Performance and Ecology

<p>In comparison with Literary Studies and Media and Film Studies the disciplines of Theatre and Performance with their strong anthropocentric heritage have been relatively slow in responding to such things as climate change species extinction or pollution and toxicity etc. However in the wake of recent work on animals cyborgs and objects as well as publications with a specific focus on ecology and environment there are real signs that theatre and performance scholars are beginning to make their own contribution to the Environmental Humanities. But if theatre critics are engaged in new forms of ecocritical analysis it is worth posing a pertinent question from the outset: namely what can theatre do ecologically? </p> <p>In this book leading researchers and practitioners seek to answer that question from a number of perspectives and with diverse methodologies. Topics include: reflections on rehearsal processes scores for performance site-based interventions ideas of conflict investigations of temporality and time ecology ecospectating and the experience of disappointment. Taken together these essays make an important intervention in the emergent (inter)disciplines of the Environmental Humanities and further our understanding of the ecological potential of Theatre and Performance in ways that are cautious tentative but also generative. </p> <p>This book was originally published as a special issue of <i>Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism</i>.</p>