Ecodramaturgy
What is ecodramaturgy?
Ecodramaturgy is a critical framework for making and studying theatre. It encompasses environmental themes as well as sustainable producing practices. Una Chaudhuri and Theresa May write that humanist theatre asks, "who are we?" while ecological theatre asks "where are we?" Ecodrama seeks to break down binaries between nature and culture, hope and despair, the individual and the community.
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Ecodramaturgy is an actively anti-racist, anti-sexist approach that centers gender inclusivity, accessibility, and Indigeneity. Applying a climate justice lens to the embodied practice of theatre making requires an intersectional approach to addressing the climate crisis, environmental racism, wealth inequality, and other forms of oppression.
Ecodramaturgy resources
Greening the Theatre: Taking Ecocriticism from Page to Stage by Theresa May
"There Must Be a Lot of Fish in That Lake": Toward an Ecological Theatre by Una Chaudhuri
Green New Theatre Toolkit (Groundwater Arts)
Eco-Theatre Manifesto (Superhero Clubhouse)
Howlround Theatre Commons: Theatre in the Age of Climate Change
Artists and Climate Change (an initiative of the Arctic Cycle)
Writing to Save the World: Playwriting and Climate Change
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Additional reading on the Anthropocene
Articles
Intersectional Environmentalist founded by Leah Thomas (intersectional approaches to environmentalism)
The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells (also the book by the same title)
Under the Weather by Ash Sanders (climate change and grief)
Decolonization is not a metaphor by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang (decolonization scholarship)
The Pitfalls and Potentials of the New Minimalism by Jia Tolentino (climate change and minimalism)
Climate Signs by Emily Raboteau (climate change and conceptual art)
Elegy for a Country's Seasons by Zadie Smith (climate change and grief)
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Books
Field Notes from a Catastrophe by Elizabeth Kolbert
The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert
How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
Timefulness by Marcia Bjornerud
Second Body by Daisy Hildyard
We Are the Weather by Jonathan Safran Foer
Call Them by Their True Names: American Crises (and Essays) by Rebecca Solnit
Lost Antarctica: Adventures in a Disappearing Land by James McClintock
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Podcasts, Videos, etc.
How to Save a Planet hosted by Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Alex Blumberg (climate solutions)
Dear Mother Nature by Pattie Gonia (climate change and queerness)
Mothers of Invention hosted by Mary Robinson and Maeve Higgins (interviews with feminist climate activists)
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