{"id":40792,"date":"2021-03-04T08:00:53","date_gmt":"2021-03-04T08:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cupblog.bluefusesystems.com\/?p=40792"},"modified":"2021-03-05T11:50:11","modified_gmt":"2021-03-05T11:50:11","slug":"mining-shakespeare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/2021\/03\/04\/mining-shakespeare\/","title":{"rendered":"Mining Shakespeare"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Driving on Interstate 90 across the North American West, it\u2019s possible, and encouraged, to travel fast. The speed limit is over 120 kph, but the wide open expanses of the state of Montana do not blur at such a pace, where the horizon forever recedes behind a seemingly unspoiled landscape. Westward beyond the Continental Divide, a town comes into view\u2014a place called Butte, with a rich history that includes industrial-scale mineral extraction, conflicts over workers\u2019 rights, and catastrophic environmental disasters. At the same time, Butte\u2019s modern story highlights an indomitable commitment to restoration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Butte\u2019s raison d\u2019\u00eatre used to be mineral extraction, especially for copper, which began in the 1890s and peaked in the 1960s. Mining headframes still dot the terrain, and a huge M sculpted from local rocks marks a hillside where the school of mines is situated. The most striking, and disturbing, feature of Butte is the Berkeley Pit\u2014a gigantic chasm filled with toxic water that is the legacy of open-pit mining and has resulted in the largest Superfund cleanup site in the United States. Butte\u2019s economy collapsed several decades ago and its population has significantly decreased, yet it remains a fascinating place not only because of its history, but also because of its thriving cultural scene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a resident of Montana, I find myself drawn to Butte\u2019s story, thus I have sought ways to speak about its past and potential futures. Like many others, I believe in the efficacy of Shakespearean texts for negotiating myriad issues facing us today, and my foremost interest is the environment. The excavation of a Shakespearean text to speak about the excavation of the earth in Montana creates an evocative synergy for dramatic adaptation. My aims are rooted in the practice of \u2018ecodramaturgy\u2019, an important ethical movement toward a more environmentally conscious theatrical practice. Ecodramaturgy \u2018puts ecological reciprocity at the centre of its theatrical and thematic intent,\u2019 thereby seeking \u2018to break down binaries between nature and culture, hope and despair, the individual and the community.\u2019[1]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In order to reflect upon Butte\u2019s history of mineral extraction, societal collapse, and environmental damage, I adapted a play called Timon of Athens<\/em>, which Shakespeare wrote with his fellow playwright Thomas Middleton. The adaptation, retitled Timon of Anaconda<\/em> (the latter term was the name of the corporation that controlled Butte\u2019s mining), served to highlight the story of Butte, especially from an ecological angle. The seventeenth-century satirical drama provided the words, ideas, and images around which the adaptation took shape. It was ultimately a natural fit to use this source to narrate the folly of the rampant capitalist hunger to dig in the earth for mineral resources without taking measure of the damage that this causes to both human and nonhuman life forms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Timon of Anaconda<\/em>\u2019s outdoor, site-specific staging locations immersed audiences in the post-industrial realities of Montana towns. In one location the audience sat in the shadow of giant, defunct grain silos, and in the other in a park that had once served as a mining foreman\u2019s home, overlooking Butte\u2019s headframes and the Berkeley Pit. The resulting performances and discussions surrounding them encouraged new perspectives on persistent environmental concerns, thus fostering a way to talk about reclamation\u2014both of the poisoned land and of the community in Butte.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My article \u2018Ecological Adaptation in Montana: Timon of Athens <\/em>to Timon of Anaconda<\/em><\/a>\u2019 (open access in the current issue of Cambridge journal New theatre Quarterly<\/a><\/em>) narrates the process of adaptation and performance that I have been outlining above. The project reminded us all that creative adaptations of classical texts are most effective when they are tied to an evocative location that can help people grapple with the \u2018where are we?\u2019 foregrounded by ecodamaturgy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Collective storytelling is a key component of any restoration for ecosystems, including our own important, and fraught, place within them. Providing a place for such historical tellings and retellings allows us to slow down, considering not just the expanse of space and the daunting scale of the problems, but also the generative lessons that can be gleaned from the local.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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[1] Theresa J. May, in Readings in Performance and Ecology, ed. Wendy Arons and Theresa J. May (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), p. 4 and Kristin Idaszak, \u2018Ecodramaturgy,\u2019 www.kristinidaszak.com\/ecodramaturgy<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo credit: Kevin Brustuen.<\/em> Featured actors: Timon (Mark Kuntz) with Alcibiades (Keegan Grady<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gretchen E. Minton is Professor of English at Montana State University, Bozeman. She has edited several early modern plays, including Timon of Athens<\/em>, Troilus and Cressida<\/em>, Twelfth Night<\/em>, and The Revenger\u2019s Tragedy<\/em>. Her recent work as a scholar focuses on ecological approaches to and adaptations of early modern texts. She is the dramaturg for Montana Shakespeare in the Parks and Bozeman Actors Theatre, and the co-founder of Montana InSite Theatre (montanainsitetheatre.org<\/a>). Minton\u2019s directorial projects include A Doll\u2019s House<\/em> (2019), Timon of Anaconda<\/em> (2019-20), \u201cShakespeare\u2019s Walking Story\u201d (2020), and \u201cSonnets in the Snow\u201d (2021). gretchenminton.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Gretchen E. Minton’s new blog discusses the context of her recent article \u2018Ecological Adaptation in Montana: Timon of Athens to Timon of Anaconda\u2019 – out now in Cambridge journal ‘New Theatre Quarterly’.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":799,"featured_media":40793,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,14],"tags":[8617,8616,524,6674],"coauthors":[8618],"class_list":["post-40792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-humanities","category-music-and-drama","tag-new-theatre-quarterly","tag-ntq","tag-theatre","tag-theatreandperformance"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/799"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40792"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40840,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40792\/revisions\/40840"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40792"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/core\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=40792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}