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Dossier: Climate Change and the Decolonized Future of Theatre

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 June 2020

LISA WOYNARSKI ,
ADELINA ONG ,
TANJA BEER ,
STEPHANIE BEAUPARK ,
JONAH WINN-LENETSKY ,
RULAN TANGEN  and
MICHELLE NICHOLSON-SANZ
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Abstract

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

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 45 , Issue 2 , July 2020 , pp. 179 - 208
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2020

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References

NOTES

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8 Tuck and Yang, ‘Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor’, p. 3.

9 Rauna Kuokkanen, Reshaping the University: Responsibility, Indigenous Epistemes, and the Logic of the Gift (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007), p. 155.

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11 Viola Zhou, ‘Many Chinese Cities Are Slowly Sinking – and Intensive Urbanisation Means It Will Only Get Worse, Say Experts’, South China Morning Post, 11 November 2016, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2044849/many-chinese-cities-are-slowly-sinking-and-intensive-urbanisation, accessed 19 September 2019.

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13 Robert Muggah, ‘How China's Sponge Cities Are Preparing for Sea-Level Rise’, World Economic Forum, 28 June 2019, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/06/how-china-s-sponge-cities-are-preparing-for-sea-level-rise/, accessed 19 September 2019.

14 Andrew Law, ‘Postcolonial Shanghai: An Urban Discourse of Prosperity and Futurity’, in Mrinalini Rajagopalan and Madhuri Desai, eds., Colonial Frames, Nationalist Histories: Imperial Legacies, Architecture, and Modernity (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2012), pp. 285–304, here p. 286.

15 SanSan Kwan, Kinesthetic City: Dance and Movement in Chinese Urban Spaces (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. xix.

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17 Liu Cixin, The Wandering Earth, translated by Kevin Liu, Elizabeth Hanlon, Zac Haluza, Adam Lanphier and Holger Nahm, e-book edition (London: Head of Zeus, 2016), pp. 8–42, here p. 13.

18 Susan Clayton, Christie Manning, Kirra Krygsman and Meighen Speiser, Mental Health and Our Changing Climate: Impacts, Implications, and Guidance (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association and ecoAmerica, 2017), p. 27.

19 Glenn Albrecht, Gina-Maree Sartore, Linda Connor, Nick Higginbotham, Sonia Freeman, Brian Kelly, Helen Stain, Anne Tonna and Georgia Pollard, ‘Solastalgia: The Distress Caused by Environmental Change’, Australasian Psychiatry, 15, 1 (Suppl. 2007), pp. S95–8, here p. S96.

20 Glenn Albrecht, ‘The Age of Solastalgia', The Conversation, 7 August 2012, http://theconversation.com/the-age-of-solastalgia-8337, accessed 9 October 2019.

21 Liu, The Wandering Earth, p. 36.

22 Ibid., p. 37.

23 Ibid., p. 39.

24 Tony Fisher, ‘Theatre of the Worldless’, in Eve Katsouraki and Tony Fisher, eds., Beyond Failure: New Essays on the Cultural History of Failure in Theatre and Performance (London and New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2019), pp. 169–91, here p. 181.

25 Zeke Hausfather, ‘Analysis: How Much “Carbon Budget” Is Left to Limit Global Warming to 1.5C?’, Carbon Brief, 9 April 2018, https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-much-carbon-budget-is-left-to-limit-global-warming-to-1-5c, accessed 9 October 2019. Tommaso Perrone, ‘How Agriculture and Climate Change Are Related: Causes and Effects’, LifeGate, 5 February 2018, https://www.lifegate.com/people/news/agriculture-and-climate-change-causes-effects-impacts, accessed 9 October 2019.

26 Liu, The Wandering Earth, p. 41.

27 Peter Brannen, ‘The Anthropocene Is a Joke’, The Atlantic, 13 August 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/08/arrogance-anthropocene/595795/, accessed 9 October 2019

28 Zhuang Zhou, ‘Enjoyment in Untroubled Ease’, Chinese Text Project, 1891 [312 CE], http://ctext.org/zhuangzi/enjoyment-in-untroubled-ease, accessed 9 October 2019.

29 Fisher, ‘Theatre of the Worldless’, p. 181.

30 Maia Wikler and Thanu Yakupitiyage, ‘11 Young Climate Justice Activists You Need to Pay Attention To’, Vice.com, 1 October 2019, https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/8xwvq3/11-young-climate-justice-activists-you-need-to-pay-attention-to-beyond-greta-thunberg/, accessed 13 January 2020.

31 Shannon Fulkhead, ‘Connecting through Records: Narratives of Koorie Victoria’, Archives and Manuscripts, 37, 2 (2009), pp. 61–89.

32 Deborah Bird Rose, Nourishing Terrains: Australian Aboriginal Views of Landscape and Wilderness (Canberra, ACT: Australian Heritage Commission, 1996), p. 8.

33 Ibid., p. 7.

34 Margaret Somerville, ‘Deep Mapping Connections to Country’, in Katherine Gibson, Deborah Bird Rose and Ruth Fincher, eds., Manifesto for Living in the Anthropocene (New York: Punctum Books, 2015), pp. 117–22.

35 Rose, Nourishing Terrains, p. 85.

36 Birgit Däwes and Marc Maufort, Enacting Nature: Ecocritical Perspectives on Indigenous Performance (Brussels: P.I.E. Peter Lang, 2014), p. 12.

37 Linda Hogan, Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1995), p. 94.

38 Dancing Earth, https://dancingearth.org/about, accessed 15 November 2019. ‘DANCING EARTH gathers Indigenous collaborators, including Nations of Blackfoot, Metis, Coushatta, Ixil and Tzeltil Maya, Papanga, Cambiva, Yaqui, Purepecha, Shoshone, Dine, Tsalagi, Hopi, Tewa, Tiwa, Towa, and Keresan of North Central and South America. DANCING EARTH inspires creativity and cultural consciousness through community art practice, energetic dance training workshops, site specific rituals and full length eco-productions.’

39 The interview has been edited for flow and for clarity. I use brackets [] to indicate words or phrases I have added for clarity, or grammar.

40 The Heard is a museum in Phoenix, Arizona that is focused on the advancement of American Indian Art.

41 Nolan, Yvette, Medicine Shows: Indigenous Performance Culture (Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 2015), p. 3Google Scholar.

42 This article is part of a larger research project that I am conducting on performance initiatives on water in Peru, India, Italy and Scotland in the context of climate change. This research has been possible thanks to a Leverhulme Trust ECR Fellowship hosted by the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London.

43 Because of the brief nature of this text, I cannot describe these rituals in any significant detail here.

44 Taylor, Diana, The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 Méndez, Jorge Trevejo, ‘Jueces de agua. Sistema tradicional de Corongo’, in Ministerio de Cultura del Perú, eds., Jueces de agua. Sistema tradicional de Corongo (Lima: Ministerio de Cultura del Perú, 2016), pp. 41–108Google Scholar.

46 See, for example, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), User's Guide on Assessing Water Governance (UNDP, 2013).

47 The most important binding international convention regarding Indigenous and tribal peoples (established in 1989) and a precursor of the UN's Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (approved in 2007).

48 Assessing the level of effective participation of representatives of Indigenous peoples in Peruvian water policy goes beyond the remit of this article.

49 I can only provide here a very succinct overview of a rather complex subject – ethnicity in Peru. For more detailed information, see for example Wightman, Ann, Indigenous Migration and Social Change (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50 Despite the blurred borders of these two ethnic categories, there are communities in Peru who self-identify as Indigenous and are recognized by the Peruvian state as such.

51 The first WJ was appointed in colonial Lima in 1555. The Spanish assimilated the office to pre-existing local-level Inca (1438–1533) water authorities, which in turn replaced similar administrators from pre-Inca cultures.

52 Rebecca Nagle, ‘The Indigenous Teen Who Confronted Trudeau about Unsafe Water Took On the UN’, Vice.com, 1 October 2019, https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8xwvx3/the-indigenous-teen-who-confronted-trudeau-about-unsafe-water-took-on-the-un, accessed 13 January 2020.

53 Global Landscapes Forum – GLF, ‘Autumn Peltier – GLF New York 2019’, 29 September 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGDH0y8AwTk, accessed 13 January 2020.

54 Chovanec, Donna M., Gordon, Naomi, Underwood, Misty, Butt, Saima and Diaz, Ruby Smith, ‘Solidarity Movements and Decolonization’, in Abdi, Ali A., Shultz, Lynette and Pillay, Thashika, eds., Decolonizing Global Citizenship Education (Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2015), pp. 157–72Google Scholar, here p. 167.