have expected to find in this series from the very beginning, considering how this chapter opens, to look at a play that encapsulates ecotheatre in the all-round sense defined in this book. In the Oxford production of Come to Where I’m From, Macmillan (2010) read the beautifully woven play Doughnuts. The storyline, and the manner of its telling, take the listener through five stages of grief  – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance – all reactions to the loss of a dear friend. Even in grief, humour comes through: how ironic that someone who had spent much of her life on the doughnut theory should be killed by diabetes. She was an astrophysicist, about to give an important, perhaps life-changing speech to a scientific conference about a groundbreaking theory, only to be rudely cut off in her prime. The narrator, no scientist, is shaking in his shoes as he waits to read her speech in her place. Grief, stage fright, technology failure and a

Frugal Modes of Storytelling  141 craving for carbs collide. In an ironic, totally believable coincidence (and a humorous reference to chaos theory, perhaps) he can hear the speaker before him talking about how to survive dangerous encounters with different animals in the wild. The narrator’s extreme stage fright and everything it, and the compounding effects of grief, might be driving him to do (back away slowly and smile, make himself as big as possible and roar or curl up in a ball on the ground) is exacerbated by the preceding speaker’s well-received speech. In this play, vibrant matter is an active presence – through the human physiology of fear, the realities of death and disease, how the sciences (or the forces they describe) shape animals, humans, the environment, anthropogenic and other CO2 emissions, the intensity of grief, and the 13.7 billion-year-old universe in which the stars we think we can see are so old they are no longer here. ‘The topology of space is toroidal’, and so is the topology of this tale. Thanks to the ‘good old universe and its punchlines’, raspberry doughnuts tie together every strand of this story – even the solution to the fuel crisis (ethyl formate) is raspberry flavoured. As a spectator listening intently to the story and letting it play through your imagination, you do not sit in your armchair and think: this is a play about the planet ecologically delivered in a low carbon format, if you ignore the fact that I am experiencing it in cyberspace. You briefly live an embodied experience of life, the universe and raspberry doughnuts. And you laugh at the punchlines delivered by the environment, neatly captured in this evocative piece of ecotheatre.

Life, the Universe and Everything Macmillan’s Doughnuts looked back billions of years and out, into the great depths of space. In some of the plays the past is earth-bound, as it is in Leon Fleming’s Home (2011, Jersey). He thinks back to the ‘skeletal remnants of coal mines’ in the landscape where he is ‘originally from’. Others draw this seam out much further, but looking downwards. In Beth Steel’s (2010, Nottingham) play Beneath Your Feet, the narrator is standing on a hill, and from that vantage point describes archaeological layers of memory. On the surface, ‘terraced houses are stacked all around you but they orbit a thing that is no longer there’. A century-old ‘black wrought-iron castle’ is gone, but the tunnels and passage-ways of the coal mine are still beneath our feet. Spectators follow her subterranean story in the imagination, down, down, down to twelve hundred feet below, where there is ‘silence like an ocean bottom’. Even further down, five miles below the surface, pit-props are collapsing under ‘the great weight of the past’, and there, in a coal seam lies evidence of even older life – a fossil. Once, it was part of a living ecosystem – swamps and forests – that is now long gone, as we will also one day be gone, in that never-changing process, marked by the march of time, constant

142  Frugal Modes of Storytelling change and global warming. These threads of memory recall Brith Gof’s Pandaemonium, where an underground explosion reduced a coal mine to a skeleton of its former self (see Chapter 2), and Kershaw’s Meadow Meanders where someone’s fingertips connected to living layers of the earth’s damp scalp beneath the grassy surface (see Chapter 5). In some plays, the long distant past is worn more lightly. In an energetic, humorous piece performed in an ear-catching local dialect, Jules Horne (2015, Edinburgh), from Hawick, describes an Unconformity – perhaps a nice quirky way of describing a geological fault, or indeed an unfortunate accident of history (Orkin, 2007). The ‘crash bang wallop’ of tectonic plates that had shaped the Cairngorms happened ‘right where I’m frae’. In this ‘muckle crumple zone’ the fish that once swam around are ‘long deed’. Firmly led by the narrator we dance through a thrilling verbal crash bang wallop perspective on environmental history, travelling past the ‘most dendritic river in Europe’ (the Tweed) also delightfully described, in case we didn’t get it the first time, as having ‘wittery tentacles’. Other features of this landscape include midge carnage (familiar in the present day to visitors to open air events in the Edinburgh Fringe as I know from my own itchy experience); a letter D that changed the course of textile history; and, last but not least, the place where ‘you can still see the join’ – the ‘unconformity’. This is a brilliant, often comical conjoining of the environment and human history, in which the environmental shapeshifter clearly has the upper hand and makes fun of human beings into the bargain. Ecological themes run through many of the plays in Come to Where I’m From, and in a small number of productions the entire production is ecotheatrical in terms of its thematic content. The Cheltenham (2012) production contained several ecological tales, including Flapjack by Mitchell, Cheltenham by Deproost and Come to Where I’m From by Tyler. The Kendal production (2012) contains a running theme of toxicity in different guises, in plays by Gallagher, Harbot, Mattinson, Wilson and Wand (all 2012). I conclude this discussion of Come to Where I’m From with a striking climate change play, found in the (also ecological) Otley production.

Otley: Climate Change Apocalypse The Otley production returns to the climate change theme with which this chapter opened and also connects to the earlier discussion of natural disasters including floods in the northeast of England. Bof Whalley’s (2016) play articulates an ecotheatrical message with intent. It addresses a topic I thought I might find in the 2017 Hull production. (See C ­ hapter 2 where Hull floods are regularly found in theatrical productions.) In the event, it was in this 2016 Otley production that a comically presented political statement about the environment and climate change appeared.

Frugal Modes of Storytelling  143 Otley (also in Yorkshire) is not close to the Humber estuary itself but sits at a higher point in the river system, on the banks of a tributary that eventually, indirectly, feeds the Humber. 2 In the verbal scene setting at the opening of Come to Where I’m From, (Whalley, 2016), we are in 2026, in a first-floor bedroom in Otley, Yorkshire, with rain pouring down outside. Bob and Emma, a seventy-year-old couple (played by male and female voices rather than one narrator), have packed their bags. They are waiting for something, and to pass the time they sing, talk and worry. Bob seems to be worrying, specifically, about going to jail, for an unknown reason, and Emma has, mysteriously, been there three times and survived fine. Giving spectators the first clue about what they are waiting for, Bob plays his ukulele and sings: ‘When will the river stop rising? |When will the dark clouds blow away?’ They imagine plants from their submerged garden, along with other possessions, racing their way down the Humber estuary ‘by now’, and a neighbour’s house they were watching as a benchmark for water levels has disappeared (all but the chimney) under the flood. It becomes clear that Bob and Emma had hidden from rescuers, Bob in the wardrobe, she under the bed, to stay behind in spite of flood warnings. (Still taken in by the playwright’s practical joke, I wondered if this was why Bob is worrying about jail.) It is looking less and less likely they will be able to move anywhere else. As the bookish Emma comments, sarcastically, that no, the café they can see from the window will not be serving scones, because ‘post-industrial civilisation’ has ‘irreversibl[y] collapsed’. Niceties such as afternoon tea have been wiped out in ‘the end game for all those years of business as usual, green bins, bags for life, energy saving light bulbs […]’. It turns out that they are playing the well-known board game, Monopoly, to pass the time (sounds of the dice shaken in the cup are audible as Bob takes his turn). I chuckled as I realised Bob was worrying about going to jail as part of the game and wondered if people who attended the live performance got the joke earlier from visual cues. He draws a Community Chest card and reads it out dolefully: ‘Advance to Trafalgar Square’. Emma asks, exasperatedly, what is wrong with that. ‘It’s currently under water for starters. Trafalgar Square is flooded right up to Nelson’s torso.’ This recalls another climate change play: in Steve Waters’ 2009 play Resilience, scientists argue about scientific climate change models in which one scenario might bring about sea-level rise sufficient for Nelson to ‘see the sea’ (p. 125). As the water rises, Bob and Emma move up onto the roof. We do not know if they take the Monopoly game with them, but we know pricey Piccadilly flats are wiped out and there are no plastic sandbags in this landlocked game. The chances are that this is a ‘terminal phase of human existence’. The last few words of this ironic take on climate change are sung to the ukulele: ‘See how power fizzles as it dies’. In the frugal modes of narrative discussed so far, Paines Plough dispenses with props, set and mime, and keeps the number of actors to a

144  Frugal Modes of Storytelling minimum. Come to Where I’m From dispenses with props, set, mime and actors, putting the playwright on stage in an act of resource efficiency. The six-person theatre company discussed in the next part of this chapter, Forced Entertainment, does not use props, set, mime or actors in the traditional sense, but provocatively substitutes monologues for staged performances and productions, and objects (no longer props, but protagonists) for people.

The Power of Storytelling The theatre company Forced Entertainment specialises in the art of using language to produce performance in the imagination, and self-describes as obsessed with ‘virtual or described performance’. The company’s website describes their rehearsal process as ‘a creative laboratory that discovers unexpected and inspiring answers to questions of life and art’. This process delivered Shakespearean productions in which objects stand in for people (a jar of marmalade for Juliet, a potato masher for King John). On the face of it, this idea looks unlikely (to use Rutter’s 2013 description of Coriolan/us cited in Chapter 3) to get out of the starting blocks. However, seeming impossibility also suggests this to be a potentially disruptive idea, likely to dislocate conventional expectations. In the words of theatre critic Gardner (2016), this approach ‘[rescues Shakespearean plays] from their fate as a series of over familiar quotations’, turning them into a ‘shared enterprise between the performer and the audience’ by ‘opening up the imaginative landscape of the plays’. In this final section of the chapter, I briefly discuss the company’s production Table Top Shakespeare, which consists of thirty-six Shakespearean tales frugally told. Breaking with several theatrical conventions neatly connects to the new materialisms discussed in Chapter 1. In the following, Director Tim Etchells (2015) seems to describe the spectatorial imagination as harnessed by flows of vibrant matter, energy and ideas: Shakespeare is full of references to the alchemical transposition of language to images, explicit invitations that spectators work to conjure actions. It’s a device that […] has [long] been part of Forced Entertainment’s performances […] most centrally, perhaps in Dirty Work. In the company’s Complete Works: Table Top Shakespeare, the plays are retold as a monologue with the help of household objects in such a way as to fit on a bare (rectangular rather than round) wooden table top. Complete Works is not ecotheatre, but in paring Shakespearean performances so far down that a single storytelling human voice can deliver them, it can be described in Chaudhuri’s terms as driven by ecological imperatives of narrative, memory and frugality. For Chaudhuri, memory is about ‘recycling’. Here, recycling is both physical and virtual.

Frugal Modes of Storytelling  145 The company takes the idea of substituting one thing for another to extremes, in having everyday objects stand in for actors, and a single narrator stand in for the company of actors. Substitution is commonplace on the stage. Scenery after all stands in for the real thing. Returning to the Introductory discussions of theatrical ecosystems and ambiguity, substitutions are not automatically ecotheatrical. This tactic is as ambiguous as any other in being capable of producing resource-intensive productions or the opposite. Substitutions can potentially be implemented in environmental theatre mode, with the effect of producing an expanded scenography and an expanded resource foot print at the same time. When substitutions are executed with the aim of paring down, this tactic goes beyond the idea of consciously produced ‘green theatre’, in delivering theatrical engineering that is potentially intrinsically frugal (cf. Meadows’ idea of intrinsic responsibility discussed in the Introduction). In Home of the Wriggler human energy, bicycles and other objects stood in for lighting rigs in a striking instance of intrinsically responsible ecoengineering. In Of All The People, and Of All The Creatures, grains and seeds stood in for animals and people in a frugal mode of production that was (contrary to prior expectations) able to elicit strong emotional responses from its audiences, but possibly not always disconnected from other less frugal societal systems. In Table Top Shakespeare objects stand in for actors and protagonists thereby (in the language of this book) harnessing a stable, gently oscillating resource footprint to other performative feedback loops unexpectedly having the potential to become emotional runaway warming systems. As described by Etchells (2015) in words that recall Bennett (2010, as cited in the Introduction), the company’s mode of performance in these plays is a form of ‘rudimentary ventriloquism […]. [B]ringing to life these supposedly dead things, the work taps the half-life that objects have anyway’. The DVD of King Lear (1983) discussed in Chapter 3 provides a touch point with these table-top productions. In the filmed performance, the scenography, supposedly made of ‘dead things’ (rocks or materials standing in for them) actually played an active role in shaping the actor’s body, thereby shaping reactions in the spectatorial brain. In Forced Entertainment’s production, supposedly inert objects connect directly with the imagination so that what is on the table, so to speak, is a coproduction of the performer telling the tale, the objects in the cast playing the characters in the play, and the small (forty-five strong) audiences sitting close by. This series of performative feedback loops is described by the company in Forced Entertainment’s own summary of Table Top Shakespeare for the 2018 Spill Festival, cited below. A description of a key moment in King Lear appears towards the end of the recording: Watching the objects arranged on the table for the end of King Lear, gathered around the body of Cordelia (as represented by a small

146  Frugal Modes of Storytelling glass vial), Robin Arthur’s glass vase representing Lear looking down to see if his daughter is still breathing […] you’re confronted in a double sense by the lifelessness of Cordelia. (Etchells, 2018. Transcribed from recording, 5th minute 15th second onwards.) This moment in the Spill Festival (Etchells, 2018) is captured in the brief video which contains the sad moment in which the glass vase playing Lear lies down next to Cordelia and dies. There is no doubt about the capacity of sauces, paint stripper or lemon juice or their containers to take on a life of their own. Evidence lies not just in the effects of these objects on the audiences engaging with them, but in their effects on human performers. Just as Stan’s Cafe rice manipulators were ‘performed by’ (Kershaw, 2015, 2016) the rice (see Chapter 5), Forced Entertainment’s performers sometimes find that inanimate objects talk back. Chris Wiegand (2016) interviewed Claire Marshall (Forced Entertainment). Marshall described the change in the casting process. At first the narrators thought ‘any old object’ could present the protagonists, but they became ‘obsessive’ about casting. Marshall’s Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew was initially played by a crushed half-empty crisp packet, but as she got to know Katherine better, a ‘spiky rose’ stepped in and took over. In this process of substitution, the nature/culture divide is rubbed out. It is impossible to say what led the way forwards: objective decisions of the human brain driving casting selections or vibrant matter working on the human subconscious in the context of a human story. In the above quotation, Etchells describes ‘alchemical transpositions’ at work in Table Top Shakespeare as having also characterised another earlier (1998) production, Dirty Work. This is ‘a stage production in which pretty much everything happens through ‘description and a process of language unpacking’ (Forced Entertainment, 1998). It was set on a very small stage framed by ragged curtains, and two actors sometimes collaborate and sometimes compete ‘to imagine and describe a performance as ugly and impossible as the whole world’. Nuclear explosions, gridlocked traffic, overgrown foliage and stormy skies run through this dematerialised ecospectacle, populated by an imaginary cast of thousands. I have intentionally focused on Table Top Shakespeare, and not on the more obviously ecologically themed Dirty Work, in the above paragraphs. The key point, in this chapter, is that ecotheatre is not limited to theatre in which climate change or the environment are problematised or thematised. Fitting a lot into a small space on the basis of minimal scenery, furniture, props, or mime, to use Macmillan’s stage-setting language in Lungs, productions like Table Top Shakespeare and Dirty Work both problematise and thematise theatrical resource footprints. Such productions also point the way to a paradigm of intrinsically performing responsibly with the environment.

Frugal Modes of Storytelling  147

Ecoconscious Unconsciousness and Unconscious Ecoconsciousness In this chapter, whether ecotheatre is defined as frugal theatre, site-specific theatre, green theatre, theatre that foregrounds climate change or theatre in which the environment is a silent but assertive presence ceases to matter. What matters more than anything is the mode of consciousness running through productions, performances or installations. In Paines Plough’s imaginative approach to touring, defined as theatre that travels as widely as possible as efficiently as possible, a climate change play imaginatively ecoengineered to fit perfectly with the Roundabout resolves the scenery/ shapeshifter, theatre operations/aesthetics separation quandary discussed in Chapter 1. Lungs and Doughnuts as plays demonstrate the power of skilled ecoconscious engineering in play texts to produce intrinsic responsibility (cf. Meadows, cited in the Introduction) in theatrical ecosystems. However, this outcome will also be dependent on the vision driving the scenography they find themselves in. The frugal mode of production at work in Come to Where I’m From is designed to produce unconsciously ecoconscious performances and productions alongside overtly ecoaware ones. This production system also illustrates the potential ambiguity of all theatrical enterprise no matter how frugal: separation from resource-­ intensive systems might potentially be achieved in live performances, but the App reconnects to energy and communication systems that drive intense resource usage and power imbalances in real life. Clever substitutions characterise Forced Entertainment’s Table Top Shakespeare in an instance of object-shaped vibrant matter in action. Actors or spectators could view this from any of the three above-mentioned points of view, but the idea of intrinsic responsibility is once again potentially found in an ecotheatrical ecosystem that, for the most part, replaces ‘stuff’ with words in an act of verbal unpacking. Collectively, Lungs and Come to Where I’m From and Table Top Shakespeare are about the power of storytelling to transcend resource-intensive modes of production. In frugal productions, the ironic stage invasions described in Chapter 4, in which resource prolixity can undermine meaning, become less likely. The ubiquitous presence of cyberspace and transport systems in which these productions are embedded must nevertheless not be forgotten as a feedback loop potentially running counter to resource frugality in the bigger picture. In the next chapter, the environmental shapeshifter once again takes on the guise of the bicycle, and substitutions of objects for people, and people for other people, drive the ecologically comical mode of production of The HandleBards.

Notes 1 Lungs productions: October–November 2011, September–October 2012, March 2013, August–September 2014, May–October 2015, Paines Plough Past Productions 2012–2015. www.painesplough.com/play/lungs.

148  Frugal Modes of Storytelling 2 The following rivers flow into the Humber estuary: the Trent, Don, Aire, Ouse and Hull, which, together, drain one-fifth of England, according to Natural England (NCA Profile: 41 Humber Estuary (NE344)). P ­ ublications. naturalengland.org.uk/publication/2285747. The River Wharfe is a tributary of the River Ouse, which feeds into the Humber (www.britannica.com/ place/River-Wharfe).

References Angelaki, V. (2019) Theatre and Environment. London: Macmillan; Red Globe Press. Aronson, A. (2018) The History and Theory of Environmental Scenography, 2nd edn. London: Methuen Drama. First published in 1981. Bartlett, M. (2011) Earthquakes in London. London: Methuen Drama. Chaudhuri, U. (1995) Staging Place: the Geography of Modern Drama. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Etchells, T. (2015) ‘Table Top Shakespeare: Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide’, Exeunt Magazine, 2nd July. Available at: www.exeuntmagazine.com/ features/table-top-tim-etchells/. Eversmann, P. (2004) ‘The Experience of the Theatrical Event’, in Theatrical events: Borders Dynamics Frames, ed. by Cremona, V., Eversmann, P., Van Maanen, H., Sauter, W. and Tulloch, J. Amsterdam: Rodopi, pp. 139–74. Gardner, L. (2016) ‘King John Played by a Potato Masher? It’s Shakespeare on a Plate’, Guardian, 3rd March. Grieve J. and Perrin, G. (2011) ‘Flatpacks and Footlights: Why the UK Needs a Touring in-the-round Theatre’, Guardian, October. Available at: www. theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2011/oct/19/flatpack-touring-theatrepaines-plough?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other. Keeley, M. (2017) ‘Come to Where I’m From at Tron Theatre’, The Wee ­Review, 27th May. Available at: www.theweereview.com/review/come-towhere-im-from/. Kershaw, B. (2016) 'Projecting Climate Scenarios, Landscaping Nature and Knowing Performance: on Becoming Performed by Ecology', Green Letters, Studies in Ecocriticism, 20 (3), pp. 270–289. Kershaw B. (2015) ‘Performed by Ecologies: How Homo Sapiens Could Subvert Present Day Futures’, Performing Ethos, 4 (2), pp. 113–134. Macmillan, D. (2011) Lungs. London: Oberon Books. McKinney, J. and Palmer, S. (2017) ‘Introducing “Expanded” Scenography’ in Scenography Expanded: An Introduction to Contemporary Performance Design, ed. by McKinney, J. and Palmer, S. London: Bloomsbury, pp. 1–20. Orkin, D. (2007) ‘The Tweed’, Independent, 21st April. Available at: www. independent.co.uk/travel/uk/the-tweed-take-a-trip-on-a-river-flowing-withhistory-5332911.html. Paines Plough (Undated, a) ‘A Playwright’s Guide to Great Britain’, Come to Where I’m From. Available at: www.painesplough.com/project/come-where-im. Paines Plough (Undated, b) ‘Theatre. Everywhere.’ About PP. Available at: www.painesplough.com/project/paines-plough. Paines Plough (Undated, c) ‘The World’s First Pop-up, Plug and Play Theatre’, Roundabout. Available at: www.painesplough.com/project/roundabout.

Frugal Modes of Storytelling  149 Pearson (2010) Site Specific Performance. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Schechner, R. (1973, 1994) ‘Six Axioms for Environmental Theater, 1967, Revised in 1987’, in Schechner, R., Environmental Theater: An Expanded New Edition including “Six Axioms for Environmental Theater”. New York: ­Applause, pp. xix–xlv. Waters, S. (2009) The Contingency Plan: On the Beach and Resilience. ­London: Nick Hern Books. Wiegand, C. (2016) ‘A Cast of Household Names: The Taming of the Shrew Told with Everyday Items’, Interview with Claire Marshall, Forced Entertainment, Guardian, 22nd February.

Productions and Performances Mentioned Atack, T.X. (2010) M32 is Also a Galaxy, a Paines Plough and Bristol Old Vic Production, Bristol, 10th July. Come to Where I’m From (CTWIF) App. Bartlett, M. (2010) Come to Where I’m From, a Paines Plough and Oxford Playhouse Production, Oxford, 24th July. CTWIF App. Bulgo (2010) My Father’s Hands, a Paines Plough and Sherman Cymru Production, Swansea, 1st July. CTWIF App. Cargill, N. (2017) The Tattoo, The Photo, and the Floating World, a Paines Plough and Aberdeen Performing Arts Production, Aberdeen, 26th S­ eptember. CTWIF App. Chaplin, M. (2010) River Patrol, a Paines Plough and Live Theatre Production, Newcastle, 19th June. CTWIF App. Deproost, S. (2012) A Cautionary Tale, Cheltenham, a Paines Plough and ­Parabola Arts Production, Cheltenham, 1st November. CTWIF App. Etchells, T. dir. (2018) Table Top Shakespeare, The Spill Festival of Performance, Ipswich, First Performance 28th October. Available at: https://­spillfestival. com/show/complete-works-table-top-shakespeare/. Fleming, L. (2011) Home, a Paines Plough and Jersey Opera House Production, Jersey, 3rd December. CTWIF App. Forced Entertainment (2016, 2018) Table Top Shakespeare, dir. ­Etchells,  T. Available at: www.forcedentertainment.com/projects/complete-works-tabletop-shakespeare/. Forced Entertainment (1998) Dirty Work, dir. Etchells, T. Available at: www. forcedentertainment.com/projects/dirty-work/. Gallagher, L. (2012) Come to Where I’m From, a Paines Plough and Brewery Arts Centre production, Kendal, 7th November. CTWIF App. Goodwin, J. (2012) Breathe Goodwin, a Paines Plough and Ventnor Fringe ­Production, CTWIF, Isle of Wight, 18th August. CTWIF App. Gray, C. (2017) Alas | Alias in Dublin, a Paines Plough and Dublin Theatre ­Festival Production in Association with Axis: Ballymun, Civic Theatre, ­Driaocht and Pavilion Theatre, 3rd October. CTWIF App. Harbot, J. (2012) Taking Steps / Walking, a Paines Plough and Brewery Arts Centre Production, CTWIF, Kendal, 7th November. CTWIF App. Horne, J. (2015) Unconformity (Hawick) a Paines Plough Production, Roundabout@Summerhall, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, 12th August. CTWIF App. Horwood, J. (2010) Leiston Knights, a Paines Plough and New Wolsey Production, Pulse Festival, Ipswich, 28th May. CTWIF App.

150  Frugal Modes of Storytelling Lynn, I. (2016) Totty, a Paines Plough and Tamasha Production, Park Theatre, London, 6th July. CTWIF App. Macmillan, D. (2010) Doughnuts, a Paines Plough and Oxford Playhouse ­Production, Oxford, 24th July. CTWIF App. Mattinson, L. (2012) Gary Lineker Is Gay, a Paines Plough and Brewery Arts Centre Production, Kendal, 7th November. CTWIF App. McHugh, I. (2010) Yarmouth, a Paines Plough and New Wolsey Production, Pulse Festival, Ipswich, 28th May. CTWIF App. Mitchell, Katie. (2013) Atmen (Lungs). Schaubhuene, Berlin. Mitchell, Katherine. (2012) Flapjack, a Paines Plough and Parabola Arts ­Production, Cheltenham, 1st November, CTWIF App. NoPassport (2012) The Way of Water by Svich, C. Fifty Readings Took Place Between April 3rd and June 4th at US Venues. Available at: www.­caridadsvich. com/plays/fulllength/the-way-of-water/. Nunnery, L. (2010) Land and Sea and Sky, a Paines Plough and Liverpool Everyman Production, Everyword Festival, Liverpool, 19th May. CTWIF App. Paines Plough (2017) Programme 2017. Paines Plough Website. Available at: www.painesplough.com/article/programme-2017-0. Paines Plough (2010 onwards) App: Come to Where I’m From. Available at: https:// painesplough.com/project/come-where-im/come-where-im-app. In December 2018, 148 Plays Could Be Accessed on the App. Perrin, G., dir. (2015) Lungs, Roundabout@Summerhill, Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Seen by the author on 20th August. Available at: www.painesplough. com/play/lungs. Pink, S. (2017) Brick, a Paines Plough, Middlesbrough Theatre and Less Is MORE Production, Middlesbrough, 16th March. CTWIF App. Silva, H. (2013) Come to Where I’m From, a Paines Plough and Theatre Royal Plymouth Production, Plymouth, 27th March. CTWIF App. Soans, R. (2018) ‘The Boot Boy’, Come to Where I’m From, a Paines Plough and Royal and Derngate Production, Northampton, 27th September. CTWIF App. Steel, G. (2017) ‘Middlesbrough and Me’, a Paines Plough, Middlesbrough Theatre and Less is MORE Production, Middlesbrough, 16th March. CTWIF App. Steel, B. (2010) Beneath Your Feet, a Paines Plough and Nottingham Playhouse Production, Nottingham, 22nd July. CTWIF App. Tyler, L. (2012) Come to Where I’m From, a Paines Plough and Parabola Arts Production, Cheltenham, 1st November, CTWIF App. Wand, Z. (2012) Hoad Hill (Pearl), a Paines Plough and Brewery Arts Centre Production, Kendal, 7th November. CTWIF App. Whalley, B. (2016) Come to Where I’m From, a Paines Plough and Otley Courthouse Production, Otley, 10th April. CTWIF App. Wilson, A. (2012) Dig Deep, a Paines Plough and Brewery Arts Centre production, Kendal, 7th November. CTWIF App.Wilson, R., dir. (2013) Lungs. BBC Radio Three, 24th March. Wilson R., dir. (2011–2013) Lungs, a Paines Plough and Sheffield Theatres Touring Production. See https://painesplough.com/play/lungs and https:// painesplough.com/person/richard-wilson. Young, M. (2017) She of the Sea, a Paines Plough and Aberdeen Performing Arts Production, The Lemon Tree, Aberdeen, 26th September. CTWIF App.

7 Bicycles on Stage – Shapeshifters or Scenery?

The following quotation is a short extract from a spectator interview recorded by Tulloch (2005, p. 282) after a Shakespearean performance: You lose that ‘I’m watching something’ […] And you can really feel that magic then, when they’re enjoying performing to us and we’re enjoying the performance. So, you get this lovely kind of circle happening, where you’re just bouncing off each other’s feelings. Tulloch’s comment opens this chapter because the spiral of reactions (the ‘lovely kind of circle’) captures exactly what I am looking for in the form of theatrical runaway warming systems ‘just bouncing off each other’ in ecoeffective theatrical productions. It also describes what I have noticed about the chemistry between actors and spectators in The HandleBards’ productions I have seen. This spiralling system of reactions is visible in the spectatorial responses in the feedback forms discussed in the course of this chapter, in relation to plays produced by the company: Macbeth (dir. Farrell, 2014/spring 2015), Hamlet (dir. Sampson, summer 2015) and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (dir. Farrell, summer 2015). The spectator interviewed by Tulloch had experienced an emotional runaway warming system, denoting a successful live theatrical event that was enjoyed and appreciated by all involved, as discussed in the Introduction. A conundrum raised in that same Introduction was how it might be possible to produce ecotheatrical performative runaway warming systems such as this without getting trapped in the resource-intensive runaway feedback loops typical of consumerist (resource intensive) cultures, thereby reperforming them in microcosm on stage. This question matters because, as discussed in earlier chapters, the positioning of the environment on stage might throw light on what to do about similar questions outside the theatre. Another bicycle-driven production, Stan’s Cafe’s (2006–2010) Home of the Wriggler (see Chapter 4) contained the seeds of an answer to this conundrum: the electricity required to drive the production was limited and shaped by a carefully engineered fusion of actors and scenography. As a result, a stable, oscillating electricity system drove an emotional

152  Bicycles on Stage runaway warming system. The reverse was also true: an emotional runaway warming system at work in the storytelling on stage drove a stable, oscillating energy system. The locking-together of two such ecosystems, in such a way as to contain some energy-related feedback loops by means of an embedded ecological safety valve, without impeding others, is a form of biomimicry. This astonishing outcome, which can be described as analogous to an albedo effect in diagrams drawn by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is why Home of the Wriggler can be described as a theatrical ‘ecolegend’ (see the opening to Chapter 4) without exaggeration. See also the first footnote to the same chapter, on the subject of bicycles and theatrical productions. Angelaki (2019, p. 38) documents an important bicycle-driven production I did not see. Mitchell’s (2013) production of Lungs (renamed Atmen) appears to have been another ecolegendary gem.

The HandleBards: Another ‘Ecolegend’ in the Making? I was fortunate enough to see a number of The HandleBards’ bicycle-­ driven productions and performances live, and to work with the troupe on audience surveys, and this turned out to be an exciting opportunity to explore the ecological conundrum encountered in Chapter 1. The HandleBards – a cycling theatre company formed in 2013 – seeks to deliver excellent theatre with the minimum of dependence on fossil fuel-­ generated energy, thereby demonstrating how much can be done with a very small resource footprint. This chapter thus returns to the story of low-energy stagecraft. The company goes on tour with two or three Shakespearian plays per year. On these tours, its troupe of actors travels one to one-and-a-half thousand miles by bicycle and after all that still impressively has the energy to deliver sixty or seventy shows. In the company’s own words, this aim is expressed as follows: We are four-strong troupes of cycling actors who carry with us all of the necessary set, props and costume to perform extremely energetic, charmingly chaotic and environmentally sustainable Shakespeare plays across the globe.1

Ecoideology and Creativity in The HandleBards’ Performances The company does not engage in the political debate with respect to the environment through themes in the plays it stages. Rather, as explained by founder (concept-originator, actor, producer, tour manager and general multi-tasker) HandleBard Paul Moss, the troupe seeks to perform responsibly with their environment by means of their bicycles. For the company, bicycles are not only a mode of transport but also,

Bicycles on Stage  153 following father-of-semiotics Roland Barthes (2003, 2009, p. 138), a mode of representation and meta-language for the company’s environmental beliefs. My first encounter with The HandleBards was at a performance of Macbeth in the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey on a chilly March 2015 evening, where I met Moss and first saw the troupe in action. He was interested in experimenting with audience surveys as a means of finding out what The HandleBards’ performances meant for spectators from an environmental perspective, and he was delighted to find someone willing to run with the idea. On the evening of this first encounter, we ran a brief audience survey in pilot test. I do not discuss these forms in this chapter because they were outside the main study discussed later; however, one point is worth highlighting. Asked whether the performance could be described as ‘ecotheatre’, three quarters of the small number of respondents in this pilot test agreed that it could. This surprising result (which was replicated later) raises a number of interesting possibilities. Bringing to bear my own perspective as a spectator, the most obvious explanation for this response was the venue itself. (Earlier in the run, the play was performed on top of Dunsinane Hill. I can only imagine the atmospherics.) As evening fell, the old stone walls of Glastonbury Abbey took on a slightly spooky appearance, enhanced by the participation of the resident bats. Shivers produced by the evening chill were a fitting response to the murderous tale playing out on stage. Another possibility for modern spectators (considering the regular appearance of dysfunctional families in many of the 21st-century plays about climate change footnoted in the Introduction) is to interpret Macbeth as ecotheatrical on the basis of the upsetting of the natural order reflected in the act of murder. However, I did not think the production set out to this particular point across, even though it is inevitably present in the text and there to be ‘read’ by individual spectators minded to see it. A third possibility is to see this perception as a response to the working practices of the troupe, as described in the paragraph cited above. In this performance of Macbeth, I noted several amusing innovations, such as a bicycle masquerading as a horse with the help of visibly applied exaggerated clip-clopping sound effects, and a witches’ cauldron steaming thanks to an energetic application of a bicycle pump by Lady Macbeth, who briefly stepped out of role to engineer a plume of steam. Such tactics were designed to call attention to the stuff of theatre operations at melodramatic moments, thereby generating tension between the horror story of the murder and the absurdity of the moment on stage. This also draws attention to the bicycle as a ‘green theatre’ mode of production in a memorable way. Using the terms discussed in my introduction, the bicycle-driven machinery of The HandleBards’ productions can be described as propelling the environment onto the stage as a form of ‘deus ex machina’, melodramatically disguised.

154  Bicycles on Stage

Putting the Environmental Shapeshifter at the Core This chapter also returns to the questions first discussed in the context of the Arcola Theatre’s production of Waiting for Godot and the Young Vic’s After Miss Julie (see Chapter 1): if the stuff of theatrical operations is radically altered, as it is in the case of The HandleBards, does it have any effect on production and reception, and does it matter, from the perspective of ecotheatrical efficacy, if this is not the case, or if no one notices? It seemed to me, as a spectator, that constraints imposed by the small size of the production team, by the fact of having to carry everything on their bicycles, and extremes prompted by the human energy system on which the company depends (most importantly the bicycles as props, scene-shifting mechanisms and living things) combined to shape the onstage chemistry. This is evident in commentary I posted on the Warwick University website (Hudson, 2015) after seeing Macbeth, where I describe the resolution of a resource conundrum. I saw four actors do the work of seven at one go in Macbeth. The HandleBards co-opt and appropriately costume vaguely human-shaped objects (such as an old tennis racket) or recycle pieces of clothing (hung on arms, sticks or other objects) as stand-ins for the actor busy elsewhere. This combination of techniques is consistent with the Chaudhuri’s (1995) idea of storytelling driven by ecological imperatives (narrative, memory, frugality), briefly discussed in the Introduction, and explored in the previous chapter in the work of Paines Plough. Ripping Shakespearean yarns, memory (innovations designed to surprise and amuse those who had seen the play before, and provocations for Shakespearean spectators expecting Shakespeare to be delivered in a particular way) and frugality (in the overall approach) are all at play. In The HandleBards’ productions, the bicycle simultaneously drives operations and aesthetics, thereby completely transforming the manner in which energy, matter and ideas flow round Fried and May’s Theatrical Metabolic Chart (see Chapter 1, Figure 1.1). Putting this in concrete terms, a fusion of operations and aesthetics in production and reception springs from the decision of the production team to cycle everywhere carrying scenery, costumes and props. This single decision shapeshifts all activities at the core of the Metabolic Chart: administration, fundraising, rehearsal, scenic design, costume, lighting and set, thereby changing the entire ecosystem of production and reception. Meadows (2017, loc 3254) might describe this as the creation of ‘intrinsic responsibility’ in the system, in the sense that the design of The Handlebards’ production ecosystem enables it to look after itself and the environment at the same time. This highlights an important difference between an onstage environment imposed by a theatrical production system, rather than fully embedded through the entire ecosystem of the theatrical event. The carbon budget applied in the context of After Miss Julie sometimes

Bicycles on Stage  155 had similar effects when production team behaviours and practices, and spectatorial imaginations, were reshaped by the energy-saving production parameters. The fusion of the stuff of theatre operations and aesthetics in evidence in the climate change play Lungs, discussed in the preceding chapter, as experienced by spectators, was enormously powerful. The ecoefficacy of The Handlebards’ production ecosystem is also likely to be significant because the bicycle, as a substitution for the environmental shapeshifter, is visibly driving all aspects of the production ecosystem.

The Environment as the Open Secret in The HandleBards’ Productions In the terms discussed in the Introduction, the ecotheatrical tactic employed by The HandleBards in putting the bicycle at the core of the theatrical event, is to create a feedback loop (see below) with the core idea of a palpable connection to the environment at the centre of it. The environment as a dynamic force can thus be seen to be driving the entire theatrical ecosystem each time the troupe performs. The potential for this to become a runaway warming system, in performative terms, is shown diagrammatically in Figure 7.1. (See also Figure I.1.) The starting point for any production is the four-strong acting troupe cycling everywhere with everything they need with them. The bicycles shape the production and its reception at many levels: operationally (as innovative theatrical transport modes, scene-shifting mechanisms and props); symbolically (representing eco-friendly transport in modern society); comically (as an anachronism in Shakespearian plays, for

Production design: use of costumes/props; bikes; cross-casting BICYCLE: SEMIOTIC people and props; AND borrowing audience. PHENOMENOLOGICAL ENVIRONMENTAL CONNECTIVITY.

Audience chemistry: enjoyment, admiration, pleasure, empathy, affirmation. Embodied responses: laughter, participation.

Performance style: flexibility; virtuosity; energy; innovation; originality; wit; comedy; irreverence; close to the audience.

Figure 7.1  T  he Bicycle at the Core of Productions – Ecotheatre in an All-Round Sense. Source: Author.

156  Bicycles on Stage example) and phenomenologically in the embodied responses produced in all concerned. The diagram describes The HandleBards’ performance process as the circular system argued here to be potentially at work in all theatrical events. The operational consequences of the cycling regime are shown at point A on the diagram, where decisions are made about resource allocation. Bicycles and human muscles must be used in scene shifting because ropes, pulleys and steel supports cannot be carried and are almost never available in The HandleBards’ typical performance venues. When there are more speaking parts than actors simultaneously on stage then scenes must be rewritten, or pieces of clothing and audience members co-opted. These operational decisions have the consequences described in stage B. The idea of recycling is on stage at any point where a resource substitution (people for people, people for things, materials for other materials) is made. For spectators, however, the sleight of hand and comic timing skills applied to make the whole work as a performance is likely to be the main thing they want to talk about, recalling Sauter’s (2010, p. 247) finding that spectators interviewed after the event tend to talk more freely about what they enjoyed. Stage B rapidly becomes stage C, helped along by the close engagement between this troupe and its audiences. In the feedback forms analysed later in this chapter, several people commented on their enjoyment of the audience participation (both as spectators or as spectators co-opted as actors), in an interesting contrast with what happened in the London version (but not the Athenian version) of the 1984 National Theatre Coriolanus discussed in Chapter 3. Considering the importance of the boundless youthful energy of this troupe in the delivery of excellence in performance within energy-use constraints, it was perhaps inevitable that the comic potential of using whatever was to hand (from audience members to the food and drink in their picnics to recycled bicycle parts) would expand further. After all actors respond to encouragement, an important feedback loop in the ecosystem of the theatrical event depicted above. Stage C thus feeds back into stage A, as the troupe of actors, responding to audience reactions and perhaps seeking to magnify them, experiments with adjustments. Returning to the discussion of theatrical events as ecosystems, The HandleBards’ approach to performance as described above suggests that the highest level of ecotheatrical efficacy is likely to be present in The HandleBards’ theatrical events when the company succeeds in generating a self-reinforcing system of positive feedback loops in the form of enjoyment and laughter. Overall, it seemed to me, in the several performances I saw, first in March and then in the summer tour, that this was exactly why the performances worked so well. The performance ecosystem created by the ecotheatrical concept depicted in Figure 7.1 behaved like a climate system under the influence of a warming phase, conjoined, thanks to the bicycles, to a stable oscillating system of resource usage.

Bicycles on Stage  157 Small ideas sprang from the initial constraints, gained a life of their own and kept on expanding. This process was very effective in a theatrical sense, from my perspective as a spectator.

Do Comic Feedback Loops Occlude the Environmental Shapeshifter? Drawing every inch of humour out of the cast, props, costumes and spectators is a hallmark of The HandleBards’ production style. In this respect, nothing goes to waste in their productions, but, as in ecosystems generally, overshooting is always a possibility. Thus, a balance must be maintained in which going to extremes does not go so far as to lose credibility thereby also losing potential (eco)theatrical efficacy. In the productions at which I was a spectator, the reason why comical extremes did not derail the play lay in the very strong acting performances of all four players, as recorded in a 2015 blog (Hudson, 2015). The dagger Macbeth saw before him (and was convincingly terrified by) was a camping spoon dangling and spinning ridiculously on the end of a piece of fishing line. The gouts of blood spilt in the murders were no synthetic stage blood, but (eminently biodegradable and quite repulsive in this context) baked beans, but, at the same time, the horror of the murder itself was real. As described on Warwick University’s Ecotheatrical Reviewing project, the aforementioned fishing line was used in another context: ‘Banquo’s ghost [was] a two-eyed piece of gauze whisking around (in between the bats) on the same fishing hook.’ Such tactics served to make fun of a Macbeth too ‘rapt’ (both as a character and as an actor playing his part to the best of his ability) to notice them. Not only did such humour not unbalance the play or detract from the horror of the core story, it often drew out ideas in the play more strongly. A spectator attending a different show on the summer 2015 tour (­Hamlet) was moved to think back, in their feedback form, on Macbeth, which they had seen earlier in the run the previous year, in similar terms: ‘The brilliant thing about last year’s Macbeth was the contrast between hilarity and horror.’ (The HandleBards, Summer 2015a). I think it likely that this balance between the two extremes was a product of the specific combination of the bicycles and this troupe of actors, and the skilfully delivered climate-system-like momentum typical of The HandleBards’ productions. To drive this point home before moving on to feedback form analysis, I want to emphasise the importance of balance between extremes produced by runaway ideas, while not losing sight of the play, by highlighting a particularly mischievous comic treatment of Hamlet I recorded in my notes during the summer tour of 2015. Here, unexpectedly, E.L. James’s erotic 2012 romance Fifty Shades of Grey played a prominent part in the context of one of the best-known scenes in the play. At first sight, this book had little to do with Hamlet as

158  Bicycles on Stage written by Shakespeare. Also at first sight, the ecological theatrical behaviour in the form of the runaway imagination that came up with the scene I describe below seemed to be very far removed from the idea of the environment as an issue that matters to the troupe. The key scene was Hamlet's well-known ‘To be or not to be’ moment, observed by Polonius and Claudius from a hiding place behind the arras, in Act Three Scene One (Shakespeare, 2006, III, I, 54–89). In the first performance I saw on 26 June 2015 (in the garden of Capron House), actor Callum Brodie intermittently exchanged the part of Ophelia for that of scene-shifter, as the entire cast did when needed. He hopped on the bike and turned the pedals to work the pulley system (a neat piece of design by Mike Potter & Electric Pedals (The HandleBards’ Website, Past Shows)) to put the arras in place. He paused, well aware that we spectators were watching the performative actor-scene-shifter on the bike as well as the main performance. As if asking for our permission, he raised an eyebrow, and again turned the pedals. The arras moved from stage right to stage left, and poor old doddering Polonius (convincingly played by Tom Dixon notwithstanding his youthful fitness, or perhaps helped by cycling-related stiffness) was forced to keep moving reluctant creaky joints to stay hidden. Hamlet's thunder was stolen by the subversive scene-shifter; and yet, of course, it was not – Hamlet’s focused absorption was clear to see, and his acting performance even more admirable for staying on course. However, this is not the end of the story. Several weeks later, in the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh, at a performance I also attended, one of the spectators was moved to write on a feedback form: ‘Not sure about the “50 Shades of Grey” antics at the same time as Hamlet's big speech.’ In this version of the above, Ophelia (again temporarily playing scene-shifter) hopped on the scene-shifting bike, but this time still partly in role, in that she was dutifully reading the ‘book’ handed to her by Polonius. The book was not the holy text it is generally assumed to be in the play (Shakespeare, 2006, III, i, 43), but a well-thumbed copy of Fifty Shades of Grey. As she read, her excitement mounted. She turned pages and pedals faster and faster, until the scenery spun off its pulley and collapsed, requiring all hands to dash chaotically onto the stage and put it back in place just in time for Hamlet to finish his tragic speech, undistracted by the comical antics of the company. There is no doubt that this scene could only have happened in this way because of the use of the bicycles as scene-shifting mechanisms, put together with the mischievous approach of the troupe, and technical excellence in comic timing. In this sense, the scene is a product of the theatrical ecosystem of the company. I see the irreverence of this treatment of this particular scene in Hamlet to be a product of a general willingness to go to comical extremes prompted by the limits and pressures of the troupe’s ecological modus operandi. This is an interesting development of the dynamic depicted in the theatrical metabolic chart

Bicycles on Stage  159 (Fried and May, 1994, pp. 16–17; see Chapter 1), and different to clean energy posters in the lobby of the Arcola theatre; and to the public-­ domain discussion of energy-low stagecraft by the Young Vic without reference to performance aesthetics in the context of After Miss Julie (which, however, was deceptive as seen earlier). The question raised by what had happened here was whether such comic extremes also had the effect of masking the environment as a shapeshifter in the production from the perspective of spectators. In other words, if the comic feedback loop dominates, is the environment in The HandleBards’ productions ‘occluded’ Chaudhuri (1994) by laughter?

Designing Feedback Forms to Tease Out the Environmental Shapeshifter The question of interest to the company, indeed, was whether the environmental message, which matters to the company very much, was perceptible to spectators notwithstanding its embeddedness in the overall production ecosystem. We worked together experimentally to design a questionnaire that might tease this out, at the same time as collecting other data The HandleBards needed for other purposes. In the analysis in this chapter, I do not focus on data collected for other purposes, such as demographics, or whether spectators liked the venue, asked with an eye on future programming.2 The form was used in two ways, also being forced to adapt to the constraints of bicycle-driven transport. At first, respondents gave their feedback on hard copy forms on the spot. As the practical challenges of paper forms became evident (they would be a heavy weight to carry in luggage on a bicycle in the form of a material likely to respond badly to rain), Moss used the questions to create an electronic version of the form which was sent by email to those who agreed to be contacted.3 There were three key questions in the form. One simply asked whether the spectator had enjoyed the performance. A further question asked whether the performance had changed the way the respondent saw the play (and the respondent could answer yes, no or not applicable because they had not seen the play before). The opportunity was provided to comment. These two questions were deliberately constructed not to contain any hints about the environment – should any respondent mention the environment in the context of these questions, this would be the strongest possible evidence of the connection discussed above. The third key question was whether the respondent saw the performance as ecotheatre, and statements with tickboxes below the question were provided so that respondents could say why. The tickbox questions (where spectators could Strongly Agree, Somewhat Agree, Neither Agree Nor Disagree, Somewhat Disagree, Strongly Disagree) were as shown in the left-hand column in Table 7.1 below.

74 52 40

73 55 37

Source: The HandleBards’ Feedback Forms, Summer Tour 2015.

17

32

83 12

95

17

10

29

65

This performance can be described as ecotheatre – strongly agree. This performance can be described as ecotheatre – somewhat agree. Total

Strongly Agree That: Environmental and ecological meanings are always visible in this play. The working practices of The HandleBards help me see the environmental connections. The working practices of The HandleBards make the play more exciting to watch. The working practices of The HandleBards result in a low carbon footprint for the production. The overall experience is making me feel closer to the environment.

67

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Questions and Tickboxes

Hamlet

Paper Forms

Percent of Respondents

0

46

50

17

4

71

29

42

Hamlet Indoors

Table 7.1  W hy The HandleBards’ Spectators Saw Their Performances as Ecotheatre

33

53

78

34

5

79

21

57

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Electronic Forms

33

55

82

31

2

88

16

71

Hamlet

0

57

57

14

0

79

21

57

Hamlet Indoors

Bicycles on Stage  161 The list of tickbox questions added to the question about ecotheatre was intended to find out why so many people saw the productions as ‘ecotheatre’, as well as teasing out the relative importance of the ecological content in the play (the first statement) and the fusion of aesthetics and operations (the middle three statements). The final statement (which someone like Churchill might describe as ‘clunky’) was included to elicit evidence for or against the idea that The HandleBards’ ecotheatrical approach might have helped spectators connect emotionally with the environment through the experience of the performance. It did not necessarily always do this as will be seen, but the insights it produced were all the more valuable because of the sometimes subversive responses this question provoked.

Designing Ecological Analytics for Textual Commentary The forms gave spectators the opportunity to add text, thus, an opportunity for some ‘ludic’ experiments (Kershaw 1992) in textual analysis, discussed in the following paragraphs. I want to stress, at this point, that the work described below is best regarded as an experimental pilot study rather than a definitive statistical analysis. Audience surveys of the future implemented by robots on the basis of Artificial Intelligence (AI) might well be more accurate, for then many analyses could be run in parallel. The best that can be expected, with no such controls in place, is a rough idea. Generalising, when the research objective is to gain an overall impression of how a group of spectators responded to a performance, the audience research methodology known as post-coding or encoding is a useful tool. A good example of its use is found in Tulloch’s analysis of audience surveys implemented in the context of several productions of Chekhov’s plays at the Theatre Royal Bath (Tulloch, 2005, pp. 204–5). How passages of text are encoded or postcoded (the words are used interchangeably) is driven by an ontology, defined as a set of concepts and categories designed to highlight the most important characteristics of relevant texts. These can range widely in terms of their complexity. In Tulloch’s work, analytical categories range from spectatorial reasons for coming to a production, to ‘conventional binaries applied to Chekhov’ (pp. 98–9) in respect of production intentions and responses to them in the context of The Cherry Orchard. Analysis based on word counts can be used to discover the most important reasons for coming to a production (Tulloch, 2005, pp. 204–5), or the dominant quality of the response to a production on tour, as in this case study of The HandleBards. (See also the brief analysis of spectatorial comments on Stan’s Cafe’s Rice Show blog, discussed in Chapter 5.) For textual analysis to be effective, I believe it must be shaped by the ideas shaping the survey questions. This is particularly the case in the

162  Bicycles on Stage context of the circularities running through this book and, of course, running through ecotheatre as experienced in the course of this chapter. Paraphrasing the qualitative research writings of Corbin and Strauss (2015, pp. 6–7) the structure embedded in feedback form data in relation to spectators’ responses to The HandleBards’ concept (Figure 7.1) was observed by reading textual feedback form data collected during the research process and not chosen (other than in the very general sense of expecting circularity) prior to beginning the research project. Thus, as in the qualitative research process known as grounded theory, research analysis and data collection are interrelated. After initial data were collected, I analysed them, and the concepts and categories derived from the analysis formed the basis for the subsequent data interpretation, so that, as more feedback forms arrived, I returned to earlier forms to re-read the content considering discoveries made in the later ones, to make sure I had not missed relevant evidence. Data collection and analysis continued in an ongoing cycle throughout The HandleBards research project. In the 2015 HandleBards’ cohort of feedback forms, replies were generally short and simple, which meant that much of the encoding was about counting words and assigning them to categories, in the circular process described above. The main categories that fell out of this process included a term I decided to call ‘affirmation’ which denoted verbal applause expressed in words, such as ‘awesome’, brilliant’, ‘fabulous’, fantastic’, ‘great’ and ‘incredible’. Enough people used words such as ‘loved’, ‘enjoyed’, ‘enjoyed’ and ‘delightful’ to require a category I called ‘Pleasure and Enjoyment’. Words counted under the heading of ‘fun’ (which I eventually grouped with pleasure and enjoyment) included comments relating to hilarity, comedy, laughter and so on. Another common theme was admiration of the talent at work in the performance. In the category I called admiration, people described the acting, and the creativity and ingenuity of the production in glowing terms. I also recorded an interesting point in a small number of forms: resistance to worthy environmental questions in feedback forms, which seemed to be prompted by the final tickbox statement on the form. In Table 7.2, the area I describe as The HandleBards’ ‘concept’ is particularly important. This area of the analysis is an attempt to understand more about the theatrical feedback loops driving connections between the enjoyment of the performances and the perception of them as ecotheatre. The ‘concept’ as an idea embedded in the combined responses in the cohort of forms dropped out of my reading of the feedback forms, but it is also shaped by the ecotheatrical feedback loop depicted in Figure I.1 in the Introduction, adapted for The HandleBards in Figure 7.1. Translating both for The HandleBards, the concept (bicycles and associated constraints) shapes production content and style (A), content and style shape onstage chemistry (B), and the spectators responding to feedback form questions describe their reactions to production chemistry (C). Sometimes they do so in general terms; and sometimes they refer

Bicycles on Stage  163 Table 7.2  T  he HandleBards’ Summer Tour 2015, Analytical Categories Applied to Feedback Forms Response Categories

Examples of Words or Ideas in Feedback Form Text

1. Affirmation

Brilliant Excellent Great Superb Encore Amazing Loved, enjoyed the performance Found it joyful, pleasurable to watch, delightful It was fun, funny, comical Embodied response – laughed my head off; was bowled over, stunned, exhilarated Of the production overall Of the acting Of the professionalism of the troupe Of the quality of the acting Of the troupe’s talented performance The concept overall Working within limits Direct references to (words containing) ‘eco’ Use of costumes/props Use of bikes Cross-casting/multiple roles Use of spectators/audience participation Flexibility/virtuosity Energy Innovation/originality Cleverness More accessible/easier to understand/accessible to all ages Venue setting noises off Hard to hear The elements (cold, rain, insects) Audience participation – inappropriate Unnecessary eco-questions on feedback forms

Pleasure and enjoyment

Admiration

References to The HandleBards’ concept, or aspects thereof

Accessibility of Shakespeare Other Objections

Source: Author.

to specific aspects of staging or performance, in a fusion of operations and aesthetics: bikes and energy, casting and flexibility, working within limits and cleverness or ingenuity. Coming full circle, I think it reasonable, in this circular analysis of a circular process in The HandleBards’ theatrical events, to see seemingly general terms, such as ‘cleverness’ and ‘ingenuity’ written on feedback forms in the context of the widespread acceptance of the idea of ‘ecotheatre’, as connected to The Handlebards’ concept, even when neither bicycles nor the environment was directly

164  Bicycles on Stage mentioned. Putting this in another way, a direct mention of bicycles is not required to prove their presence on stage, nor their embeddedness in the performance, nor the role they played as a driver of cleverness and ingenuity in performance.

How Did Respondents React to the Performances They Saw? In this section, I begin by considering the data produced by the box-­ ticking responses to the three key questions, taking hard copy and electronic forms in aggregate for each play. The message in the responses relating to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, was how much people had enjoyed the humorous approach. The hidden agenda in the first general question (whether the respondents enjoyed the performance) was, as discussed above, to assess a joint possibility: in the context of their enjoyment of the production, whether there was any tendency to comment on environmental matters in the text. The result could not have been clearer. There were no direct comments on the environment. Considering the point that the bicycles are the environmental shapeshifter on stage in several senses, it is noteworthy that they were also hardly ever mentioned. (I counted three instances of direction mentions.) For Hamlet, similarly, respondents unanimously enjoyed the show, and here, too, the comic nature of the performance was repeatedly referred to whereas the environment was never directly mentioned, and the bicycles were mentioned four times. A further measure of enjoyment was reflected in how many people took the trouble to add text in relation to this first question. For A Midsummer Night’s Dream, taking hard copy and electronic forms in aggregate, fifty-four percent did so, and for Hamlet performed out of doors, just under sixty percent did so. The question about changed perceptions of the play was, similarly, to see whether any of the respondents would associate this with the obvious innovation: the environmental ethos driving The HandleBards’ approach. For A Midsummer Night’s Dream, answers from respondents who had seen the play before were evenly divided on whether the performance had changed their view of the play, or not. For Hamlet, the two-thirds of respondents said their view of the play had changed. Some people provided brief comments as to why their perceptions had changed. The most frequently cited reasons were for both plays were: that it was much more comical than they had expected, that it was more accessible than Shakespeare usually is and that they had understood the play better. No respondent mentioned bicycles, and no respondent mentioned the environment or ecotheatre notwithstanding the prompt in the next question on the form, visible to those filling in hard copy forms, and possibly remembered by those who had seen the form before and were responding electronically.

Bicycles on Stage  165

Did Spectators See the Productions as Ecotheatre? Moving on to the next important question – whether respondents saw the performance as ecotheatre, a large majority of respondents ‘strongly agreed’ or ‘somewhat agreed’ that the performance they saw could be described as ecotheatre. (See Table 7.1.) The Macbeth cohort of respondents thus turned out not to be anomalous on the basis of this small sample of two further productions. As discussed in the Introduction and Chapter 1, the term ecotheatre can have many meanings. It is unlikely all the respondents who ticked the box meant the same thing by it, hence the tickboxes on the forms, listed in Table 7.1. The most frequently selected reason was that the working practices of the theatre company made the play more exciting and enjoyable to watch. A large number of respondents who answered the question selected this reason. Relatively few people selected answers suggesting that The HandleBards’ working practices drew out environmental meanings in either text, and a very small minority (five to ten percent) thought ecological meanings could be found in the plays no matter who interpreted them. In this production of the play, interpretations such as Cless’s (2010, p. 100) ecological interpretation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream appear to be in the minority: To contemporary audiences, Titania’s speech provokes associations of severe weather induced by climate change, massive species extinction and ecological devastation such as rainforest destruction. Respondents who thought that the performance made them feel closer to the environment were also in the minority, and none of those who saw an indoor performance of Hamlet felt that the performance was making them feel closer to the environment, either at the time or after the event.4 Finally, about half of the cohort of respondents thought that the performance could be described as ecotheatre because of the low carbon footprint of the troupe. The likely explanation for this relatively low number is the impossibility for many spectators of choosing any mode of transport other than the car.5 Respondents who answered the question about transport electronically had journeyed to the performance by car sixty-five percent of the time (within which seven percent had shared the car); twenty-three percent arrived by public transport; and just six percent had arrived by bicycle. In Table 7.1, relatively low percentages for Hamlet performed indoors in all rows of the table are noteworthy, relative to the outdoor performances of both plays. Commenting, two respondents referred directly to the different impact on them of the indoor performance. One of them, who neither agreed nor disagreed that the performance could be described as ecotheatre, said: I think I might have felt differently (and more definite), had I seen the production at an outdoor theatre. But the environment was

166  Bicycles on Stage less pronounced as a theme indoors. However, the use and reuse of props/actors and bicycling does lend itself to an eco-theatrical performance. Here, I note with interest the direct mention of the bicycles as the main reason why this spectator might have seen the indoor production as ecotheatrical. The second somewhat disagreed, citing the use of public transport to this London-based venue as ‘eco-friendly’, and the absence of a garden setting as running against the idea of the performance being ecotheatrical.

Ecoeffective Theatre: No Need for Direct Thematisation For theatrical events to succeed as ecotheatre, they must first and foremost be enjoyable or provocative (or both) as theatre. Returning to questions raised in the context of the earlier discussion of the Arcola Godot and the Young Vic’s After Miss Julie, this section of The HandleBards’ audience survey data can be read to suggest that an overt thematisation or problematisation of the environment on stage is not required for a performance to be perceived as ecotheatre thus to be potentially ecotheatrical in its effect. The first spectator cited below is talking about A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The show was brilliant!!! I loved the premise and the eco-friendly ideology behind The HandleBards, and the incredible creativity they demonstrated to work within those parameters. I loved the friendly, casual picnic and cocktails […]. But of course, the real highlight was The HandleBards themselves – their adaptation was silly, lively, accessible and unpretentious – exactly what Shakespeare comedy should be! This person comments in terms of categories labelled in this analysis as affirmation (‘brilliant’), pleasure and enjoyment (‘loved’), admiration (of The HandleBards themselves), the concept (with direct mentions of constraints as well as creativity in this case) and the accessibility of Shakespearian theatre (‘accessible’). He or she also expresses approval of The HandleBards’ approach in the last few words, thus can be seen as validating the presence of the environment as a shapeshifter on the Shakespearian stage. Responding to Hamlet, one spectator wrote: Great ingenuity, comic timing and delivery. Loved the edgy and bonkers Hamlet under his cloud (who can he trust?). Also loved the inebriated Gertrude – made perfect sense. Best of all was the gravediggers’ scene and the ending. How do you solve the tragedy and dead body pile up problem with a cast of four? Easy! Use the audience and head to the bar.6 Loved it!

Bicycles on Stage  167 And another commented: Superb. I loved the interpretations of the dipso Gertrude, the long-­ suffering Claudius – best ever Polonius advice talk – and Rosencrantz (or Guildenstern) as a sock puppet was just inspired. The first commentator admired the skills of the troupe, enjoyed excellent acting observed in the context of a non-traditional approach to the roles and thoroughly appreciated the audience participation, in effect describing a resource optimisation problem in comical terms. The second comment of the two combines a comment on excellent acting with commentary on an innovation arising from the constraints embedded in the concept. Having seen this as a spectator, I can confirm that Claudius had to be patient (could be seen to struggle to maintain calm) because this wonderful version of Polonius several times seemed to finish what he was saying; he started moving towards the exit, and then he turned around and resumed the speech. Each time, we spectators, as a body, chuckled a bit louder. The sock puppet seemed to be made of recycled cycling socks, plastic water bottles and other materials, and (in another innovation) ventriloquism was used to solve the problem of how to use one actor to speak as two protagonists on the stage at the same time. People commented on finding Hamlet easier to understand – for example, one commentator had more sympathy than usual for Hamlet, who came across as both ‘human’ and ‘humane’ in this production. One person thought The HandleBards’ Hamlet was ‘better than Benedict Cumberbatch’.7 Other comments were (variously) that meaning was drawn out very effectively, that new light was thrown on the play and that it was true to Shakespeare.

Feedback Text Added to Forms: Digging into What Spectators Said I processed four hundred and three A Midsummer Night’s Dream feedback forms (The HandleBards, 2015b). Two hundred and eighteen provided text in relation to reasons why they liked the performance style of The HandleBards. It should be noted that this high number (over half of the forms contained text) is itself a positive indication of audience engagement with the production. Within the two hundred and eighteen responses, one hundred and thirty-four forms contained material that fell into the ‘affirmation’ category, using words such as ‘amazing’, ‘brilliant’ or ‘awesome’. One hundred and seven respondents referred to an aspect of The HandleBards’ ecotheatrical concept, with several referring to the originality of the approach, and others mentioning physical aspects of the production, for example, ‘I like bikes’8; ‘I like the clever physical sequences and use of the audience. I like the use of materials for costumes

168  Bicycles on Stage and props and the eco policy’; ‘Very funny; love the minimalist style’ and ‘The bells!9 Excellent props and audience members.’ Fifty-one expressed their admiration of the production or the actors, referring to their ‘talent’ or to the ‘amazing acting’. Ninety-eight wrote in terms of pleasure and enjoyment (‘Just so much fun! Joyous.’). Forty people suggested that The HandleBards’ approach made Shakespeare more accessible – by, for example, making it ‘come alive’, or making it ‘interesting’, ‘easy to follow the story’ and ‘family friendly’. There was just one objection, about an over-long interval. In the case of Hamlet, I processed one hundred and sixty forms, of which ninety-five contained text. Sixty-five of these forms contained terms I classified as ‘affirmation’, with comments such as ‘Brilliant!’, ‘Excellent!’ Sixty-seven people also wrote in terms of pleasure and enjoyment, such as ‘Loved the set’ and ‘Easy watching’. Fifty referred directly or indirectly to The HandleBards’ concept, as in ‘Loved the concept, and the acting’; ‘Changes of character/costumes. Energy. Use of bikes for scenery.’ (I note that almost no one referred directly to bicycles or used the ‘eco’ prefix). Twenty-one referred to Shakespeare’s enhanced accessibility. There was one objection to the runaway humour in the Edinburgh treatment of Hamlet’s key speech described above (‘Not sure about the Fifty Shades of Grey antics […]’). Asked whether the performance had changed their view of the play, ninety A Midsummer Night’s Dream forms and fifty-seven Hamlet forms with text provided commentary. For both plays, the main things people talked about were pleasure and enjoyment, the humour, the accessibility of the plays (especially noteworthy for Hamlet). In this context about what was different, a small number of people mentioned an aspect of the concept discussed in the context of Table 7.2. However, I note that people did not directly mention the ‘eco’ prefix or the bicycles in the context of a changed view of the play. Hamlet is not usually seen as a comedy. A very small number of people objected in terms of seeing the comedy as overdone. One person ‘thought perhaps the pathos could have been slightly more highlighted’ (and this respondent, cited earlier, thought the balance had been better in ­M acbeth). Another thought that tragedy was too often ‘undercut by comic relief’. Someone else objected to the irreverent treatment of the Hamlet’s key speech. However, such objections were overwhelmed, in terms of numbers, by those who enjoyed the comic take on the play. Some of these respondents, indeed, saw the irreverence inherent in some of the visual gags as appropriate: Just loved it. Energy and creativity. Felt like Elizabethan theatre through and through. How can the audience stay engaged? Maybe by having a morose, heavy-browed Hamlet have a permanent grey cloud hung in front of his face by an umbrella tucked into his trousers.10

Bicycles on Stage  169 The small number of objections to extreme moments suggests that The HandleBards took the balance between comedy and tragedy as far as optimal – in short, they reached greatest possible comic extreme without losing the balance with tragedy. In ecosystemic terms, they exploited an emotional runaway warming system on stage without going so far as to unbalance the broader ecosystem of the performance or the play.

The Open Secret of the Environment as a Shapeshifter: Don’t Spoil It! In the following paragraphs, I consider text submitted in the context of the ‘eco’ question, which was only possible in the electronic version of the forms because there was more space than in the hard copy forms. A  number of people decided to use the space. Forty-four respondents (out of two hundred and sixteen who answered the question) provided text for A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and twenty-four respondents (out of one hundred and twelve who answered the question) for Hamlet. This additional text, furnished by respondents with the direct eco-question in sight, and prompted by the changed structure of the form in electronic format, provided some interesting supporting insights. For both productions, people chose to use the space to assess aspects of The HandleBards’ ‘concept’ (e.g. ‘good use of props’, ‘very clever props and staging’) or to describe it by means of short factual statements (e.g. ‘props and costumes made of recycled materials’). Some went further. A spectator of A Midsummer Night’s Dream provided a sixtythree-word summary of the ‘concept’, with a comment that balances the effect of the whole on him or her as a spectator, with reference to specific (physical) aspects of the production such as props and set: I loved the use of the bicycle to change the scenery and the bells to signal character changes. The set and costumes were minimalistic but this added humour and excitement to the whole production. The way the actors transported the set etc. to different venues is economical and this was certainly appreciated by all the people I went to see the play with. In a similar vein, a Hamlet spectator captured the quality of the production and its resource-constrained delivery, in a nicely worded piece of creative description that suggests emotional engagement with the performance in the way it is (performatively) written: I loved the ethos of the tour – and its ramshackle pedal-powered style is the main reason I went to see it and enjoyed it so much. Many of the comments, with respect to both productions, took another chance to deliver praise, in the form of affirmation and admiration,

170  Bicycles on Stage using words such as ‘brilliant’, ‘eco-awesomeness’ (in a rare use of the term ‘eco’) and ‘amazing’, and one Hamlet spectator humorously said (seeming to empathise with the actors), ‘I hope your knees are OK’. One of the A Midsummer Night’s Dream respondents said the following, describing the environmental messaging that had struck home, in the context of a performance they had clearly enjoyed: This is such a fantastic concept – a touring theatre company who can put on a performance with no more than what they carry themselves. It really made me think about the impact that most large productions put on the environment, which aren’t really at all necessary! We don’t need pyrotechnics and trucks full of props – in fact the minimalism made it more accessible and friendly; the confines added to the creative whimsy. In the responses relating to both productions, in this part of the electronic forms, the term ‘eco’ was slightly more frequently used than it had been in the context of other questions and references to The ­HandleBards’ ecotheatrical concept appear regularly. The implication of this finding is that spectators more often refer directly to the environmental shapeshifter on stage when prompted to do so, as they were in this section of the form. Nevertheless, I do not think this implies that the forms led the spectators who responded to see the environment where they had not before. There are two pieces of evidence in support of this view. The first is the point that the bicycles are hardly ever mentioned in response to general questions on the survey – they appear almost as infrequently as the environment does, as a direct mention. A literal interpretation of this fact might describe the bicycles as invisible to the spectatorial gaze on The HandleBards’ stage, thus, to use Chaudhuri’s term again, ‘occluded’. However, because of the palpable presence of the bicycles and associated equipment (especially the bells) driving both operations and aesthetics, bicycles were visibly, audibly and palpably shapeshifters more often than scenery. Bicycles do not need to be mentioned in feedback forms for it to be possible that all concerned noticed the part they played in the whole, and indeed, to insist on evidence on this point would be absurd. Bicycles, as a form of ‘vibrant matter’ (Bennett, 2010) are likely to have invisible effects on spectators known (or perhaps not known!) to the spectators themselves. A similar effect is discussed in Chapter 5, where my attempt to block out Stan’s Cafe’s Of All The Creatures Across The Globe installation in Kershaw’s (2014) Meadow Meander was subverted by seeds in boxes standing in for animals without my having been aware of this until I looked back on the experience. A second piece of evidence suggests that feedback form respondents will allow themselves to be led by potentially leading feedback form questions if they agree with the direction of travel before they see

Bicycles on Stage  171 the question. Notwithstanding the majority response discussed above (­Table  7.1), four A Midsummer Night’s Dream respondents and two Hamlet respondents pushed back on the term ‘ecotheatre’. Two said it was ‘just good theatre’. One described the term as ‘worthy’, another as a term ‘mired in nonsense and irrelevancy’. However, that same person also said, ‘[…] this was ecotheatre. With bikes as transport and venue how could it not be [ecotheatre]? In short, silly question […]’. In other words, this person seemed to be suggesting that he or she was fully bought into The HandleBards’ ecotheatrical concept, making the question unnecessary. Others said, ‘Just because it is outside and minimalist does not make it eco’, ‘No, very close anyway’ and ‘Strolling players. For environment, read history’; ‘(Not closer to the environment because) we are on a blanket’. Some of these comments are playful, engaging with the people behind the form, but others contain a strong element of resistance to the question. The overall message of feedback about feedback forms was: don’t talk to me about the environment, I appreciate where these questions are going, but, as a spectator, I am here to watch good theatre produced by The HandleBards. Overall, the evidence in this chapter suggests that The HandleBards’ productions set the scene to welcome in a playful version of the environmental shapeshifter for spectators. It seems appropriate to give the last word on the forms to a spectator: They make me think of how travelling players would have performed it in Shakespeare’s day, and therefore give a sense of continuity, and of theatre/story-telling etc. being a fundamental human activity: something people have always done, always needed to do, and still need to do. Returning to the Introduction and Kershaw’s (1992, p. 1) framing of the ecotheatrical efficacy question addressed in this book: one answer suggested by this evidence is the ‘possibility that the immediate and local effects of particular performances might – individually and collectively’ contrive to ‘shift the culture of communities in particular directions’ is present in the ecology of the The HandleBards’ performances. However, as one 2015 summer tour respondent put it: ‘until global leaders face up to having to take a hit economically for the environment it’s really all for nothing.’ Returning to the discussion of stage invasions in Chapter 4, existing infrastructures such as incumbent transport systems introduce the ghost of fossil fuels where it is not always welcome. Finally, this is a chapter about audience research methodology. Theatrical productions are, as Kershaw (1992, p. 24) pointed out, ‘ludic’ ideological experiments. Attempts to find out what the audience thinks are best done in the same spirit. A warm audience attending an ecotheatrical production by choice, as in the example discussed in this chapter, is

172  Bicycles on Stage indicative of a living community culture. In practical terms, a warm audience makes it more likely that ecotheatrical efficacy will be very high. From the perspective of methodology and measurement, I am aware that the circular data analysis implemented in the course of this chapter as a brief experiment would not pass muster with everyone. This chapter confirms the notion (see Introduction) that ecotheatrical efficacy may be impossible to measure, especially if the requirement is for linear causeand-effect performance indicators. However, such metrics are irrelevant when the very existence of a runaway warming system, in the form of spectators enjoying The HandleBards’ ecotheatrical productions time after time, several years on from the formation of the company, is incontrovertible evidence of ecotheatrical efficacy in the all-round sense discussed in the Introduction and Chapter 1.

Notes 1 www.handlebards.com. The HandleBards Girls troupe (also a team of four actors) was launched in 2016, hence the reference to ‘troupes’. 2 I note the possibility of segmenting the data by age bracket, gender, location, weather and so on, for a more detailed analysis. I did not attempt this because I wanted to focus on developing the main idea. I also observed that spectators often filled in single forms in small groups, mingling conventional feedback form tickbox categories on the same form. 3 For ethical reasons (restricted access to respondent identities) I was unable to correct for the possibility that some respondents could have responded twice, once in hard copy and again electronically. 4 Indoors, fewer respondents ticked the ‘exciting to watch’ box. It thus seems reasonable to suggest that performing out of doors plays an important part in the chemistry of production and reception. 5 As I drove up the long hill to the Petersfield Sustainability Centre, I thought with sympathy of The HandleBards towing their equipment. Cycling or walking to this performance would be a challenging round trip for all but the fittest spectators. 6 The four actors successively replaced each casualty with a spectator, and by the end the four were sitting together in the back row of the audience. 7 The Barbican Hamlet, directed by Lindsey Turner (2015) and starring Cumberbatch ran from 5 August to 31 October, thereby overlapping with The HandleBards’, 24 June to 12 September 2015 tour of Hamlet http://hamlet. barbican.org.uk. 8 This and the reference to bells cited later on in the chapter are the only direct reference to bicycles in this large number of forms. 9 Each actor carried a bicycle bell on his thumb, and rang it once to announce a scene (which often also meant a character) change. As a spectator, I found this device funny, and I could see others did too. It also played an important function within the production ecosystem, given the potential for confusion when players change their roles often, as they do in these frugal productions. 10 In later performances, Hamlet wore the cloud suspended over his head by an umbrella handle in the first scene only, probably because it constrained movement and possibly because it was uncomfortable. One scene was

Bicycles on Stage  173 enough to make the point. The line ‘How is it the clouds still hang on you?’ (Hamlet, I, ii, 66) elicited a ripple of chuckles from the audience in several of the performances I saw.

References Angelaki, V. (2019) Theatre & Environment. London: Macmillan; Red Globe Press. Barthes, R. (2003, 2009) ‘Myth Today’, in Mythologies, ed. and trans. by ­Lavers, A. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1957; London: Vintage Books, pp. 131–87. Chauduri, U. (1995) Staging Place: the Geography of Modern Drama. Ann ­A rbor: Michigan University Press. Chaudhuri, U. (1994) ‘“There Must Be a Lot of Fish in That Lake”: Towards an Ecological Theater’, Theater, 25 (1), pp. 23–31. Cless, D. (2010) Ecology and Environment in European Drama. New York: Routledge. Corbin, J. and Strauss, A. (2015) Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory, 4th edn. Los Angeles, CA: Sage. Fried, L. and May, T. (1994) Greening Up Our Houses: a Guide to More Ecologically Sound Theatre. New York: Drama Book Publishers. Hudson, J. (2015) ‘The Scottish Play in Glastonbury Abbey: HandleBardian Ecotheatre’, Reviews, 27th March. Available at: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/ arts/english/research/currentprojects/eco-theatricalreviewing/reviews/. James, E.L. (2012) Fifty Shades of Grey. New York: Vintage Books. Kershaw, B. (1992) The Politics of Performance: Radical Theatre as Cultural Intervention. London: Routledge. Meadows, D.H. (2017) Thinking in Systems: A Primer, ed. by Wright, D. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing Company. Sauter, W. (2010) ‘Thirty Years of Reception Studies: Empirical, Methodological and Theoretical Advances’, About Performance, 10, pp. 241–68. Shakespeare, W. (2006) Hamlet, ed. by Thompson, A. and Taylor, N. London: Arden Shakespeare. The HandleBards (Summer 2015a) Hamlet Feedback Forms. Unpublished ­HandleBards’ Documents. The HandleBards (Summer 2015b) A Midsummer Nights’ Dream Feedback Forms. Unpublished HandleBards’ Documents. The HandleBards (March 2015) Macbeth Feedback Forms. Unpublished ­HandleBards’ Documents. The HandleBards Website (Undated) Past Shows. Available at: www.­ handlebards.com. Tulloch, J. (2005) Shakespeare and Chekhov in Production and Reception: Theatrical Events and Their Audiences. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press.

Productions, Performances and Installations Mentioned Farrell, J., dir. (2014/2015) Macbeth, Summer/Spring Tour, The HandleBards. Farrell, J., dir. (2015) A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Summer Tour, The HandleBards.

174  Bicycles on Stage Home of the Wriggler (2006) dir. Yarker. J., [DVD]. Stan’s Cafe. Kershaw, B. (2014) Meadow Meanders. Warwick University Campus. Mitchell, K. (2013) Atmen (Lungs). Premiered at the Schaubuehne, Berlin. Sampson, E., dir. (2015) Hamlet, Summer Tour, The HandleBards. Stans Cafe (2006–2010) Home of the Wriggler, dir. by Yarker, J., mac Birmingham and Warwick Arts Centre (2006); A.E. Harris, Birmingham (2009) and on tour (2009–2010). Available at: www.stanscafe.co.uk/project-home-ofthe-wriggler.html. Turner, L., dir. (2015) Hamlet, Barbican, 5th August–31st October. Available at: http://hamlet.barbican.org.uk.

8 Reperforming Reception – The Skriker in 1994 and 2015

The picture in Figure 8.1 is not just a photograph of Olafur Eliasson and Minik Rosing’s (2018) climate change installation Ice Watch. Behind the camera, I was a spectator purposefully pursuing an opportunity to experience some of the physical qualities of Eliasson and Rosing’s 2015 ArtCOP21 production of Ice Watch. I could have chosen Tate Modern brick walls or the line of trees standing off to the east as the backdrop to this slowly melting installation in which ice, literally shifting its shape as each hour passed, stood in for the environmental shapeshifter in performance. I deliberately faced towards the river in order to position the relatively modern dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral above the ice, and I did

Figure 8.1  Ice Watch in the Dark – Shapeshifting Ice Meets City ‘Scenery’. ­I nstallation by Olafur Eliasson (2018). Photographed by the author, 13 December 2018.

176  Reperforming Reception not try to correct for the shine of the overhead light on the tarmac, for in signalling the connectedness of this climate change production to fossil fuel energy systems, it is an important part of the picture. This two-­dimensional frame contains an entire ecosystem of meanings as feedback loops, set moving by melting ice, buildings, a river, COP21 and ArtCOP21, COP24 situated in the coal-driven city of Katowice, ­Eliasson’s artistic vision, geological science, a prime minister turned tugboat captain, grains of sand thanks to which the bergs stood unmoving on the slick surface, and money. These stranded icebergs open this chapter for several reasons. They reach back to climate change installations of 2015 (discussed in ­Chapter 4), an important year for The Skriker. The photograph positions a spectator (thus, spectators) in the leading role, represented in the invisible presence of the photographer watching the ice, and (in the case of the productions discussed in this chapter) by a small group of relatively homogenous individuals in the form of two cohorts of theatre critics. The 2015 revival of a 1994 climate change play, The Skriker, and the existence of a body of reviews reprinted in Theatre Record for both years, is an opportunity to explore in some depth how critics reacted to the two productions of an important climate change play produced at different times.1 Recalling the Introduction and Chapter 1, the environment in The Skriker can be described as an ecosystem knowingly embedded in the ecologies it performs as a system of feedback loops within a complex network of other ecologies. Precisely because the environment is systemically embedded throughout this play, spectators and production teams may not able to perceive the difference between artifice and organism (fairyland form and real-world ecological substance) of this work. This perspective potentially explains why Churchill thought 1994 audiences had not noticed the environmental message in the first production of this unique ecotheatrical play. In 2015, in contrast, The Skriker could be nothing other than a climate change play. Somewhere the system of ecosystems had rebalanced between 1994 and 2015, providing an unusual opportunity to explore the idea of theatrical ecoefficacy over a relatively long period of time.

Cultural Change and Ecotheatrical Efficacy The Skriker came to the stage in two markedly different contexts for climate change in 1994 (directed by Les Waters) and 2015 (directed by Sarah Frankcom). The play premiered in the early years of the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC) climate talks. 2015, in contrast, was a key year for a well-established political process and the science of global warming seemed to be more often accepted in political circles. In 2015, it may be more likely than it was in 1994 that the environment on stage was visible to its spectators as an ecotheatrical shapeshifter. I state this tentatively, however, because,

Reperforming Reception  177 while 1994 and 2015 look different from the perspective of UNFCCC ecopolitics, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) scientific message, and increasingly prominent climate change campaigns reported in the media as I write, the environmental shapeshifter was not entirely absent as an overt presence in the arts in 1994. Several chapters in this book suggest an active engagement of the arts with environmental challenges in both of the time periods under consideration. In the early 1990s, Brith Gof’s ecotheatrical productions, Los Angeles and PAX, together with some of the literary and cultural artefacts and newspaper articles (e.g. Clover 1988) discussed in Chapter 5, suggest environmental concerns to have been an active site of engagement in the arts. On the other hand, notwithstanding striking environmental writings by Serres (1990, 1995), Revkin (1990) and Shoumatoff (1990), Chaudhuri’s (1994) article and Pearson’s retrospective comment (2010) hint at gaps in ecoconsciousness on stage. Theatrical productions, performances and installations explored in earlier chapters in this book – theatrical responses to natural disasters, ecological modes of narrative, the increasing number of climate change plays in conventional theatre spaces, bicycle-driven ecoengineering in Home of the Wriggler, The HandleBards tours and other bicycle-­powered theatre, the scale and reach of ArtCOP21 and ecoperformative interactive installations such as Kershaw’s (2014) Meadow Meanders  – ­collectively suggest that the environmental shapeshifter is becoming more assertively present on stage. Notwithstanding active debate about the environment under way in 1994, it seems likely that two ­ecosystems – The Skriker and the world outside the play – may be shapeshifting in several senses in 2015: changing in themselves, changing each other and changing under the influence of shifts in awareness in the world outside the theatre.

1994: Ecological Aphasia The Skriker premiered in January 1994 (Churchill, 1994, p. 7), just over eighteen months after the 14 June 1992 Rio Earth Summit, and not long before the first Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC (1995), COP1. Themes woven through the text suggest that the play has always been a play about environmental degradation and climate change, even if not always so recognised. In a radio interview about the writing of the play in retrospect, Churchill (2016) described spirits in the play such as Thrumpins, Black Dog and Jennie Greenteeth as gradually escalating their invasion into human life, starting off with anomalous presences in the mental hospital and a bar and ending in full-scale invasion. This neatly captures the environmental narrative arc running alongside the story of the two girls (Lily and Josie) and the Skriker’s attempts to own them for herself because she is needy and they are vulnerable. Alongside this structure run lines in the play such as ‘Now they hate us

178  Reperforming Reception and hurt hurtle faster and master. They poison me in my rivers of blood poisoning makes my arm swelter’ (p. 12), which hint strongly at ecological themes. Given such clear references to the environment in the play text (and indeed the structural presence of a strong environmental thread of meaning in the play described by Churchill herself), it is surprising to find that the National Theatre (1994) Theatre Programme does not once make a direct mention of the environment. Rather, it focuses on the fairy-tale characters that populate the play. There is a glossary for characters such as Black Annis (‘[a] hag with a blue face and only one eye, she devours lambs and young children’); Jimmy Squarefoot ([a] pig-like man, ridden by a stone-throwing giant) or Skriker itself (‘[a] shapeshifter and a death portent [that] wanders about in the woods uttering loud piercing shrieks’). The programme recounts a few of the fairy tales that shaped the Skriker’s language, drawing on K.M. Briggs (1967), and Briggs and Tongue (1965). To give two short examples, one tells the story of the wicked stepmother who sent Rosy to fetch something from a chest with a heavy lid. This fell on her and killed her, so the stepmother duly baked Rosy into a pie for her father and sisters to eat. Rosy came back as a ghost and sang about what had happened, so the wicked stepmother suffered a fate that did not sound very ignominious considering the crime – she ‘died lonesome’. Another tells the story of a farmer who was too frightened to go out in the dark. He eventually confessed to his wife that a Bogey was coming to get him because when ‘he were a silly young lad’ he had sold himself to it. His wife baked a red-hot iron into a pie, the Bogey bit on the bait, and was ‘scorched bewtifull’. Although the programme does not directly discuss the environmental themes embedded in the play, members of the audience who attended the Platform discussion in which Nicholas Wright (1994) interviewed Churchill the day after the play’s opening night would have been aware that they were there. In this forty-three-minute discussion the theme came up several times. Asked about the themes, Churchill observed that one of the most constant, over the ten years it took to write the play, was ‘feelings to do with damage and loss’ – relating to both the damaged world and damaged people. Asked about the Skriker’s language – phrases such as ‘poison in the food chain saw massacre’ where words change their meaning and take the sentence off in unexpected directions – Churchill explained that this was also about damage. Her intention was to have ‘it’ (the Skriker) ‘have a damaged way of speaking so it could not hold a train of thought’, resulting in a creative aphasia described by critic Claire Allfree (2015) as a ‘careening mish-mash’. When Wright asked Churchill if she believed in fairies she explained that of course she did not, although one of her aims in writing the play had been to enjoy the stories for their own sake. However, this was also a way to ‘write about […] damage to the world, because it’s the fairies that are damaged

Reperforming Reception  179 and neglected’. Churchill wanted to talk about damage to the environment without coming over as ‘incredibly direct and horribly obvious’. Her hope was that the message would come through at the level of the stories about the spirit characters in the play ‘without being so quiet and without sounding as [clunky]2 as it sounds to me when I say it.’ Later, in the same Platform discussion, a member of the audience asked if English people were familiar with all the fairies in the play, and this prompted Wright to add a question – whether people not knowing about them was one reason why the fairies were damaged. ‘Yes’, said Churchill, ‘It’s one of the things they are furious about. They’d […] like to think anyway that there was a time when they were respected.’ Wright drew the theme out further: ‘It’s the natural world that’s being built up and streams dried up and all that.’ Churchill’s reply was: Yes. As far as they are spirits of a stream or spirits of this and that […] they feel poisoned and ignored and […] physically damaged. Because no one thinks about them they feel neglected and not thought about so they are extremely angry at the beginning of the play. The above suggests that the 1994 production was intentionally ecotheatrical, but that environmental degradation was regarded as a difficult subject to thematise or problematise on stage. In 1994, it seems that environmental damage and related issues such as climate change were not always readily accepted by the general public or in the arts. Churchill herself suggested as much in March 2016, when she introduced the Radio 3 version of the Manchester International Festival production of The Skriker, also starring Maxine Peake: By the end […] Black Annis [was] destroying the world by floods, because this was of course partly an environmental play, though I was concerned that it should not be clunkily obvious. […] [A]t the time people weren’t so aware of things like climate change [so] I don’t think anyone noticed. Such comments however also raise questions, recalling the discussion in Chapter 7, where respondents to feedback forms pushed back on questions about ecotheatre and the environment, potentially giving a new definition to the idea of ‘not noticing’ something on stage.

2015: ‘A Call to Arms from the Earth Herself’ The difference in the cultural positioning of climate change in 1994 and 2015 is fully reflected in the contrast between the theatre programmes for each event. In the introduction to the 2015 Royal Exchange Theatre Manchester Programme, director Sarah Frankcom (2015, p.  5)

180  Reperforming Reception introduces the Skriker as representing ‘environmental fury in extremis’, and the play as ‘a call to arms from the Earth herself.’ Rachel Clements (2015, pp. 9–10), Lecturer in Drama, Theatre and Performance at Manchester University is cited as describing the Skriker’s ‘blunt statement of ecological catastrophe [as] just one of the play’s pressing concerns.’ The Programme also carries (pp. 13–14) an extract from Naomi Klein’s 2014 climate change polemic This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. The extract opens by describing the ‘alarm bells of the climate crisis’ as having been ‘ringing in our ears for years and […] getting louder all the time.’ Despite that, she says, ‘humanity has failed to change course’, recalling the unchanging trends in the charts of ­Chapter 1. She asks: ‘what is wrong with us?’ The Programme thus positions this production of The Skriker as highly political ecotheatre. There are, moreover, many moments that, to my ecocritical 2015 eyes watching the Manchester production, could be described as ecotheatrical, even if not so understood in 1994. One that stands out is a comical scene in a bar (Churchill, 1994, p. 20), in which Lily flounderingly tries to explain how TV works. This scene suggests humorously that most human beings have no understanding of what makes it possible for them to exploit the energy that drives their substantial natural resource footprint, therefore no means of controlling this behaviour because the knowledge feedback loop is missing. (As I write, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence appear to be magnifying this same alienating technological runaway warming system. (For example, see Zuboff, 2019.)) Another brief but remarkable moment in the 2015 production I saw was in the spectatorial reaction to the Skriker’s question to Josie in the Underworld as she persuades her to have a drink so she will be unable to escape: ‘Don’t you want to feel global warm and happy ever after?’ (p.  36). Chuckles I noticed in the Manchester International Festival audience as Peake spoke the words suggest that this signpost to the metaphor that can be seen as structural to the play – the damaged spirit world standing for damaged, neglected planetary ecologies – did not go unnoticed.

1994 Reviews: ‘Not Entirely Unembarrassing – Believe in Fairies, Get Green’ Churchill was not far from the mark when she said that she did not think anyone had noticed the ecological themes in 1994. The 1994 edition of Theatre Record republished eighteen reviews. Just two of these reviews discuss the environment, the planet or the ecosystem directly. Paul Taylor (1994, p. 94) of the Independent talked about the breakdown between the human and ‘faery’ worlds as part of an overall dynamic of environmental degradation: ‘now they hate and hurt natural spirits in their catastrophic abuse of the environment’. Billington (1994, p. 97) included a sixty-two-word passage of ecocritical comment in his review, amounting

Reperforming Reception  181 to thirteen percent of the word count, in which he described the Skriker as ‘an eco-prophet of doom foreseeing the death of the planet’. However, both critics make it clear that they are either uncomfortable with the idea of environmental campaigning in this production, or unsure about it. Taylor (p. 95) writes off the ecological connection in his final paragraph: ‘But the environmental dimension of the play is not entirely unembarrassing; if you believe in fairies, get green.’ Billington is at first more accepting of the theme. He directly cites a powerfully ecocritical line of text from the Skriker’s ‘most potent speech in the play – because it touches on a common human fear, [the death of the planet]’. He further elaborates on it for the reader in a manner that suggests identification with the theme. However, he then moves on to say that nature can no longer be relied on: in a world of seasonal disturbance and apocalyptic meteorological phenomena. But in a classic fairy tale a simple story naturally gives rise to multiple meanings; here you have to impose the meanings on the story just to make sense of it. The crux of the above passage is the word ‘but’, which undercuts what he had just written. Having seemed to identify with The Skriker’s ecocritical threads of meaning for sixty-two words, in his next thirty words he describes them as imposed on the story. Billington seems to reject the idea of ecoprophecy because the production is (as he stated in his opening paragraph) ‘strangely opaque’; thus, he cannot be sure he is reading it right. Another, less direct measure of the extent to which the play’s ecological threads of meaning were noticed is the frequency with which critics quote obviously environmentally relevant pieces of text. Apart from Billington, cited above, Neil Smith of Time Out (1994, p. 96) includes ‘toxic waste paper basket case’ in a list of three phrases designed to illustrate the ‘Joycean construction’ of Churchill’s language. A third critic, John Peter (1994, p. 98), who wrote his review as a one-thousand-threehundred-word mock interview between the critic and his reader, cites a six-word ecofragment – ‘poison-in-the-food-chain-saw-massacre’ – as an example of a ‘bizarre’ language that sounded as if it had been invented by Bosch. Overall these comments suggest that, although some picked up on the ecotheatrical themes present in The Skriker, it was in a minor way. Other commentators did not seem to ‘notice’ the environment. The following academic review by Ralf Erik Remshardt (1994, pp.  121–3) from the Theatre Journal suggests several other possible themes and hints at the sense of bafflement described by many reviewers: The Skriker incorporates the gender-bending phantasmagoria of Cloud Nine, the exploration of class and gender of Top Girls, and the social critique of Serious Money, but its politics are far less conspicuous and its technique, despite its quirks, more conventional.

182  Reperforming Reception Themes identifiable in this critique include gender, feminism, class and capitalism. An ecocritical perspective is significant only by its absence, although, as Canadian academic Susan Bennett, discussing a version of this work with me in the context of the International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR) conference in Stockholm in 2016, commented, environmental concerns were often woven through the feminist movement from the 1970s onwards. A possible reading of her comment is that feminism and environmentalism could be described as feedback loops potentially reinforcing each other as co-movements in this play and its productions, especially in the context of the broader cultural ecosystem. Thus, in 1994 the embarrassment felt by some of the male critics could be seen as resistance to feminism and environmentalism in combination, rather than to environmentalism alone.

2015 Reviews: Climate Change as ‘Moral Rupture’ In contrast to the reviews of 1994, all seven of the reviews published in the 2015 edition of Theatre Record marked out the environment or climate change as a theme and all but one (Robert Gore-Langton of the Mail on Sunday) took the issue seriously, variously discussing ‘environmental terrors’ (Allfree, 2015, p.  724), ‘environmental collapse’ (­Maxwell, 2015, p. 724), the ‘revenge of nature for the human despoliation of the earth’ (Valley, 2015, p. 225), the suggestion that ‘climate change feeds on our bones’ (Jays, 2015, p. 725) and ‘an environmental tragedy that here looks like a moral rupture’ (Clapp, 2015, p. 725). Climate change and environmental degradation are thus identified as important themes in the play and the production by the 2015 critics. One critic (Allfree, 2015) even thought that this production ‘underplayed’ the environmental dimension. Another (Jays, 2015) saw the Skriker herself as ‘a malevolent reminder of how nature may turn on us at any minute’. Of the eight extracts of quoted language from Churchill’s play text, four can be described as eco-quotations. Overall, six out of seven the 2015 reviewers seem to identify strongly with the production as outstanding theatre and ecotheatre. I did not see the 1994 production therefore I am not able to compare 1994 critical reviews with other spectatorial responses. However, it was clear from small pieces of evidence I noted down as a spectator myself, that for at least some of the other spectators the Manchester production in 2015 was perceived as being about the human degradation of natural systems. As I waited in the foyer to take my seat, for example, someone in a small group of people behind me informed those with whom she was sharing the programme: ‘It’s about what we’re doing to the environment.’ Listening to the audience sitting around me as I watched the play I was struck by chuckles at the Skriker’s ‘global warming’ comment in the underworld.

Reperforming Reception  183

Theatre Reviews as Potential Evidence of Cultural Change The above-cited reviews by critics such as Billington, Smith, Gore-­ Langton, Peter, Allfree, Maxwell, Valley, Jays and Clapp, which were captured for posterity in Theatre Record, provide in freeze-frame a set of reactions of a specialised segment of the audiences who saw the two productions. This cohort of writers as a source of evidence on cultural change is not necessarily ideal. Perhaps most importantly, newspaper critics are unlikely to be representative of a typical audience, on the basis that they may be quite homogenous as a group, having similar educational back grounds and cultural biases. The social make-up of the ‘anomalous’ group humorously described by Warwick University academic Paul Prescott (2013, p. 144) as ‘criticus rotundis Oxoniensis’, contains overlaps with the group of critics cited in this book and this chapter. In addition to the lack of cultural diversity in the group, 21st-century newspaper critics face tight constraints relative to the 1990s, in the form of an increasingly functional star-driven reviewing culture in the context of a reduced word count. Such conditions potentially limit and may distort what they say, in 2015 relative to 1994. Thus, there is a possibility that the 2015 reviews might contain less information about the reception of this play than the 1994 reviews did, just because there is less scope for textured commentary. Nevertheless Prescott (2013, p. 22) identifies reviews as ‘enormously fruitful’ in the context of Shakespearian reviewing, when used as ‘guides to the ways in which audiences of the past have read performance, have found meaning in theatre and have negotiated the worth of Shakespeare’. An advantage of using reviews in this way in this ecotheatrical context is that any findings suggestive of cultural change, produced in the context of the tighter 2015 constraints described above, are potentially more meaningful. A further advantage is that ecocritical reviewing (should it be identified in the reviews) is unlikely to be trammelled by the tacit rules of engagement at work in Shakespearian reviewing as described by Prescott. On the contrary, ecocritical theatre might even have the potential to elicit diverse responses even in a group that potentially lacks cultural diversity. Overall, the advantages seem to outweigh the disadvantages of leveraging this body of text in this specific context, for potential evidence it might contain in respect of a different emotional register in the two years in question, just over two decades apart. My first reading of a selection of The Skriker reviews drawn from the two years in question suggested that the writing was different in a manner that might be potentially quantified by means of qualitative research techniques known as textual encoding (see also the experimental material in the preceding chapter). Critics writing about performances and productions do not communicate their reactions to these and other productions through explanation and description alone. As already noted in Chapter 5 in the small amount of reviewer material available for Los

184  Reperforming Reception Angeles and PAX, and in some of the Stan’s Cafe blogs also discussed in Chapter 5, short pieces of creative interpretation and description are regularly woven into reviews. This is also apparent here, even in the context of shorter 2015 word counts. In two examples of reviewer commentary that goes beyond factual description, Valley (2015) thought the theatre was ‘transformed into an underground bunker bedlam’, while Allfree (2015) describes the play as ‘piercing the membrane between the real and the imagined, sanity and madness’.

What Critics Talk about in Reviews In deciding on suitable encoding categories for what critics talk about I drew on the empirical work of others as well as being guided by the structure of the reviews themselves. Tadeusz Kowzan’s well-known classification of thirteen theatrical sign systems is helpful in suggesting a range of topics critics could potentially focus on. It falls into five broad categories: spoken text (word and tone); expression of the body (mime, gesture and movement); actor’s external appearance (make-up, hairstyle and costume); appearance of the stage (properties, settings and lighting) and inarticulate sounds (music and sound effects).3 In the case of The Skriker, most critics do not segment their material into so many divisions. In the body of reviews examined in this chapter, critics discuss the language of the play and the way the lead actor delivered it because the language was an important aspect of the play. They talk about lead actor’s performance and appearance as one element, focusing on what mattered most within this. They talk more briefly about sound, props, setting and lighting. However, movement, sound and design are often mentioned in the context of an assessment of the overall production, as an illustration of how everything worked together, or not. For the analysis described below, I identified the following as key elements in the reviews in question: the production overall; the contextual positioning of the production as a performance, or as theatre; the writing (and the writer); sound and music; design and set; the performance of the lead actor, the supporting actors and the ensemble of dancers; meaning and ecotheatrical threads of meaning; and the plot. The empirical work of others working in the field of reception research, such as Sauter (2010) and Tullock (2005, esp. Part Two, Audience Studies), suggests that such topics, put together, are a reasonable structure for textual analysis. The following description of audience survey work, for example, is an important cornerstone for the work in this chapter: We compared a number of topics that were graded by the participants, such as the play, the set, the dramatist, the lighting, the music and so forth. It turned out that the only issue that correlated constantly with the overall judgement of a performance were the actors. (Sauter, 2010, p. 247)

Reperforming Reception  185 This precedent suggests that a comparison of the spectatorial reactions to a list of topics like those discussed above in published reviews should help to identify the presence of potentially successful emotional and cognitive feedback loops. Combined with an analysis of how critics talk about those topics, a systematic comparison of the relative ecotheatrical efficacy of the two productions is experimentally developed in this chapter. Billington is the only critic in the cohort of critics discussed in this chapter to have been present at both productions. In the following paragraphs, I compare his two reviews directly.

Billington: What He Wrote about, and How, in 1994 and 2015 Billington’s 2015 (pp. 724–5) review of The Skriker begins, as do several of the reviews in the cohort, with a positioning statement, designed to catch the reader’s attention, but also to indicate to the reader how the production struck him as a critic. He leads, as a second-time spectator and reviewer in 2015, with a strong hint that he has had a change in view: ‘Plays change with time’. He contextualises this Manchester International Festival production as a ‘darker’ version of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream,4 and as distinguished by the ‘magnetic’ Maxine Peake in the leading role. He also describes important aspects of the play, such as the language: At […] times the play seems like an experiment with language in which the Skriker adopts a densely pun-filled style (‘champagne the pain is a sham pain the pain is a sham’). However, what I found interesting about his 2015 review, in relation to the 1994 version, was the greater emphasis on creative interpretation, as opposed to straight description, in several sections of text. In 1994, this is how he described the personage of the Skriker: We first see the Skriker – the protean Kathryn Hunter – looking like some squat, hairy insect and plotting revenge for ancient wrongs in a dense, pun-packed Joycean prose. The equivalent lines in 2015 seem to be a description of the Skriker’s role in the plot, but they are far more than that: Driven by a mixture of neediness and revenge, the Skriker craves to be part of the human cycle yet comes attended by a bevy of Breughelian underground spirits and seems bent on mortifying her human contacts. Each passage is a piece of creative description in the sense intended above. Both focus on the artistry of the leading player’s performance.

186  Reperforming Reception However, they are also different for what they suggest about the quality of Billington’s response to the lead player’s performance. The 1994 lines concentrated on the Skriker’s striking external spidery appearance and shapeshifting capabilities, suggesting empathy with the actor as well as what she was seeking to project. Billington may also identify to an extent with the protagonist herself on the basis that ‘plotting revenge’ looks briefly into Skriker’s psychology. In 2015, however, he adds more texture to his exploration of Skriker’s psychological make-up. The words ‘neediness’, ‘revenge’ ‘craves’ are not objective descriptions formed in the cold light of day, but phenomenological reactions to the leading actor’s performance. Peake’s Skriker ‘ardently’ pursues Lily and Josie, she ‘oscillates’ between evil spirit and fairy godmother; Hunter displayed ‘prodigious chameleon skill’. For Billington, Peake and Hunter seem to be well matched in terms of their ‘chameleon’ artistic skills. However, when he describes Peake as ‘embracing within herself male and female, tough and tender, vengeful and vulnerable’, he is looking within, and reflecting about how (he feels) she feels, thus the level of empathy in his second review goes to a deeper level. He is responding emotionally to a performance that was very strong in phenomenological and artistic terms. His painterly description of the spirits cleverly captures movement by recalling the pullulating scenes characteristic of Breughel’s pictures. The phrase ‘bent on mortifying’ is his own interpretation of Peake’s performance, indicative of cognitive processes at work as the critic sought to understand what was happening, while ‘seems’ suggests a moment in which the critic as spectator steps back to reflect, partly puzzled by the seemingly irrational behaviour of the Skriker. Sometimes, creativity extends further as the performance triggers moments in which the critic is playing pleasurably with language, not just as a means of communicating what he or she felt and thought, but as a part of the theatrical experience. Hence, Billington describes the Skriker as (unlike Puck) ‘chillingly visible […] to the two girls whom she haunts and pursues’, the ensemble of dancers as ‘[threading] their way through the action like sinuous ghosts’, and the set as ‘a distressed echo-­ chamber filled with bare wooden tables’. Such passages are densely written because of the way words are used – multiple meanings are conveyed through words like ‘threading’ and ‘distressed’. A layering of meanings in the writing suggests a complex and highly engaged response to the production in the critic, thus, a runaway warming system of responses, as discussed in the Introduction.

The Environment – Scenery or Shapeshifter for Billington? The description of Billington’s two reviews, above, suggests that there was more emotional content in his 2015 review, and a deeper ‘engagement’, 5 with the lead protagonist. Was there also a change in how he

Reperforming Reception  187 responded to the environmental threads in the play? Conveniently for this discussion, Billington is consistent in spotting the ecotheatrical theme in the play on both occasions, and (all-importantly) not consistent in the way he reacts to it. In 1994, Billington identifies environmental degradation as a theme in the play, but the production failed to act as a catalyst to connect emotionally because ‘puzzlement’ was dominant. In contrast, in 2015, he described his own embodied response to the environment: But what hits one between the eyes now is Churchill’s concern with ecological disaster. [A] deeply moving speech […] talks of mankind’s historic reliance on the seasons: the assumption that ‘spring will return even if it’s without me, nobody loves me but at least it’s a sunny day’. For Billington, the 1994 production of The Skriker was not ecotheatrically effective in the sense at work in this book because it did not succeed in harnessing the environmental narrative from an emotional perspective. In 2015, in contrast, his comments point to embodied emotions in the opening few words, to an awareness of being moved, and to an emotional connection to the ecosystem of ideas embedded in the play. Even his selection of quoted words (‘spring will return […]’) is likely to have a different impact on the review reader, thereby reperforming their effects on Billington during the performance. The words cited in 2015 are an example of Churchill’s language, but they also reflect a vicarious experience of the despondency human beings feel when there is no sunlight. This choice of words suggests an emotional connection to the environmental themes in the play.

Capturing What Critics Wrote about, and How, in 1994 and 2015 In the brief analytics that follow, I marked sections of review text in terms of what the critic was focusing on, and how the critic wrote about it: * What: I looked at the proportion of text spent on the production overall; its positioning; the writing; the plot; the lead actor, the support actors, and the ensemble of dancers; meaning; and ecotheatrical meaning. * How: I distinguished between empathy, verbal applause (affirmation that the production was worth going to see) and objection (the opposite). I also categorized the type of content in the review: whether it was relatively factual, or focused on the artistic merit of the production, or was couched in terms of a phenomenological or ‘sensory’ response.

188  Reperforming Reception I treated each paragraph in reviews as a unit of commentary, and began by identifying what each paragraph was most focusing on. Having identified the focus of each paragraph, I identified words, phrases, sentences or sometimes the entire paragraph in question in each review that seemed to me capture how the critic was writing, as defined above. Marked sections of text could then be expressed as a percentage of word count, of the review or the cohort, depending on the aim of the analysis. In the paragraphs below, I run through the thought process that determined what was encoded how, for empathy, affirmation and objection.

Reading between the Lines: Creative Description in Reviews In the analysis that follows the 1994 and 2015 reviews of The Skriker, empathy as identified in the reviews analysed here might typically take one or more of the following forms: a discussion or description of what is driving the lead protagonist’s inner feelings; a discussion or description of the challenge facing the acting company; discussion and interpretation of a key theme; an approving imaginative shorthand description of either of these; writing that creatively mimics, echoes or plays with the language of the play or agreement with one or more of the goals of the production. Thus, Coveney (1994) looks beyond the surface when he refers to the ‘competitive relationship’ between Josie and Lily. Taylor (1994) delves into the Skriker’s psychological make-up when he says: ‘all these impostures seem to be fuelled by the same devouring need to feed off people and yet to manifest an alien’s misapprehensions as to what makes someone likeable’. Allfree (2015) contextualises Peake’s performance against her 2014 Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre Hamlet (also directed by Frankcom) and observes: ‘You might even argue Churchill presents the tougher challenge […].’ Frequently, language in the reviews echoes the language of the play in both years: Coveney coins an eye-catching alliterative phrase to describe the language that also echoes the quirky language of the play with ‘Joycean poetic pun-speak’, while Clapp harnesses several ideas to capture Peake’s physical appearance: ‘crop-haired, grey-clad prophetess’, and Allfree describes Skriker as a ‘chameleon-like demon’ and her language as (as cited above) a ‘careening mishmash’. In 2015, several critics discuss the environmental dimension of the play in a way that suggests empathy with the theme: for Billington the 2015 production presents ‘a vision of climate catastrophe we can all understand’. Clapp (2015) describes climate change as ‘an environmental tragedy that here looks like moral rupture, psychic disaster writ large’ and goes on to weave together feminism and environmentalism: ‘The few males are […] part of a disordered landscape in which animation means mutation.’

Reperforming Reception  189 In the category of ‘affirmation’, the production might be deemed to be worth going to see, but a strong affirmation may position the production as great: theatre history in the making. This could apply to the entire production; the writing; the acting; or an aspect of the production such as design, sound or movement. In 2015, there are many examples of affirmation: Billington talks about ‘the magnetic Peake’, and ‘a magnificent Royal Exchange Production for the Manchester International Festival’. Clapp describes the Skriker as ‘one of the primary figures of modern theatre’, Sarah Frankcom’s production as ‘explosive’ and the play as ‘extraordinarily prescient’. At times, I also marked references to literary works and other productions as forms of affirmation. In 1994, Coveney was reminded of ‘Peter Brook’s famous Dream’, and Billington compared Churchill’s approach in drawing on fairy tale to ‘Shakespeare, the Brothers Grimm and J. M. Barrie before her’. In Spencer’s 1994 review, when he compares the language to ‘James Joyce on LSD’, I marked the sentence in which this appears as an objection, and the reference itself as the opposite – affirmation – to capture what seem to be mixed feelings about the production in the form of a grudging admiration. The flip side of affirmation in this analysis is objection, where the critic takes issue with aspects of the production or, sometimes, the entire production. The idea that there might be more creative interpretation in reviews for productions critics like and actively engage with is potentially offset by the possibility of creatively framed objections. Sometimes, humour, sarcasm or mockery is applied. Gore-Langton, the only critic in Theatre Record to write negatively on the 2015 production of The Skriker, is a good example. He likened the tone of the production to the exaggeratedly gloomy comportment of Private James Fraser (an undertaker in his fictional civilian life) in the television sitcom Dad’s Army, declaring in a lugubrious Scottish accent: ‘We’re doomed’. Spencer regularly used similar tactics in 1994: he admired Hunter’s performance as the Skriker, for instance, and neatly injected damning comments about the writing into an affirmatory sentence about her acting: ‘One’s admiration for Miss Hunter, who has learnt page after page of this gibberish […] is intense.’ Elsewhere he couches seemingly factual pieces of information in such a way as to make the performance seem meaningless or incoherent: ‘the Spriggan […] spends the whole evening on stilts.’

Spectatorial Reactions, Ecodata and Analytical Efficacy The analysis in this chapter takes advantage of the fact that Theatre Record collects and publishes reviews drawn from leading newspapers every two weeks. The 15–28 January 1994 edition includes eighteen reviews published in fifteen newspapers.6 The 2–15 July 2015 edition contains seven reviews published in seven newspapers.7 In total, this body of text amounts to 10,869 words.8 Within this, the word count

190  Reperforming Reception for newspapers that published in both years is 7,463, unevenly divided between 1994 (4,682 words) and 2015 (2,781 words). The cohort of reviews I selected for analysis (Table 8.1) focused on newspapers that published on The Skriker in both 1994 and 2015, so that the balance of newspaper cultures in each cohort might be similar. Before proceeding to a brief discussion of my analysis, I want to make one further point. By this stage in the book, it should be clear that, notwithstanding the pleasure I take in playing with charts and numbers, I am not suggesting that this or similar experiments are a valid way of assessing theatrical productions. I use words and charts as a means of visualisation. I am interested in using such techniques primarily to look for patterns, but not because I expect to prove anything. If proof were the aim of the exercise, textual analysis as implemented here would need to be undertaken with far greater rigour. For example, the same exercise would be implemented by a crowd of others in parallel, to verify whether similar answers emerge no matter who does the analysis. Even if resources were available to do this, I think this would be missing a key point about live theatre – its ‘ludic’ (Kershaw, 1992) capacity to produce completely different reactions from one person to the next. (See the earlier discussions of Godot.) The charts below are enough, in this context, to confirm my impression of an emotionally more engaged response in 2015 than in 1994. Table 8.1  R  eviews Selected for Analysis in The Skriker Case Study Word Critic Name, Count, 2015 1994

Newspaper

534 491

Daily Telegraph Claire Allfree Guardian Michael Billington Independent Paul Valley Independent Mail on Sunday Robert Gore-Langton Observer Susannah Clapp Observer

423 344 281

Charles Spencer Michael Billington Paul Taylor Judith Mackrell Louise Doughty

243

Jan Parry

447

Michael Coveney N/A Sunday Times Benedict The Times Nightingale Total Word Count

0 670 3433

Critic Name, 2015

David Jays Dominic Maxwell

Word Count, 2015 467 527 251 156 751

217 411 2780

Source: Compiled from Theatre Record. Reviews were selected in such a way as to match newspapers between years, as far as possible, to try and balance out potential stylistic differences. The rule was relaxed when two reviewers published in 1994, where both are included. The 217-word 2015 Sunday Times review was included, but its 1994 1,242-word counterpart was excluded because it was not in a review format, but written as a chatty discussion between the critic and an imaginary spectator.

Reperforming Reception  191

Ecodata: What Did Critics Write About? The approach taken in the next stage of this chapter is, thus, to present some data visually to make the point about changing patterns. This is done below by plotting 1994 data on the X axis and 2015 data on the Y axis, but without going so far as to interpret the resulting scatter-plot as a regression.9 Figure 8.2 looks at what critics wrote about in the reviews, comparing word counts expressed as a percentage of words in all of that year’s encoded reviews in aggregate as listed in Table 8.1. In this chart, the unit of analysis within each cohort is the review paragraph. Each point on the chart represents one of the activities discussed under ‘what’ critics wrote about as their main subject-matter, paragraph by paragraph. The forty-five-degree line drawn from the origin is where data points fall when the same proportion of the text, in aggregate, is spent on a particular aspect of the review, such as the production overall or its positioning, in both years. The analysis in Figure 8.2 finds that critics in both years focused mainly on the production and (to a lesser extent) its positioning, with an increase in both in 2015. Another point of note is that critics spent more time discussing meaning and less time on the plot and movement in 2015, suggesting that the play was better understood 70%

2015: Percent of Total Word Count

60% 50% Twice as much in 2015

40% 30%

The same in both years.

20%

Positioning Ecomeaning

10% 0%

Production

Meaning

Writing / writer Lead Actor Movement Design Sound

0%

5%

10%

Half as much in 2015 Plot / storyline

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

1994: Percent of Total Word Count

Figure 8.2  W  hat Critics Focused on in Reviews of The Skriker in 1994 and 2015. Source: Based on raw data Compiled from Theatre Record.

192  Reperforming Reception in the revival. They also spent time on ecomeaning in 2015 whereas in 1994, this concept did not appear at all as the leading subject matter of any paragraph, even though it did appear briefly within paragraphs.

EcoData: How Did Critics Write about the Production? The next stage in the analysis looks at how reviewers wrote about the productions in the two years in question, in terms of the simple analytical system described above. When the 1994 and 2015 reviews are compared as a body in terms of how they were written, applying the same visualisation technique as in Figure 8.2, this evidence suggests that these critics, as a group, reacted differently to the two productions (Figure 8.3). Just under thirty percent of total word count is devoted to affirmation in 2015 against seven percent in 1994, suggesting a more positive response to the play in 2015. Empathy was high in both productions, almost doubling in 2015. Objections were far fewer in number. In terms of Sauter’s levels of response to a theatrical event, the artistic level dominated in both productions and was higher in 2015, rising from twenty-five percent to thirty-six percent. Sensory level responses rose significantly in 2015, from six percent to nineteen percent. Literal or

70%

2015: Percent of Word Count

60%

Twice as Much in 2015

Empathy

50%

40% Artistic Level of Response

30%

The Same in 1994 and 2015

Affirmation

20%

Sensory Level of Response

10% Factual Content

0%

5%

10%

Half as Much in 2015 Objection

15%

20%

25%

30%

1994: Percent of Word Count

Figure 8.3  How Critics Wrote About The Skriker, 2015 Vs. 1994. Source: Based on Raw Data Compiled from Theatre Record.

35%

Reperforming Reception  193 factual content was about a tenth of total word count in both years. However, considering the point that the proportion of reviews telling readers about the plot was lower in 2015, it seems that, for this play, critics focused on describing the plot when less engaged in the production.

The Importance of Clapp’s Review as an Indicator of Cultural Change Having turned text into numbers and charts, I now want to return to the review I saw as the most important of all the 2015 reviews in Theatre Record. This is Clapp’s review, which stands out because it makes a connection between two movements – one environmental, the other social. She positions her review by opening with a feminist provocation, made even more mischievous by the ambiguous reference to ‘she’: She would not be welcome as a member of the Garrick club. She has no penis, no establishment position and is not big on banter. Nevertheless, the Skriker is one of the primary figures of modern theatre. By the end of the second sentence it becomes more likely that ‘she’ is the Skriker,10 rather than Peake, or Churchill, or indeed Clapp herself, as leading figures in aspects of ‘modern theatre’. Yet, precisely because they are at the top of their respective fields, all three could still be described in the words applied to the Skriker in the third sentence. Amusing as this is to read, by the end of Clapp’s review it becomes clear that the opening sentence is more than a light-hearted provocation. It expresses her identification with ‘exciting partnership’ of Peake and Frankcom. It represents Clapp herself, joining the female voices in the production (and as one of a small number of female critics bucking the male-dominated establishment) to ‘express a skewed world’ – the ‘moral rupture’ that is climate change, ‘psychic disaster writ large’. Clapp’s review captures the joint advancement of two movements from the earlier production to the later one – climate change and feminism – at a stroke. For Clapp, The Skriker seems to have been a theatrical peak experience in the sense described by Eversmann, in all senses of the word, to judge by the rich texture of her own descriptions. She makes it possible to follow what happened as she creatively captures the full range of Peak’s athletic shapeshifting trajectory from one role to the next: She is a tattered, winking Gloriana, a sleek, androgynous seducer in a tie, and a winsome elf with a teeny voice and gauzy wings. Overall, Clapp’s review evokes a system of spiralling feedback loops each reinforcing the other in production and reception. As a review, it can be described as an ecoeffective piece of writing.

194  Reperforming Reception

The Skriker: A Story of Cultural Change Returning to the research questions driving this chapter, the textual analysis applied to the 1994 and 2015 bodies of text in critical reviews of The Skriker suggests that critics not only more often noticed the ecological themes in 2015 than they had in 1994, but also that they were more engaged in talking about them. Secondly, critics showed significantly more pleasure and empathy, and fewer objections, in response to the later production. Overall the data suggest a much richer spectatorial experience for the second cohort. Thirdly, the evidence presented here suggests that ecological issues connected to emotional reactions more frequently in 2015 than in 1994, and this was because of the combined effects of Sarah Frankcom’s production (which seems to have been set up to behave more like an ecosystem than its earlier counterpart), as well as its connectivity to a socio-political context in which climate change was an active topic in which many were now emotionally engaged. Data-driven approaches can be risky in the sense that they can give a false impression of change. Data and text are fundamentally different, because meaning can be ambiguous, complex and many-layered. The structure of the encoding system described above is designed with intent, the dual aim being to make an objective textual analysis possible, and to identify ecotheatrical effects. The question is whether the analytical approach itself is any more effective than the sections of the chapter in which I directly discuss text, and my sense, having come to the end of the chapter, is that the two approaches complement each other, jointly throwing light on research questions. The system of textual analysis created in this chapter is a small ecosystem describing a series of other ecosystems, thus it is a construction informed by the ideas at work in this book. Notwithstanding the care taken in my implementation – r­ epeating the mark-up process several times, checking what I had done many times, understating embedded ecological readings in inter-textual references – I must acknowledge the risk that the virtuous circle (see Tulloch, 2005, cited at the opening to Chapter 7) I identify in reviews of the 2015 production of The Skriker could be an artefact of the analytical ecosystem I have created in this chapter. Thus, this analytical approach risks overstating the extent to which the 2015 production was ecoeffective. Running against this is the possibility that one ecosystem (the spectatorial response embedded in reviews) is mirroring another (the shapeshifting ecosystem of the production), and, in my analysis I am mirroring both systems, thereby describing a high level of ecoefficacy. All three are artefacts, created in the spirit of the ecological approach in which circularity and obliquity are given, as discussed in the Introduction. Overall, the work in this chapter suggests that a major cultural change has been under way over the past two decades with respect to the cultural positioning of climate change. Whereas, in 1994, Churchill

Reperforming Reception  195 herself and the critics who wrote about the production were unwilling to discuss the issue directly; in 2015, there is no such hesitation. Such a change does not necessarily mean that energy systems, transport systems, buildings, the structure of work or high resource consumerism will also change considering the likely power of those feedback loops in the overall system. However, it is unlikely incumbent systems will change without a shift in mind-set from conscious ecoconsciousness (implying understanding without behavioural change), towards unconscious ecoconsciousness and ecoconscious unconsciousness. Without such a change, intrinsic responsibility (cf. Meadows) on stage and off it is unlikely to be possible, and herein lies the importance of live ecotheatrical events, productions, performances and installations having the power to make phenomenological connections. The Skriker was ‘extraordinarily prescient’ as a climate change play. Its 2015 revival was a ‘primary’ piece of ecotheatre delivered with intent, and an important component in the dynamic climate change movement captured in earlier chapters of the book.

Notes 1 Theatre Record, Openings 15–28 January 1994, ‘The Skriker’ (Cottesloe), 27 January–26 April, XIV (2), pp.  93–8; and Theatre Record Openings 2–15 July 2005, ‘The Skriker’ (Manchester International Festival), 4 July–1 August, XXXV (14), pp. 724–5. 2 This word was impossible to hear because of the quality of the recording; ‘clunky’, which Churchill uses quite often elsewhere, captures what she seems to have meant. 3 For a summary of Kowzan’s system, see Aston and Savona, 1991, pp. 105–7. 4 Intertextuality embedded in this comparison may include his memory of Smart’s set, a ‘cuboidal white box, reminiscent of the gymnasium in Peter brooks famous Dream’, as described by Coveney in 1994. 5 C.f. Bruce McConachie (2008): ‘Empathy is not an emotion but it readily leads viewers to emotional engagements’ (p. 65); ‘Embodying others’ emotions produces emotions in us’ (p. 67). 6 Daily Express, Daily Telegraph, Evening Standard, Financial Times, Guardian, Independent, Jewish Chronicle, Mail on Sunday, Observer, Sunday Express, Sunday Telegraph, Sunday Times, The Times, Time Out and What’s On. 7 Daily Telegraph, Guardian, Independent, Mail on Sunday, Observer, Sunday Times and The Times. 8 Theatre Record, Openings 15–28 January 1994, The Skriker (Cottesloe), 27 January–26 April 1994, XIV (02), pp. 93–8; and Theatre Record, Openings 2–15 July 2005, The Skriker (Manchester International Festival), 4 July–1 August 2015, XXXV (14), pp. 724–5. 9 These charts may recall regression analysis, but this is not their purpose. Rather, this is an efficient way of visualising similarities and differences. The forty-five-degree line in bold and other gradients are added to make it easier to read the significance or otherwise of changes. 10 Churchill herself referred to the Skriker as ‘it’.

196  Reperforming Reception

References Allfree, C. (2015) The Skriker Review, Daily Telegraph, 6th July, repr. Theatre Record, XXXV (14), p. 724. Aston, E. and Savona, G. (1991) Theatre as Sign-System. London: Routledge. Billington, M. (2015) The Skriker Review, Guardian, 6th July, repr. Theatre Record, XXXV (14), pp. 724–5. Billington, M. (1994) The Skriker Review, Guardian, 29th January, repr. ­Theatre Record, XIV (2), p. 97. Briggs, K.M. (1967) The Fairies in Tradition and Literature. Routledge and Keegan Paul. Briggs, K.M. and Tongue, R.L. (1965) Folktales of England. Routledge and Keegan Paul, copyright the University of Chicago. Churchill, C. (2016) ‘Introduction to the Radio 3 Broadcast of The Skriker’, Drama on Three, 20th March. Available at: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/ b07454g5. Churchill, C. (1994) The Skriker. London: Nick Hern Books, repr. 2015. Clover, C. (1988) ‘Where There’s Smoke’…. Sunday Telegraph, 7 Days, p.  3, 30th April. Photocopy viewed in Brith Gof archive papers, PD6/5. Chaudhuri, U. (1994) ‘“There Must Be a Lot of Fish in That Lake”: Towards an Ecological Theater’, Theater, 25 (1), pp. 23–31. Clapp, S. (2015) The Skriker Review, Observer, 12th July 2015, repr. Theatre Record, XXXV (14), p. 725. Clements, R. (2015) ‘Spring Will Return and Nothing Will Grow’, Theatre ­Programme, pp. 9–10. Coveney, M. (1994) The Skriker Review, Guardian, 29th January, repr. Theatre Record, XIV (2), p. 94. Frankcom, S. (2015) Introduction, Theatre Programme – The Skriker. Manchester: Manchester International Festival. Jays, D. (2015) The Skriker Review, Sunday Times, 12th July 2015, repr. ­Theatre Record, XXXV (14), p. 725. Klein, N. (2014) This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. London: Penguin Books. Maxwell, D. (2015) The Skriker Review, The Times, 6th July 2015, repr. ­Theatre Record, XXXV (14), p. 724. McConachie, B. (2008) Engaging Audiences. A Cognitive Approach to Spectating in the Theatre. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. National Theatre (1994), Theatre Programme, The Skriker, January. Pearson, M. (2010) Site-Specific Performance. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Peter, J. (1994) The Skriker Review, Sunday Times, repr. Theatre Record, XIV (2), pp. 97–8. Prescott, P. (2013) Reviewing Shakespeare: Journalism and Performance from the Eighteenth Century to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Remshardt, R.E. (1994) ‘Performance Review: The Skriker by Caryl Churchill, Royal National Theatre, London’, Theatre Journal, 47 (1) (March), pp. 121–3. Revkin, A. (1990, 2004) The Burning Season: The Murder of Chico Mendes and the Fight for the Amazon Rainforest. Washington, DC: Island Press.

Reperforming Reception  197 Sauter, W. (2010) ‘Thirty Years of Reception Studies: Empirical, Theoretical and Methodological Advances’, About Performance, 10, pp. 241–64. Serres (1990, 1995) Le Contrat Naturel, trans. by MacArthur, E. and Paulson, W. Editions Francois Bourin, 1990; Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Shoumatoff, A. (1990) The World is Burning: Murder in the Rainforest. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company. Smith, N. (1994) The Skriker Review, Time Out, repr. Theatre Record, XIV (2), p. 96. Taylor, P. (1994) The Skriker Review, Independent, 29th January, repr. Theatre Record, XIV (2), pp. 94–5. Tulloch, J. (2005) Shakespeare and Chekhov in Production and Reception. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. UNFCCC, Documents of the Conference of the Parties COP1, Berlin, 1995. Available at: http://unfccc.int/timeline/. Valley, P. (2015) The Skriker Review, Independent, 8th July 2015 repr. Theatre Record, XXXV (14), p. 725. Wright, N. and Churchill, C. (1994) Royal National Theatre Platform Interview on the Premiere of Churchill’s Play The Skriker, 28th January. Audio recording accessed in NT Archives, 11th April 2016. Zuboff, S. (2019) The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. London: Profile Books.

Productions, Performances and Installations Mentioned Frankcom, S. (2015) The Skriker, Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre. First night: 4th July. Eliasson, O. and Rosing, M. (2018) Ice Watch. Exhibition in front of Tate ­Modern, London. Eliasson, O. and Rosing, M. (2015) Ice Watch. Place du Pantheon. Paris. Waters, L., dir. (1994) The Skriker. Royal Court Theatre, London. First night: 20th January.

9 On the Importance of Intrinsic Environmental Responsibility

The barnacled figure gazing out to sea in Figure 9.1 is one of a hundred such figures that has been standing patiently on Crosby Beach for over a decade. His untidy appearance was not caused by ageing human cells, nor by layers of old clothing and newspapers donned against the cold. Time’s arrow and the elements have conspired to blur the edges of this iron form. By March 2019, he had been submerged and revealed ten thousand times, since his arrival on this spot, by the waters of the Irish Sea. Assaulted ten thousand times by barnacles, salt water, wind and sand. If you choose one of Gormley’s hundred figures with care, not going so far out as to risk the hungry suction of the infamous Crosby quick-sands, you can walk around him, and as you do so, the backdrop behind him will revolve past wind farms, ships, cranes, buildings, and grassy sand-dunes. Gormley’s Another Place (2005) is a reversal of anthropocentrism, notwithstanding the presence of one hundred

Figure 9.1  Another Place – Humans Contemplating Sea-Level Rise? Installation: Gormley (2005). Photographer: Sue Burton (2015). Shutterstock Photograph.

Intrinsic Environmental Responsibility  199 human forms in iron. Humanity is centre-stage yet upstaged, speechless yet speaking volumes, motionless yet constantly moving, passive yet vibrant, fixed yet slowly dissolving. Standing beside the iron people, you feel the sands of time shift under your weight and the wind brush past your face; and the idea of separation between humans, nature, scenery and shapeshifter loses all meaning. Gormley’s installations are profoundly ecological, as he suggested in his own 1989 words, printed on the back of a picture in a small hardback book (2016, p. 49) about his important work Field for the British Isles. Nature is within us. We are sick when we do not feel it. […] If we are to survive we must balance outer action with an inner experience of matter. […] We are the world, we are the poisoners of the world, we are the consciousness of the world. The picture in the book shows a large pale terracotta-coloured human handprint on a wall, looking for all the world as if one of the producers of the rough red clay figures in one of the many installations of Field had rested there for a moment after a hard day’s work. Then my eye was drawn to the small human figure lying supine before it, in a sense of derangement of scale regularly experienced in the context of environmental challenges. Small people, huge handprints!1 From the perspective of this ecotheatrical book, Another Place and Field have the following in common: human figures are made of and embedded in vibrant planetary matter, produced by hands also made of and enmeshed in such matter. These installations are, to use Gormley’s words, ‘a dynamic interpenetration of the elements in the workings of the mind [realised] in the workings of the body’ (p. 49). Or, as Kershaw (2015, 2016) might say, the human mind and body both performing and being performed by their environment, or, in the language of this book title, shapeshifting and being shapeshifted by a complex interweave of energy, matter and ideas (cf. Bennett, 2010). Gormley is quite clear about the inseparable fusion of the human and the non-human (separate only in modern human minds) in his installations. Ultimately, environmental destruction that follows from the absence of the environment in human imaginations is about human nature, and Gormley ecotheatrically represents human nature in these installations in such a way as to situate humans in their rightful place. In the context of this book, Another Place and Field for the British Isles are also ecosystems themselves, demonstrating that installations and site-specific productions have the power to set moving new feedback loops unbeknown even to those producing them or affected by them. Yarker, founder of Stan’s Cafe, can be described as having propelled me all the way to Crosby Beach to find out what it was about Gormley’s work that had taken such a grip of his imagination. Discussing Of All The People In The World in one of his blogs, he describes a vague

200  Intrinsic Environmental Responsibility memory of having seen Gormley’s Field at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham in the summer of 1995. Later, he ‘realised this must have fed into [his] thinking unheralded’ (Yarker, undated). In a similar vein, in the ecocritical spectatorial journey under way in this book, seeds and grains, standing in for animal life, spoke for themselves in Kershaw’s 2014 Warwick University Campus Meadow Meanders and pointed the way to rice standing in for humans. Rice, standing in for humans, thus turned out to yet another metamorphosis, from human forms shaped by many human hands in wet terracotta clay. Grains of rice connected to grains of wet sand clutching at my feet on Crosby beach and spun off in the direction of wet sand sucking at the feet of warriors wreaking havoc on the planet, in productions of theatre company Brith Gof; and grains of sand fused in the imagination with grains of wheat expropriated from the starving poor by the rich and powerful in Coriolanus and Coriolanan/us. Here, I want to highlight an important subtext running throughout this book. This chapter opens with a photograph in which the human form (rather than the sand and sea in the backdrop) dominates. This is because environmental challenges are primarily about human behaviour, a point that comes through at regular intervals in the preceding chapters. Brith Gof’s seminal ecotheatrical productions, Los Angeles and PAX, stand out as having sprung from the company’s contemplation of the disasters of war – described, in Chapter 5, as the terrible things p ­ eople do to each other and the environment in the name of difference. This book about ecotheatre is not about human divides and power structures, yet it cannot avoid them. Environmental degradation is often driven by human power imbalances in the form of runaway feedback loops. An ecological perspective on this point finds that extremely adverse societal feedback loops can be set moving by environmental degradation, for its costs are rarely fairly shared. A safe space is needed to come to grips with all-too-human problems such as climate change.

No Such Thing as ‘Offstage’ Morton (2017, p. 137) puts the ecocritical spectatorial mode of viewing under way in the above paragraphs and throughout this book into words in suggesting that the biosphere can be imagined as a human head standing in for the entire system of interactions within it: Everything in that biosphere is a symptom of the biosphere. There is no ‘away’ that isn’t merely relative to a position within it. […] I can’t get rid of nuclear waste just by hiding it in some mountain. […] You can’t sweep things under the carpet in a world of ecological awareness. Everything on stage is a symptom of the biosphere. There is no such thing as ‘offstage’ in a world of ecological awareness. The seemingly

Intrinsic Environmental Responsibility  201 eclectic collection of theatrical experiences in this book can thus also be imagined as contained in a biosphere in which everything is connected to everything else. As discovered in the course of this book, natural disasters repeatedly shape theatre texts and performance texts; vibrant matter often speaks for itself (sometimes in the form of a deus ex machina or stage invasion) on stage; environmental theatre connects readily to ecotheatrical ideas inevitably at work in expanded scenography, and neither can be separated from their environmental effects, on stage or off it. In Paines Plough’s Come to Where I’m From, narrators often looked back and unmasked ‘things’ that had been hidden before they were put into words in these productions. They were unable to ignore the stuff of which they were made, be it nuclear waste, genetics, physiology or psychology – energy, matter and ideas. Everything on stage in live productions and performances is also a ‘symptom of the biosphere’. The seeming randomness in the range of productions and performances explored in this book can only be so described insofar as the ecologies and ecosystems of the biosphere are random. In reality, they are all connected to each other, and, as the person who brought them together in this book, I am not the only link between them. On the contrary, in ecoconscious modes of spectatorship, interconnectedness is given. The small number of interconnections I have identified are likely to be the tip of the iceberg in the context of ecological modes of theatrical production and reception. In the words of Black, who recognised the environmental shapeshifter in King Lear thanks to the availability of an important recording, Come to Where I’m From (Paines Plough) might not be the most obvious theatre to put on an ecotheatrical viewing (in the mind’s eye) list. Yet several of Paines Plough’s frugally produced plays connected to narratives of environmental disaster constructed around ecosystem nodes of flood, climate change, famine and the inequitable social distribution of their effects encountered in Chapters 2 and 3. Theatre companies individually deliver a powerful cultural message. A collective of communities of audiences and actors can jointly foster momentum: hence, on 12 April 2019 UK arts organisations (theatre companies such as Shakespeare’s Globe and the Royal Court among them) held a ‘day of climate action […] to raise awareness of the growing ecological crisis’ (Taylor, 2019). Broader gatherings of such organisations, as in the 2015 ArtCOP21 festival, can be even more powerful, and organisations behind it such as Cape Farewell and Julie’s Bicycle can forge further interconnections, potentially fostering runaway warming system of environmental protest. Sometimes such connections are deliberately and consciously forged by those involved, sometimes not. Rachel Whiteread (CBE and Turner Prize Winner 1993), for instance, responded to the March 2005 Cape Farewell arctic expedition with Embankment (2005), a huge display of fourteen thousand white polyethylene casts of cardboard boxes, stacked upon each

202  Intrinsic Environmental Responsibility other to form mountains, glaciers and icebergs in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern. Richard Dorment (Telegraph, 2005), reviewing the installation, described stacks of white boxes resembling barriers desperately piled up by people at risk of imminent flooding. It made him think about the people of New Orleans scrambling to protect themselves before the levees gave way in the 2005 floods. (See Chapter 2.) Gormley joined the same 2005 expedition to spend six days on an icelocked ship thirty degrees below zero. One of the Cape Farewell (2005) website photographs echoes Another Place: there stands a bulky human figure dressed in black next to a white effigy of himself in snow, both resembling the barnacle-blurred copy of them thousands of miles away on Crosby Beach (Figure 9.1). In the collaboration between Kershaw and Yarker in the 2014 Warwick University Campus Meadow Meanders, these ‘engineers of the imagination’ (to borrow from a book title by Coult and Kershaw, 1983, 1990) delivered the environmental shapeshifter as a series of dei ex machina: human hands set up conditions for vibrant matter to be empowered to speak for itself.

On the Importance of Wittery Tentacles The ecosystemic perspective running through this book is important in another sense. This is a relatively UK-centric book, if only because this is where I live, and is also where some of my most intense ecotheatrical experiences have happened. However, all such experiences are inseparably connected to a much bigger ecosystem. Chapter 4, which explores stage invasions, touches on HeHe’s (2008 and see also Hehe, 2016, pp. 394–5) ‘green cloud’, which appeared as a seemingly local installation in several seemingly separate European cities. Yet, because the green cloud was situated within an energy grid, it was not merely local to where it could be seen. In one sense, this installation was as described by essayist Marres (2016), a means of making energy consumption around a particular generation plant or factory chimney visible. However, as the energy company working with HeHe pointed out, energy grids (which can be local or ‘Pan European’) see to it that no single energy-generating node can give a true picture of production and consumption. In a similar vein, my UK-based phenomenological experiences all have ‘wittery tentacles’ (to borrow a phrase from Horne, Come to Where I’m From, Chapter 6), and reach out to many communities, towns, cities and countries. A challenge I grapple with throughout this book, notwithstanding the connectedness of everything to everything else, is the persistent presence of the nature/culture divide. This can render the ever-present environment invisible, in production and reception. This psychology (which is no doubt also present in this book, albeit without intention) gets in the way of the mode of thinking and being needed for a healthier relationship between human beings and the planet. Teasing out the paraphrase

Intrinsic Environmental Responsibility  203 of Gormley’s words used in this book, we need to know deep in our subconscious brains that the environment is ever-present, and that we ourselves are nothing more nor less than vibrant matter embedded in vibrant matter. (Ecoconscious unconsciousness.) We need to see, hear, smell, taste and feel the environment on stage or off it, in all theatrical productions whether they are ecotheatrical with intent or not. (Unconscious ecoconsciousness.) Without such modes of consciousness, production teams and spectators may not realise the environment is present as a shapeshifter even when it is hitting them between the eyes, as in the further example discussed below. In the presence of the divide, the potential for changes in thinking needed to try and head off environmental disaster is blocked. In the language of ecosystems, feedback loops that would change human relationships with the resources they rely on fail to connect. Getting to a constantly ecoconscious state of mind is probably rather like riding a bicycle. Think about it too hard and you risk falling off. Balance comes with unconscious muscle memory. As was discovered in Chapter 7, research surveys that foreground the environment can change it into something different, thereby unintentionally reintroducing the nature/culture divide where bicycles and performance excellence in combination had succeeded in crossing it. I want to reinforce the important points made in the preceding paragraphs by thinking back to a 2011 Royal Court Theatre production: Simon Stephens’ UK climate change play Wastwater. In this play, the environmental shapeshifter is masked, much as it was in the 1994 production of The Skriker. Neither Churchill in 1994 nor Stephens in 2011 wanted to be didactic. Billington’s (2011) Wastwater Review is accompanied by a photograph by Tristram Kenton, Ambiguous Encounter. This can be viewed on the Guardian website and catches a deeply disturbing moment in the play (p. 49). Sian (played by Amanda Hale) has asked Jonathan (Angus Wright) to put his hand out on a hard surface. He could refuse, or run away, but he is caught in the psychological, situational trap, set by Sian. The knuckles of her right hand are festooned with a pair of handcuffs worn as knuckle-dusters. The tension mounts as she conversationally describes to him why she thinks he wants to go ahead with the transaction, citing the number of years he and his wife tried for a baby and the cost of their fertility treatment. She chats about the time she went back to live with her ‘lovely’ foster mother Frieda after her divorce, in the beautiful village surrounded by parks and reservoirs that might be wiped out by Heathrow’s third runway.

Destruction in the Name of Difference From a spectatorial point of view, this is ominously confusing. How can someone be understanding and threaten violence at the same time? How can they act in a way that could be benign, allowing Jonathan to become a

204  Intrinsic Environmental Responsibility father while rescuing his charge from an awful existence; or in a way that could be the opposite of benign, leaving a kidnapped, abused child to an uncertain existence in an unstable environment? Once again, the environment on stage turns out to be typical of ecosystems, in being ambiguous in its effects. Yet again, environmental degradation is connected to terrible things people do to each other: mass murder, torture and environmental obliteration in the name of difference in the work of Brith Gof explored in Chapter 5; child-trafficking in the name of turning a profit in Wastwater. Billington’s response to such ‘individual cruelties’ in Wastwater was reminiscent of his 1994 response to The Skriker in also suggesting confusion. The play succeeded in being disturbing, but the unknown question remained: ‘[W]hat are we meant to do about it?’ For Billington, the climate change message embedded in the play did not come across. However, I think it far more important that he has (unconsciously ecoconsciously) identified raw materials that add up to an ecocritical message. At the opening of his review, he describes an ‘airport environs’ and a lake both full of ‘sinister shadows’, and ‘larger forces’ that chime with the discussion of ecosystems in this book. Thus, in his review, the environmental shapeshifter is present even if not consciously recognised. His response is a reminder that shapeshifters often work on the oblique. From an ecocritical perspective, ‘larger forces at work’ in the ecotheatrical ecosystem in this production are palpably present in the many auditory, visual and verbal signals pointing the way to fossil fuel-driven feedback loops. These include the networks created by travel, the internet and telephone systems. These variously facilitate, interrupt, precipitate, disrupt or magnify human ecologies. They also facilitate fossil fuel-driven runaway warming systems. The key point about Wastwater is that the play itself is an ecosystem, depicting ecosystems in all their ambiguity. The three seemingly separate acts of the play are, as Billington observes, ‘cunningly’ connected with each other through individual acts of kindness or cruelty between protagonists in different acts. Ecotheatrically speaking, these are small feedback loops (or shapeshifters) in a larger whole. How individual acts of kindness or cruelty were intended is irrelevant because knock-on effects arising from them can carry on in the same direction, or (in the presence of perverse consequences) in the opposite direction. Together, in this play, they amount to a widespread dynamic of runaway damage, propelled forwards by systemic transmission mechanisms. In Wastwater, fossil fuels drive the ecosystem in which environmental damage is social damage and social damage is environmental damage. In The Skriker, resource-hungry social systems destroy the wider system of ecologies without distinguishing between the human and the non-human, the organic and the rest. In both plays, the nature/culture divide running through human behaviour blinds human beings to the consequences of resource profligacy. In both plays, the circularity of ecosystems and

Intrinsic Environmental Responsibility  205 ecologies means that environmental damage wrought by human beings also does damage to human beings themselves, directly and indirectly.

What Are We Meant to Do about It? Billington’s Wastwater question is on the nail in the context of the ambiguity of theatrical ecosystems discussed throughout this book, because they represent, in microcosm, the same process at work in real life. Highly effective ecotheatrical productions were sometimes found to be stopped in their tracks, in terms of their ecoefficacy, by the infrastructures they and their spectators were embedded in. Hence, The HandleBards’ spectators mostly saw the troupe’s productions as ecotheatre because they enjoyed the performances, but not primarily because of the productions’ low carbon foot print. In Chapter 7, I speculated that this might have been because many people travelled to performances by car. As soon as travelling becomes necessary – spectators to performances or indeed the theatre company itself to other countries – the metabolic chart (to use Fried and May’s 1994 term) reconnects once more to fossil fuel-intensive ecosystems. The fact that The HandleBards’ props, costumes and scenery fit into a couple of suitcases when they take their theatre to other countries reduces the troupe’s travelling carbon footprint in relative, but not absolute, terms. In several chapters, separation from incumbent cultures or infrastructures turns out to be what could be done about it. In Chapter 3, Coriolanus seemed to work better as a dearth play when separated from its usual context, as it was in Greece in 1984, in the hands of Japanese companies in 2007 and 2012; and in site-specific theatre mode in Wales in 2012. Installations by definition separate themselves from conventional theatre infrastructures and cultures, and yet also often remain connected to other resource-intensive systems. Hence, a poster on the brick wall of Tate Modern explained that the company Julie’s Bicycle is working with Olafur Eliasson’s (2018) production of Ice Watch ‘to understand and minimise the work’s environmental impacts’. Kershaw’s strategy, in Meadow Meanders, separated the production from incumbent infrastructures by requiring no energy other than unprocessed human energy in performance, but may unwittingly have reconnected to fossil fuel energy systems through Stan’s Cafe’s internet searches for animal population statistics. The internet is regularly present in this book. Thanks to modern technology, virtual spectators such as myself are able to appreciate ecotheatrical plays such as Macmillan’s (2010) play Doughnuts or Bof Whalley’s (2016) flood-bound climate change play Come to Where I’m From, after the event. The YouTube performance of Waiting for Godot on radioactive land that put the actors but (intentionally) not the spectators in harm’s way could be described as a tremendously impactful intermedia ecosystem acting upon the phenomenological sensitivities of spectators. They were physically absent, but virtual spectatorship was channelled

206  Intrinsic Environmental Responsibility by physical means in an interaction of energy, matter and ideas. Here, the ecosystem includes virtual networks (the internet) working alongside the synapses of the brain (memory) to deliver a performance that connects the environment as a shapeshifter to the distant spectator. The internet must be acknowledged as an important feedback loop (or perhaps that should read entire fossil fuel-driven ecosystem!) potentially pushing in good and bad directions for the environment. Haraway (1988, p. 587) provides a useful term – the ‘god trick’ – for the potentially adverse feedback loop that is introduced by the ability of the internet to interconnect and yet also disconnect. 2 The power of the internet (see Matthew Hindman’s 2018 book, The Internet Trap for an insightful discussion of the internet and power imbalances) to exacerbate the nature/culture divide in several ways is all too clear. However, other feedback loops running in the opposite direction can come from the same place. Waiting for Godot in Fukushima could be imagined through the soles of the feet by YouTube spectators, in a reversal of the internet’s ‘god trick’.

How Can You Know What You Are Actually Doing about It? The power of separation from resource-intensive cultures and infrastructures is explained by the work of Meadows (2008), discussed in the Introduction. The more self-contained productions are, in terms of their (occluded) connections to fossil fuel ecologies, the more ‘intrinsic’ environmental responsibility becomes. When intrinsic environmental responsibility is achieved (as in the examples of Paines Plough’s Lungs, Kershaw’s Meanders, Stan’s Café’s Home of the Wriggler and The H ­ andleBards’ Shakespearean productions), whether the environment as a shapeshifter is visible or not becomes irrelevant to the question of theatrical ecoefficacy addressed in this book. Insisting on its visibility (somewhere in the fusion of production and reception) could have the effect of rendering ecotheatre less ecotheatrical. Morton (2007, p.  1) potentially explains this by suggesting that a consequence of foregrounding the environment is that it ‘stops being the environment’. Foregrounding the environment potentially separates it from the nature/culture fusion in which it is embedded in intrinsically responsible theatrical events, thereby turning it into mere scenery and re-establishing the nature/culture divide. The HandleBards’ spectators who objected to environmental questions on their feedback forms can be interpreted as making this very point. The Skriker, as a play that reperforms the environment without foregrounding it, thus could perhaps have been described as more ecotheatrically effective in 1994 than it was in 2015, even though the discussion in Chapter 8 suggests the opposite. If this were the case, my interpretation of the ecodata gathered for Chapter 8 would be precisely wrong,

Intrinsic Environmental Responsibility  207 notwithstanding the ecological lens through which the evaluation system was constructed and the intentional circularity potentially running through the framework. The ecotheatrical efficacy trap lies in the insistence upon evidence, because the measurement of ecotheatrical efficacy risks insisting upon the nature/culture divide. To foreground ecology is to take it out of its natural habitat and kill it dead. Bateson (2002, pp. 18–19) saw this problem, decades ago: How is the world of logic, which eschews circular argument, related to a world in which circular chains of causation are the rule rather than the exception? […] [L]ogic and quantity turn out to be inappropriate devices for describing organisms and their interactions and internal organization. Putting the environment as a shapeshifter at the core, as discussed in the Introduction (see Figure 1.1) can be tremendously effective in putting the environmental shapeshifter on stage, but productions in which the environment is so positioned cannot always be fully described or measured.

Intrinsic Responsibility for the Environment When I see live theatrical productions (or recordings of them) in which bicycles drive two systems at the same time – energy for lighting and sound, and the dramatic logic of the production – I have hope for the human race and the environment. Such productions tend to leverage human energy as a substitute for fossil fuel energy in some way, as in Home of the Wriggler by Stan’s Cafe, and Macbeth, Hamlet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream as performed by The Handlebards. They are also striking feats of ecoengineering in which it no longer matters whether the mode of production is site-specific (unreadable away from the ‘site’), environmental (blurring boundaries between production and reception, scenery and scenography, actors and spectators; see Aronson, 2018; Schechner, 1973, 1994;) or ecotheatrical with intent. Nevertheless, bicycles are not necessarily required to achieve such multiple effects. A similar idea is in evidence in some of the ecotheatrical effects described in the context of the 2014 Arcola Godot discussed in the Introduction and Chapter 1 and Abrahami’s (2012) After Miss Julie (Chapter 1) seen from the perspective of an ecoaware spectator. It also describes Kershaw’s Meadow Meanders, in which gently circulating earthly systems engineer the possibility of infinite imaginings and mind-set shifts, leaving nothing but memories behind. However, an important attribute of the bicycle on stage, standing in for the environmental shapeshifter, is its propensity to introduce opportunities for comedy. Bicycles on stage recall the importance of resilience, adaptability and flexibility, as observed in the recovery of the residents of Hull from flood

208  Intrinsic Environmental Responsibility (see Chapter 2), and, indeed, as described in Meeker’s Comedy of Survival. Bicycles on stage in this book are a reminder that well-designed ecotheatrical productions can create a safe space within which dangerous imbalances might be safely handled without creating new ones. The relationship between human and generated energy in the above-mentioned productions is a striking form of theatrical engineering, in which oscillating energy systems and performative runaway warming systems are delivered in harness. In such productions, expanded (yet, self-constraining) scenography embedding its spectators in (a self-­limiting) ‘environmental theatre’ mode of production is an act of unconsciously ecoconscious biomimicry. Structurally speaking, in such theatre, resource usage is contained in an oscillating system (it does not grow even if the production grows), but the chemistry between performers and spectators is free to expand and become a runaway warming system. This is a dry, factual description of live theatre enjoyed to the utmost by all involved, without wrecking the planet. Returning to Billington’s Wastwater question, what to ‘do about it’ may be to make beautifully balanced bioengineering commonplace, not only in theatrical productions and installations but in all human activities.

Notes 1 The first two installations were held in New York and Sydney in 1989. ­Mexico and Brazil followed in 1990 and 1992, the year of the Earth Summit. Between 1993 and 1996, European Field visited eleven European cities. For British Isles, twenty-four exhibition sites between 1993 and 2015 are listed in Gormley, 2016, pp. 106–112. 2 Jason W. Moore uses the same term in a condemnation of capitalism: the ‘God-trick was […] the co-production of Nature as something to be mapped, quantified and, above all, controlled in ways that eased the endless accumulation of capital’, loc. 1431. Moore capitalises the G in God, Haraway does not.

References Aronson, A. (2018) The History and Theory of Environmental Scenography, 2nd edn. London: Methuen Drama, first published in 1981. Bateson, G. (1979, 2002) Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Bennett, J. (2010) Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Billington, M. (2011) ‘Wastwater: Review’, Guardian, 6th April. Available at: www.theguardian.com/stage/2011/apr/06/wastwater-review. Cape Farewell (2005) 2005 Expedition. For Gormley’s Ice-Bound Photograph. Available at: www.capefarewell.com/2005/2005crew.html. Coult, T. and Kershaw, B. (1983, 1990) Engineers of the Imagination: The ­Welfare State Handbook. Revised and Updated edn. London: Methuen. Dorment, R. (2005) ‘Review, Embankment’, Telegraph.

Intrinsic Environmental Responsibility  209 Fried, L. and May, T.J. (1994) Greening Up Our Houses: A Guide to More Ecologically Sound Theatre. New York: Drama Book Publishers. Out of Print Book Obtainable via [email protected], at the University of Oregon. Gormley, A. (2016) Field for the British Isles. London: Hayward Publishing. Haraway, D. (1988) ‘Situated Knowledges’, Feminist Studies, 14 (3), pp. 575–99. HeHe: Evans H. and Hansen H., eds. (2016) Man Made Clouds. Orleans: Editions HYX. Hindman, M. (2018) The Internet Trap: How the Digital Economy Builds Monopolies and Undermines Democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kenton, T. (2011) Photograph: ‘Ambiguous Encounter’, Guardian, April. ­Available at: www.guardian.com/stage/2011/apr/06/wastwater-review?CMP= share_iOSApp_Other. Kershaw, B. (2015) ‘Performed by Ecologies: How Homo-sapiens Could Subvert Present-Day Futures’, Performing Ethos, 4 (2), pp. 113–34. Marres, N. (2016) ‘Who Is Afraid of the Green Cloud? Environmental Rendering of Controversy’, in Man Made Clouds, ed. by Evans, H. and Hansen, H. Orleans: Editions HYX, pp. 357–410. Meadows, D.H. (2008) Thinking in Systems: A Primer, ed. by Wright, D. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing Company. Moore, J.W. (2015) Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital. London: Verso. Morton, T. (2017) ‘… and the Leg Bone’s Connected to the Toxic Waste Dump Bone’, Anthology of Consciousness, 28 (2), 135–42. Morton, T. (2007) Ecology without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schechner, R. (1973, 1994) Environmental Theatre: An Expanded New Edition. New York: Applause. Stephens, S. (2011) ‘Wastwater’, in Stephens, S., Wastwater and T5. London: Methuen Drama. Taylor, M. (2019) ‘Royal Court and Globe Join UK Arts Climate Protest’, Guardian, 20th March. Available at: www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/ mar/20/royal-court-and-globe-join-uk-arts-climate-protest?­C MP=Share_­ iOSApp_Other. Yarker, J. (Undated) Of All The People in The World, blog. Stan’s Cafe Website.

Productions, Performances and Installations Mentioned Abrahami, N., dir. (2012) After Miss Julie, Young Vic, London. Opening Night 15th March. Burton, S., photographer (2015) Another Place, Statues by Antony Gormley on Crosby Beach, Merseyside, UK. 17 August. Shutterstock, at www.­ shutterstock.com. Gormley, A. (2005) Another Place. Crosby Beach, Sefton. Visited by the author in the Summer of 2018. Source of installation date: ‘Welcome to Another Place, Crosby Beach, Sefton’, Sefton Council signboard. Hehe (2008) ‘Green Cloud’ in Curating Cities, a Database of Eco Public Art. Available at http://eco-publicart.org/nuage-vert-green-cloud/. Kershaw, B. (2014) Meadow Meanders. Warwick University Campus.

210  Intrinsic Environmental Responsibility Macmillan, D. (2010) ‘Doughnuts’, Come to Where I’m From. Paines Plough. Stephens, S., (2011) Wastwater. Royal Court Theatre, dir. Katie Mitchell. First Performance, March. Whalley, B. (2016) ‘Come to Where I’m From’, Come to Where I’m From. Paines Plough. Whiteread, R. (2005) Embankment, Turbine Hall, Tate Modern. Available at: www.capefarewell.com/2005/2005crew.html.

Index

Note: Bold page numbers refer to tables; italic page numbers refer to figures and page numbers followed by “n” denote endnotes. Aberystwyth Railway Station 114, 116 Aberystwyth University 65 Abrahami, Natalie 27–9 Adamson, J. 10n2 After Miss Julie (Marber) 27–8, 32, 35, 132, 154, 159, 166, 207 Alas | Alias (Gray) 138 Albion (Bartlett) 32 Aldrin, Buzz 123 Allfree, Claire 178, 183–4, 188 Almeida Theatre, London 32, 50 Ambiguous Encounter (photograph, Kenton) 203 American Centre for Art and Culture 90 American Dream 19 American Dustbowl 19 Ames, Margaret 41 Angelaki, V. 102n1, 152 Another Place (installation) 91, 106, 198–9, 202 anthropogenic global warming 43, 91 Archer, Jayne Elizabeth 64 Arcola Energy 30 Arcola Theatre Company 1–2, 30–1, 132, 154, 159, 166, 207 Arctic Oil (Duffy) 32, 50 Armstrong, Neil 123 Aronson, Arnold 7 ArtCOP21 17, 35, 88, 90, 102n5, 175, 176 Artificial Intelligence (AI) 161, 180 Art Not Oil Coalition 101 Arts Council England (ACE) 25 Ashden Directory 24

Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE) 22 Atack, T.X. 138 Athens 73–4 Barbican Theatre Programme 80n5 Barrie, J. M. 189 Barthes, Roland 153 Bartlett, Mike 32, 134 Bassett, Kate 97 Bateson, Gregory 3, 207 Baugh, Christopher 92–4 Beckett, Samuel 1–2, 9, 17, 23, 30, 32, 45, 49 Bedford, Kristina 72–3 Beneath Your Feet (Steel) 141 Bennett, Jane 1, 3–5, 22, 46, 86 Bennett, Susan 96, 182 Berg, Peter 50 bicycles on stage 151–72 Billington, M. 30, 68, 72, 74, 180–1, 183, 185–9, 203–5, 208; review of The Skriker (1994 and 2005) 185–6; review of Wastwater 203 Bingo (Bond) 65 “biological holocaust” 111 Black, Ralph W. 23 Blackadder, N. 101 Black Mountain (Paines Plough Roundabout) 131 Bodied Spaces (Garner) 66 Bond, Edward 65 Boot Boy (Soans) 139 Boxing Day Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami 45, 48 BP 96–7

212 Index ‘BP or Not BP’ 46, 96, 98; see also Reclaim Shakespeare Bradby, David 32 Breaking the Surface (installation, Pinsky)91 Brecht, Bertolt 78 Brennan, Clare 54, 99 Brick (Pink) 138 Briggs, K.M. 178 Brith Gof 106, 126n8, 177; ecosystem 109; ecotheatrical environmental theatre 109–19; ecotheatrical environmental theatre? 109–19; Gododdin 106; Los Angeles 113; PAX 117; sitespecific theatre and 106 British Museum, London 98, 100 Brooke, James 110 Brookes, Mike 77, 109 Brothers Grimm 189 Brown, Margaret 50 Bruckner, Lynne 35n4 Buell, Lawrence 10n2 Buffong, Michael 66 Bulgo, Matthew 137 Buried Child (Shepard) 18, 19 Cage, John 23 Callenbach, Ernest 25 Capra, Fritjof 25 Cardiff scenography (Brith Gof) 116 Cargill, Neil 139 Carlson, Marvin 18 Carnegy, Patrick 99 Carson, Rachel 21 Cavendish, Dominic 49 Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) 43–5, 50 Chan, Paul 47 Chaudhuri, Una 4, 45, 132, 144, 154, 177 Chekhov, Anton 18, 20, 161 Cheltenham (Deproost) 142 Chen-Hsing Tsai, Robin 10n2 The Cherry Orchard (Chekhov) 20, 161 Children of the Sea (Gough) 48 Chiten Theatre Company 69 Churchill, Caryl 7, 62, 176, 177–9, 182, 189, 194–5 Clapp, S. 183, 188–9; on climate change 188; review of The Skriker 189, 193

Classical Theatre of Harlem 47 Clements, Rachel 180 Cless, Downing 45, 165 climate-change plays 9, 11n5 Clover, Charles 111 Comedy of Errors (Shakespeare) 49, 96, 125 The Comedy of Survival (Meeker) 23 Come to Where I’m From 10, 135–7, 140, 142–4, 147, 201, 202, 205 Complete Works: Table Top Shakespeare 144 Conde Duque cultural centre 120 conscious ecounconsciousness: on the impossibility of 6–7 The Contingency Plan (Waters) 49 Coole, Diana 3, 5 COP21 17, 30, 44, 90, 102n6, 176; see also 21st Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC Cope, Alistair 132 Corbin, J. 162 Coriolan (Brecht) 78 Coriolanus (Shakespeare) 76–7, 87, 106, 122, 144, 156, 200; ecologies of dearth in 66–7 Cotter, Holland 47 Coveney, Michael 76, 112, 188–9 Cracknell, Carrie 32 CRED ecodata 45, 50 Creed, Rupert 33, 49 Creswell, John W. 10n3 critics: and ecodata 191–3; topics of discussion in theatre reviews 184–5; writing about production 192–3 Crossley, Mark 120 Crown Prince (Godber) 49, 51 cultural change 137; Clapp’s review as an indicator of 193; and The Skriker (theatrical production, 1994 and 2015) 176–7, 194–5; theatre reviews as potential evidence of 183–4 Curse of the Starving Class (Shepard) 18 Cwmardy (Jones) 42 Dad’s Army (Sitcom) 189 Dai Ishida 80n6 Danby, John F. 24 data-driven approaches 194 Dean, Thomas K. 22 dearth ex machina! 71, 73–4

Index  213 dearth in modern-day settings 65–6 dearth in performance: Athens: dearth ex machina! 73–4; dearth in modern-day settings 65–6; early modern dearth sensitivities on and off the stage 63–4; ecologies of dearth in Coriolanus 66–7; ecotheatrical perspective on 62–79; financial bubbles vs. the environmental shapeshifter 70–1; food insecurity in performance 65–6; modern dearth sensitivities 64–5; Shakespeare industry conventions vs. the environmental shapeshifter 71–3; star actor vs. environmental shapeshifter 67–70; Thacker: break the rules to unleash environmental shapeshifter? 74–9 Deepwater Horizon (film) 50 Deepwater Horizon oil spill 43, 44, 50, 55, 96 ‘Defining Ecocritical Theory and Practice’ conference 21 De Jongh, N. 71 Deproost, S. 142 Diario de la Nación (Argentina) 112 Dickinson, G. 3 Dirty Work 146 Disasters of War (Brith Gof) 109–10 Dixon, Tom 158 Dobson, Michael 68, 71 Dormandy, Simon 1–3, 30, 46 Dorment, Richard 202 Doughnuts (Macmillan) 140, 141, 205 Duelo a Garrotazos (Goya) 119 Duffy, Clare 32 early modern dearth sensitivities, on and off the stage 63–4 Earth, coming back to 25–33 Earthquakes in London (Bartlett) 134 Earthrise Repair Shop, Devon, 2011 (Kershaw) 107 ecoawareness 79, 87; defined 18; ‘expanded scenography’ and 7; societal 44 ecoconscious unconsciousness and unconscious ecoconsciousness 147 ecocritical theatre: theatrical ecocriticism and 2–5 ecocriticism: 21st-century 21–2; first wave of 21; ‘fourth wave’ of 15;

‘material turn’ of 10n2; theatrical 2–5 The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology (Glotfelty and Fromm) 21 ecodata and critics 191–3 Ecodesign Working Plan 2016–2019 (European Commission) 93 ecoeffective theatre 166–7 ecological analytics 161–4 ecologies of dearth in Coriolanus 66–7 Ecologies of Theatre (Marranca) 23 ecosystems: (eco)theatrical 79, 204; ecotheatrical, at play 100–1; ecotheatrical shapeshifter as 7–8; metaphorical 95; non-human 43; planetary 35, 43; socioenvironmental 46 ecotheatre 171; defined 5–6; frugal modes of storytelling as 130–47; The HandleBards’ performance as 160, 161, 165–6; and A Midsummer Night’s Dream 165–6, 167–8; naturalism as 17–21 ecotheatrical ecosystems, at play 100–1 ecotheatrical environmental theatre 109–19 ecotheatrical feedback loops at play 6 ‘ecotheatrical opera’ 110 ecotheatrical perspective: on dearth in performance 62–79 ecotheatrical shapeshifters 41–57; natural disasters as 41–57; not an entity but an ecosystem 7–8 ecounconsciousness: on the impossibility of conscious 6–7 Edinburgh International Fringe Festival 48 Edwardes, Jane 99 Egan, Gabriel 3, 22 Eliasson, Olafur 91, 175, 176, 205 Elliott, Scott 19 Embankment (installation, Whiteread) 201–2 emotional reactions in spectatorial responses 123–5 encoding 161; reviews selected, in The Skriker case study 190 Endgame (Beckett) 45 An Enemy of the People (Ibsen) 29, 45

214 Index Ensemble Studio Theatre (New York) 50 environment 8–9 environmentalism 111, 182, 188 environmental metaphors 137 environmental shapeshifter: and designing feedback forms 159–61; financial bubbles vs. 70–1; Shakespeare industry conventions vs 71–3; star actor vs 67–70 environmental stage invasions and site specificity 101–2 environmental theatre 33–4, 106–25, 134 Environmental Theatre (Schechner) 33 environmental themes in the Rice Show 121–3 environment in performance 85–102; comedy of survival 100–1; ecotheatrical ecosystems at play 100–1; environmental stage invasions and site specificity 101–2; ghost of fossil fuel energy systems – past, present and future 88–92; let there be light 92–5; noises off – how one production company perceived the other 100; stage invasion or deus ex machina? 96–100 environment on stage: coming back to Earth 25–33; it doesn’t have to be Shakespeare, but… 22–5; naturalism as ecotheatre 17–21; phenomenologically experienced ecological rupture 15–17; in production and reception 14–35; site-specific theatre: everything is connected to everything else 33–5; stuff of theatre operations 25–33; vibrancy in 21st-century ecocriticism 21–2 “ephemeral junk” (Smil) 8  Essential Reader (Hiltner) 21 Etchells, Tim 144 Evans, Helen (HeHe) 89 Eversmann, P. 133, 193 Every Time It Rains (Creed) 33, 49, 52 expanded scenography 7, 87, 94, 131, 145 Famine (Murphy) 49 Farr, David 67, 97 Farrell, Joseph 112 The Father (Strindberg) 20

feminism 182, 188, 193 Field, Andy 108–9 Field for the British Isles (Gormley) 199–200 Fifty Shades of Grey (James) 157 financial bubbles vs. the environmental shapeshifter 70–1 Fingleton, David 72 Flapjack (Mitchell) 142 Fleming, Leon 141 Fletcher, A. 80n1 Flood (Phillips) 49, 53–4 The Flood (McCabe) 49 Fondakowski, Leigh 50 food insecurity in performance 65–6 Fool for Love (Shepard) 18 Forced Entertainment 10, 144–7 Forest (Harrison) 24 Frankcom, Sarah 8, 14, 176, 179–80, 194 French Revolution 75, 76 Fried, Larry K. 25 Friends of the Earth 122 Fromm, Harold 21 Frost, Samantha 3, 5 frugal theatre 133, 147 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster 43, 45, 47 Fukushima earthquake and tsunami 31, 45 Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (Lovelock) 4 Gaia hypothesis 4 Gallagher, L. 142 Gardner, Lyn 69, 144 Gernika! (Brith Gof) 111 ghost of fossil fuel energy systems 88–92, 125 Giannachi, G. 24 Glasgow Mayfest 112 Glasgow Tramway Mayfest 112 Global Footprint Network 44 global warming 8, 50, 91, 115, 142, 176 Globe Player TV 70 Glotfelty, Cheryll 21 Godber, John 49, 51 Gododdin (Brith Gof) 34, 77, 106, 109, 111 Golding, William 4 Goodwin, John 139 Goold, Rupert 32 Gore-Langton, Robert 183

Index  215 Gormley, Antony 6, 106, 118, 124, 198–202 Goya, Francisco 109 Gray, Coburn 138 Gray, Spalding 4, 132 The Great Invisible (Brown) 50 green, debbie tucker 88 Green Cloud (HeHe) 89–90, 108 Green Letters 24 Grieve, James 131 Grimley, Terry 86 ‘Grounded Theory’ 10n3 Guardian (Pilbrow) 94 Guattari, Felix 5 Guidelines (production, Arcola) 31 Haearn 34, 109, 126n1 Haedicke, Susan 108 Hagerty, Bill 76 Haiti Earthquake 45 Hamlet (Shakespeare) 63, 151, 157–8, 164, 165, 166–70, 188, 207 Hampstead Theatre (London) 49 The HandleBards 159, 160, 172n1; analytical categories applied to feedback forms 163; ‘concept’ 162–4, 169; formed in 102n1; Hamlet performed by 151, 157–8, 164, 165, 166–70; Macbeth performed by 207; A Midsummer Night’s Dream performed by 151, 164–71, 185, 207; performance as ecotheatre 160, 161, 165–6 Hansen, Heiko (HeHe) 89 Haraway, Donna 3 Harbot, J. 142 Hardy, John 115 Harland and Wolff company 114 Harris, Ed 19 Harrison, Robert Pogue 24 Harrower, David 29 HeHe 88–9, 92, 102n4, 108, 202 Heim, Wallace 24 Helm, D. 90 Helsinki Energy 89 Henry V (Shakespeare) 121 Herodes Atticus Theatre 73 Hicks, Greg 68, 71, 73 Hickson, Ella 32, 50 Higgins, Charlotte 56 ‘high naturalism’ 18 Hiroshima (Brith Gof) 48, 110 Home (Fleming) 141

Home of the Wriggler (Stan’s Cafe) 35, 85, 111, 132, 145, 151, 152, 177, 206, 207 Horwood, Joel 139 Houston, Will 70, 71 How to Be a Kid (Roundabout) 131 Hudson, Richard 70 Huffington Post (Website) 65 Hull Truck Theatre 33, 49, 51 Hunter, Kathryn 14 Hurricane Katrina 45, 52 Hurricane Sandy 49 ‘hyperenvironmentalist’ 20 Ibsen, H. 18, 20, 23, 29, 45 Ice Watch (Eliasson) 91, 175, 175, 205 If My Memory Serves Me Well (Pearson) 118 Independent (Newspaper) 65, 180 instrumentalism 35 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 44, 50, 80n3, 152, 177 International Disaster Database 43 International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR) 182 intrinsic environmental responsibility 198–208 Iovino, Serenella 4 IPCC Special Report No. 15 44 Jackson, Angus 65 James, E.L. 157 Jays, D. 183 Jones, Lewis 42 Jones, Lis Hughes 106, 110, 114 Jones, Richard 29 Julie’s Bicycle company 25 Kamome Machine Theatre Group 47 Keeley, Matthew 136 Kershaw, Baz 2, 3, 106, 107–8, 124, 142, 170–1, 199–200, 202, 205–7 King Lear (Shakespeare) 23, 24, 35n4, 36n4, 43, 49, 145 Kinney, A.F. 64 Kirwan, Peter 69 Klein, Naomi 180 Kleist, Kuupik 91 Kobe Earthquake 45 Kowzan, Tadeusz 184 Kroll, Jack 71

216 Index Lan, David 27 Land, Sea and Sky (Nunnery) 139 Latour, B. 22 Lavery, Carl 3, 24 Ledger, Adam 91 Lee, Adele 70 Liberate Tate 101 Libération (Newspaper) 89 Loman, Willy 19 Lopez, Jeremy 76 Los Angeles (Brith Gof) 109, 177, 183–4, 200 Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War) (Goya) 109, 111 Louisiana State University (LSU) 50 Love, Genevieve 48 Lovelock, James 4 Lungs (Macmillan) 130 Lynn, Isley 138 ‘M32’ 138 Macbeth 36n4, 151, 153, 157 McCabe, Daniel 49 McEvoy, S. 101 McHugh, Ian 139 McKellen, Ian 71–2 McKinney, Joslin 7 McLucas, Clifford 133, 116 Macmillan, Duncan 130, 140, 205 McMillan, Joyce 118 Madigan, Amy 19 Manchester International Festival 179 Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre 14 Manchester University 180 Man Made Clouds (HeHe) 89 Marber, Patrick 27 Marburg, Sandra 25 Margolies, Eleanor 24 Marranca, Bonnie 3, 22, 23 Marres, Noortje 89, 202 Marshall, Claire 146 Marzorati, Pedro 91 ‘material feminisms’ 22 Mattinson, L. 142 Maxwell, D. 183 May, Theresa J. 3, 19, 25 Meadow Meanders (Kershaw) 106, 107, 120, 125, 170, 177, 205, 207 Meadows, Donella H. 3 Meeker, Joseph 23 Mendez, Chico 110–11 Men Fighting with Cudgels (Goya) 110

The Merry Wives of Windsor (Shakespeare) 64 Metamorphosis (Ovid) 56 Middlesbrough and Me (Steel) 137 A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Shakespeare) 35n4, 151, 164–71, 185, 207 Mike Potter & Electric Pedals 158 Miss Julie (Strindberg) 18, 27–8 Mitchell, Katie 102n1, 142 Miura, Motoi 69 modern dearth sensitivities 64–5 Morton, Timothy 3, 6, 22, 119, 200, 206 Much Ado About Nothing (Shakespeare) 98 Mukherjee, Ayesha 63, 78, 80n2 Murphy, K. 3 Murphy, Tom 49 My Father’s Hands (Bulgo) 139 National Library of Wales 41, 43 National Theatre Wales Press Release 56 natural disasters: as ecotheatrical shapeshifters 41–57; new writing prompted by 49–57 naturalism: described 17; as ecotheatre 17–21 naturalist scenography 19 Needham, Alex 66 new materialisms, the 144 new writing prompted by natural disasters 49–57 New York International Fringe Festival 49 New York Times (Newspaper) 47, 50, 111 Nicholls, Gareth 32 Nightingale, Benedict 72 Ninagawa, Y. 69, 79, 80n5 Nordhaus, William 8 Nut (tucker green) 88, 92 The Observer 54, 74 Of All The Creatures Across The Globe (Stan’s Cafe) 106, 108, 145, 170 Of All the People In All the World (Stan’s Cafe) 106, 145, 199–200 ‘offstage’ 200–2 O’Flynn, Kate 132 Oil (Hickson) 32, 50, 55, 86 O’Kelly, Grainne 114

Index  217 Olivier, Laurence 24 One Heart One Tree (Mestaoui) 92 Oppermann, Serpil 4 O’Shea, Meg 102n1 Otley: Climate Change Apocalypse 142–4 Out of Love (Roundabout) 131 Ovid 56 Paines Plough company 10, 35, 130– 1, 133, 135, 143, 147, 201, 206 Paines Plough Roundabout 130, 133, 135, 143, 147, 201, 206 Palmer, Scott 7 Pandaemonium: The True Cost of Coal (Brith Gof) 41–2, 142 Paris COP21 122 Particle Falls (installation, Polli) 88, 90 PAX (Brith Gof) 17, 34–5, 56, 77, 109, 114, 177, 184, 200 PCS Union 101 Peake, Maxine 14, 179, 188 Pearson, Mike 7, 106, 109, 113, 118 performance: ecotheatrical perspective on dearth in 62–79; environment in 85–102; food insecurity in 65–6 Performance Magazine 113 Pericles (Shakespeare) 48–9 Perrin, George 131, 132 Peter, John 76, 181 phenomenologically experienced ecological rupture 15–17 Phillips, James 49 Pilbrow, Richard 94 Pink, Scarlett 138 Pinsky, Michael 91 Polli, Andrea 88, 90 postcolonialism 22 power of storytelling 144–6 Prescott, Paul 183 ‘pseudo-scientific paradigms’ 5 Public Enemy (Harrower) 29–30 Purves, Libby 99 racial homogenisation 111 Radio Three 134 Ramira and Juliet 101 Ratcliffe, Michael 72 Rayfield, Donald 49 Rechauffement (De Pool) 91 Reclaim Shakespeare Company 46, 96, 97–9 Rees, Marc 113

Reese-Williams, Siân 132 Remshardt, Ralf Erik 181 Resilience (Waters) 143 Revkin, Andrew 111, 177 Rice Show (Stan’s Cafe): environmental themes in 121–3 Richard II (Shakespeare) 36n4 Rio Earth Summit (1992) 177 River Patrol (Chaplin) 140 Roach, Joseph 31, 49 Romeo and Juliet in Baghdad 98 Rosing, Minik 91, 175 Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh 158 Royal Exchange Theatre Manchester Programme 179 Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) 67, 70, 96–8; World Shakespeare Festival Guide 96 Rutter, Carol Chillington 77–8 Salis, Abdul 132 Sauter, Willmar 3, 5, 156, 184, 192 Save the World II (Stan’s Cafe) 122 scenography 115; Cardiff 116; expanded 7, 87, 94, 131, 145; naturalist 19 Schechner, Richard 7 Schlenz, Mark 23 The Scotsman (Newspaper) 112 Senghenydd coal pit explosion 44 The Serpent’s Tooth (Watson) 66 Serres, Michel 110, 177 Shakespeare, William 22–5, 88, 98, 121, 125, 164, 167–8, 183, 185, 189 Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Library and Archive, Stratford 68, 71, 75 Shakespeare industry conventions vs. environmental shapeshifter 71–3 Shakespeare Survey review 77 shapeshifters 7–8; ecotheatrical 7–8, 41–57 Shenton, Mark 55 She of the Sea (Young) 139 Shepard, Sam 18 Shepherd-Barr, Kirsten 18 Shipwreck Plays 97, 125 Shoumatoff, Alex 110, 111, 177 Sichuan Earthquake 45 Sicilian Vespers (Verdi) 92 Silent Spring (Carson) 21 Silva, Hannah 137 Simpson, Penny 113

218 Index site specificity 106–25 ‘site-specific’ theatre 33–5, 134; everything is connected to everything else 33–5 The Skriker (theatrical production, 1994) 7, 99, 176–7, 204, 206; critics focus on review 191; and cultural change 176–7, 194–5; ecological aphasia 177–9; ecotheatrical interpretation 179; reviews 180–2 The Skriker (theatrical production, 2015) 176–7; critics focus on review 191; and cultural change 176–7, 194–5; emotional content 186–7; reviews 182 Slovic, S. 10n2 Small People with Big Feet (Stan’s Cafe) 123 Smith, Neil 181, 183 Soans, Robin 138 Sochor, Nicole 114 ‘Social Environment and Theatrical Environment: The Case of English Naturalism’ 17 Soloski, A. 50 spectatorial reactions 189–90 spectatorial responses: emotional reactions in 123–5 Spencer, Charles 69, 76, 189 Spill (docudrama, Fondakowski) 50 The Stage 55, 95 stage invasion, or deus ex machina 96–100 Stan’s Cafe 10, 35, 85–7, 94, 106–8, 111, 119–25, 170 star actor vs. environmental shapeshifter 67–70 Steel, Beth 141 Steel, Gordon 137 Stein, Gertrude 23 Stephens, Simon 131 Stephens, Toby 76 Stewart, Patrick 24, 65 Storm Cycle (National Theatre Wales) 55, 109 storytelling: ecoconscious unconsciousness and unconscious ecoconsciousness 147; fragments, interweave, embodiment 140–1; frugal modes of as ecotheatre 130–47; life, the universe and everything 141–2; Otley: climate

change apocalypse 142–4; power of storytelling 144–6 Strauss, A. 162 Strindberg, Johan August 18, 28 substitutions: swapping one form of vibrant matter for another 120–1 Swan Theatre 68 Szerzynski, B. 24 Table Top Shakespeare (Forced Entertainment)144 Talawa theatre company 66 The Taming of the Shrew 36n4, 146 Tattoo, Photo, Floating World (Cargill) 139 Taylor, Paul 180, 188 Telegraph (Newspaper) 65 The Tempest (Shakespeare) 36n4, 49, 96, 125 Ten Weeks (Roundabout) 131 Terry, Ellen 101 Test Dept 111 textual commentary 161–4 Thacker, David 74 Theater der Welt 2005 120 theatre see specific theatres Theatre Bonn 122 theatre ecologies 106–25 theatre operations, stuff of 25–33 Theatre Record 176, 180, 181, 182, 183, 189 theatre reviews: creative description in 188–9; critics’ topics of discussion in 184–5; as potential evidence of cultural change 183–4; The Skriker (theatrical production, 1994) 180–2; The Skriker (theatrical production, 2015) 182 theatrical ecocriticism and ecocritical theatre 2–5 theatrical metabolic chart 26 Things Come Apart (National Theatre Wales) 56 This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (Klein) 180 Thomas, Howard 64 Time Out 181 The Times (Newspaper) 110 Titus Andronicus (Shakespeare) 36n4 Tocil Fields, Warwick University 108 Totty (Lynn) 138 Tramway Theatre Glasgow 114 Traverse Theatre 32

Index  219 Tron Theatre 136 Trueman, Matt 56 True West (Shepard) 18 The Trussell Trust 65 Tulloch, John 3, 5, 151, 161 Turley, Richard Marggraf 64 Twelfth Night (Shakespeare) 49, 64, 96–7, 125 21st-century ecocriticism 21–2; vibrancy in 21–2 21st Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC; see also COP21 unconscious ecoconsciousness: ecoconscious unconsciousness and 147 United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC) 44, 50, 56, 89, 176 University of Florida School of Theatre and Dance 50 UNSDR 43 Valley, P. 183, 184 Verdi 92 vibrancy in 21st-century ecocriticism 21–2 virtual spectatorship 205–6 Waiting for Godot (Beckett) 1–7, 15, 17, 24, 30, 46–7, 132, 154, 166, 205–6 “Waiting for Godot”@Fukushima 47 Wall, Stephen 72 Wand, Z. 142 Wardle, Irving 76 Warwick Arts Centre 122 Warwick University 106, 107; Ecotheatrical Reviewing project 157; website 154 Wastwater (Stephens) 203, 204, 205

Wateron, C. 24 Waters, Les 8, 176 Waters, Steve 143 Watson, David 22, 66 Watson, Robert N. 3 The Way of Water (Svich) 49, 132 Western Literature Association (WLA) 21 Western Mail (Newspaper) 114 We Turned on the Light (Gough) 16, 35n3 Whalley, Bof 142 ‘What We Talk About When We Talk About Ecocriticism’ 23 Where’s my Igloo Gone? (Bone Ensemble) 92 Where the Tides Ebb and Flow (installation, Marzorati) 91 Whiteread, Rachel 201–2 Wiegand, Chris 146 Wild Duck (Ibsen) 20 Williams, Raymond 17 Wilson, Richard 132, 142 Wilson, Robert 23 The Winter’s Tale (Shakespeare) 36n4 Wired 95 The Wood Demon (Chekhov) 49 World Resources Institute (WRI) 44 World Shakespeare Festival 77, 96–7, 125 Wright, Nicholas 178 Yarker, James 106, 120 Yarmouth (McHugh) 139 A Year of Shakespeare 70 Y Gododdin (Aneirin) 111 Young, Morna 139 Young Vic 154, 159, 166 Zola, Emile 17 Zunino, Pablo 112, 113

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