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Theater and Ecology
The following resources will help provide a basis for research on ecologically-aware theater. Though not (yet!) a mainstream topic, information is findable throughout the literature and history of theater with some research persistence. Looking at references and bibliographies in some of the resources below, for example, will help a good deal. Though eco-drama/theater falls under the "environmental theater" umbrella, the researcher should be aware that the latter term has been used for anything from site-specific or open-space performance, to 'theater as environment' without reference or concern for ecological or sustainable practice.
Resources listed below, if part of the Carnegie Mellon Library collections, are noted by location.
- Practical Guides
- Databases and Indexes
- Selected Books and Articles
- Artists and Organizations
- Case Studies
- Related Research Guides
Fried, Larry K. and May, Theresa. Greening up Our Houses: A Guide to a More Ecologically Sound Theatre. New York: Drama Book Publishers, 1994.
HUNT STACKS-4 PN2053 .F74 1994Contents: Part 1: Key Concepts for Going Green; Part II: What Can My Department Do? Part III:Materials, Products and Alternatives (a wide ranging discussion from make-up and shoe polish to special effects, office supplies, paints, etc.). Appendices include a list of common toxic substances, alternative suppliers and manufacturers, resources for technical and regulatory assistance and a bibliography.
Rossol, Monona. The Health & Safety Guide for Film, TV & Theater. New York: Allworth Press, 2000.
HUNT FA-REF-4 RC965 .T54 R668 2000An introduction to facts, precautions and prescriptions on everything from attitudes and psychological stress to biohazards. Includes sections on fog, pyro and other special effects, theater crafts, materials, chemicals, machinery, shop safety, makeup, safety codes, laws and regulations, reproductive hazards, air quality and ventilation, humans with sensitivities and disabilities and more.
Try beginning with following indexes and databases to find plays and related information on the environment and the performing arts. You might start by using keywords that express various concepts and derivatives of the words environment including environment, ecology, nature, land, sustainable, 'place in literature' etc., paired with words like theater/theatre, performance, performance art, events, dance, music etc.). To find known plays or playwrights, see within this guide Topics:Literature. Ask for additional assistance at the Arts Reference Desk or contact Mo Dawley , Art and Drama Librarian.
Ashden Directory: Bringing Together Environmentalism and the Performing Arts (UK) Robert Butler and Wallace Heim, eds.
Search this free-web directory by using a keyword search and/or use the browse mode to get detailed information on individuals, themes, plays, productions/projects. Also available on this site is a "magazine" section with related links, essays and interviews, funding opportunities, and news. First launched in 2000 and funded by the Ashden Trust.
Between Nature: Explorations in Ecology and Performance (Lancaster University, UK. Center for the Study of Environmental Change and Department of Theater Studies).
Contains a detailed index of performance environmental links by keyword.
"Between Nature" was the first major international conference for performance and ecology held at Lancaster University in 2000. The site also documents that event with images and abstracts of the events. An inteface for continuous discussion is provided. A book based on conversations and collaborations of the event was published as Nature Performed: Environment, Culture and Performance, Bronislaw Szerszynski, Wallace Heim and Claire Waterton, eds. in 2003.International Index to the Performing Arts
Cites articles (1998 to present) in 140+ international performing arts periodicals. Includes articles and reviews. Most records include an abstract in addition to the citation. Some full-text articles available (in the minority).
Available to Carnegie Mellon users.Play Index Online (available to Carnegie Mellon users)
Cites plays in published sources (1949-present) by subject, author, title, style, genre, cast type and more with plot summaries and musical, cast and scenery requirements. Includes one-act plays, pageants, plays in verse, radio and television plays and classic drama. Links to selected full-text plays on the web.
To see if a play in Play Index is accessible via Carnegie Mellon Libraries check Cameo (library catalog).
To request a play for the University Libraries play collection contact Mo Dawley, Art and Drama Librarian.Asian American Drama
Black Drama
Twentieth Century North American DramaFull-text plays online available to Carnegie Mellon users.
As of this writing, the subject indexes of these databases don't indicate plays on the environment as such, but words within the text of the plays are fully searchable. For example, a keyword search on "nature" in Asian American Drama reveals a number of scenes from various plays referring to concept of "nature."
Selected Books and Journal Articles
The following are some basic texts with useful bibliographies and/or play/performance references.Books
Kershaw, Baz. Theatre Ecology: Environments and Performance Events. Cambridge;New York: Cambridge University Press,
2007.
HUNT STACKS-4 PN1643 .K48 2007Kershaw, Professor of Performance, School of Theatre, Performance and Cultural Policy Studies at the University of Warwick, and director and writer in experimental, radical and community-based theatre examines the political and environmental aspects of the performing arts and with an underlying question: "What are the challenges to theatre and purposes of performance in an ecologically threatened world?"
Maranca, Bonnie. Ecologies of Theatre: Essays at the Century Turning. New York: Routledge, 1996.
HUNT STACKS-2 PN1861 .M36 1996An anthology of reflections, criticism and performance/play analysis by (and one interview with) Maranca (a.k.a. publisher of PAJ: Performing Arts Journal) from the mid-seventies to 1995. The anthology means to document Maranca's embracing "recognition of an ecosystem as part of a cultural system and of natural history as inseparable from the history of the world." Partial contents include essays on the Gertrude Stein, The Mus/ecology of John Cage, Robert Wilson: Dramaturgy as Ecology and The Forest; The Autobiology of Rachel Rosenthal; Despoiled Shores: Heiner Muller's Natural History Lessons; Theater and the University, Garden/Theater and Isak Dinesen.
History, memory, ecology (social, political, theatrical and the earth), the body (self, social, as text, a continent, Gaia), geography, territorial expansion, ethics, landscape, place, the pastoral, international culture and events, war, gender, oppression, nuclear theater, spectacle, religion, spirituality, shamanism, theater and the everyday, plate techtonics, chaos theory, aging, decay, planned obsolesence and sports are some of the concepts discussed or introduced.May, Theresa. Theatre in the Wild: Rediscovering the Spiritual Purpose of Theatre Through Stories that Give Meaning to Existence from In Context: A Quarterly of Humane Sustainable Culture issue "Earth and Spirit" (IC#24), Late Winter, 1990.
Brief article online about how ancient theater played a "crucial, spiritual purpose within the community" rooted in a deep connection with the land.
May, Theresa. Greening the Theater: Taking Ecocriticism from Page to Stage
May, Theresa Joette. Earth Matters: Ecology and American Theatre.
Ph.D. dissertation, University of Washington, School of Drama, 2000.
Note: A copy of this dissertation will soon be available in Hunt Library.Recommended for anyone interested in understanding some basic concepts about culture and the environment, and how the American theatre has represented and participated in perceptual and cultural constructs that 'have brought us to our present environmental crisis.' May, a playwright, director and author traces American theatre through "the closure of the frontier, the beginning of the conservation movement, the New Deal era, the rise of post-consumer culture and the 20th century green revolution" mainly through the following plays or musical theatre, and brings them within cultural historical, industrial, political, scientific, and literary context; good wide-ranging interdisciplinary bibliography.
The author focuses on the following plays to advance her thesis:
(John)Augustin Daly. Horizon (1871) ; William F. (Bill) Cody. Wild West (1883-1906); William Vaughn Moody. The Great Divide (1906); David Belasco. Girl of the Golden West (1929); Federal Theatre Project's Living Newspapers Power (1937) ; Triple-A Plowed Under (1936); Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein. Oklahoma (1943); Arthur Miller. Death of a Salesman (1949);Samuel Beckett. End Game (1958); Raisin in the Sun (1959); Living Theatre's Frankenstein (1965); Lanford Wilson Angels Fall (1982); Robert Schenkkan. The Kentucky Cycle (1993); Anne Galjour, Alligator Tales Lynn Riggs, Green Grow the Lilacs;Roth, Moira, ed. Rachel Rosenthal. Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press. 1997
HUNT STACKS-4 NX512 .R68 R3 1997An anthology of writings on and by the "grandmother" of performance art and ecofeminst; includes interviews. Rosenthal's concern about healing and human relationship to the earth is a main component of her work: "All of Gaia dances in harmony and we humans are the only ones out of step."
Schechner, Richard. Environmental Theater : An Expanded New Edition Including "Six Axioms for Environmental Theater." New York : Applause, 1994.
HUNT STACKS-4 PN2297 .P4 S3 1994First published as Environmental Theater ( New York, Hawthorn Books, 1973).
Presents theater, life and ecology as symbiotic, interconnected "complex systems of transformation." Contains a good bibliography for anyone interested in researching environmental theater in terms of explorations of space, participation, nakedness, performer, shaman, therapy, playwright, groups and director. The author is responsible for introducing the term and concept "environmental theater" in this new light beginning in the 1970s.Sullivan Jr., Garrett A. The Drama of Landscape: Land Property and Social Relations on the Early Modern Stage. Stanford: Stanford University, 1998.
HUNT STACKS-2 PR658 .L35 S85 1998A study of human relationships to the land, (concepts of landscape, land "management", society, space, identity) in 16th and 17th century English drama in reference to the country estate, roads, maps and the city. The introduction contains a good discussion on landscape as a human construct. Plays discussed include Arden of Faversham ; Woodstock (1592); Shakespeare's Henry IV (1597), King Lear (1605), Cymbeline (1609) , and Richard II (1595); Richard Brome's A Jovial Crew (1641); Thomas Heywood's Edward IV (1599).
Szerszynksi, Bronislaw, Heim, Wallace and Waterton, Claire. Nature Performed: Environment Culture and Performance. Oxford ; Malden, MA : Blackwell Pub./Sociological Review, 2003.
Produced as a result of collaborations and conversations during Between Nature: Explorations in Ecology and Performance the first major international conference on theater and ecology.
Journals
Special Issues
Art Environment Ecology. High Performance. 10:4, 1987, 22-59.
7 article special section on performance and eco-theatre. A classic special issue and perhaps one of the first peformance journals to dedicate an issue to the environmental crisis.Theater and Ecology Theater, Spring Summer 25:1. 1994
6 article special issue.
Erika Munk: A Beginning and an End: Green Thoughts; Una Chaudhuri. "There Must be a Lot of Fish in That Lake" : Toward an Ecological Theater; John Bell. Uprising of the Beast: An Interview with Peter Schumann ; Elinor Fuchs. Play as Landscape: Another Version of Pastoral; Gabrielle Barnett. Performing for the Forest ; Sheila Rabillard. Fen and the Production of a Feminist Ecotheater.Selected Articles
Research Hint:
Try browsing PAJ: Performing Arts Journal for articles with consistent and wide-ranging themes on peformance and the environment, ethics, politics and society. Paper copy is available in Hunt Library and full-text html or PDF articles are available to Carnegie Mellon users through Project Muse, 1996-present.Rundle, Erika. Performance and Evolution. PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 27:2 (2005) 114-119.
Review of Jane R. Goodall's book Performance and Evolution in the Age of Darwin: Out of the Natural Order ( London and New York: Routledge, 2002).Jacobson, Lynn. Green Theatre: Confessions of an Eco-reporter. American Theatre, 8:11, February 1992, 17-25.
Cless, Downing. Eco-Theatre, USA: The Grassroots is Greener.
TDR: The Drama Review, 40:2, Summer 1996, 79-102.
Between Nature: Explorations in Ecology and Performance (Lancaster University, UK. Center for the Study of Environmental Change and Department of Theater Studies).
"Between Nature" was the first major international conference for performance and ecology held at Lancaster University in 2000. The site documents that event with images and abstracts of the events. An inteface for continuous discussion is provided. Also contains a detailed index of performance environmental links by keyword.
Bread and Puppet Theatre
Founded in 1962 by Peter Schuman; Obie Award winning. One of the oldest non-profit, self-supporting theatrical companies in the U.S; addresses social, political and environmental issues through spectacle and other productions. As of this writing, there is no official web site. A search on Bread and Puppet theater in any search engine will bring up numerous web sites. Try beginning with the following:
http://www.theaterofmemory.com/art/bread/bread.html
Recommended:
Ronald T. Simon & Marc Estrin. Rehearsing with Gods: Photographs and Essays on the Bread and Puppet Theater (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing Co. 2004).
An amazing collection of photographs taken from 1983-2003 by Canadian photographer Simon who first attended Bread and Puppet Theater in 1979; and written by Estrin a puppeteer, writer, cellist and activist. The black and white images give an excellent sense of how powerful theater can be when spectacle is performed with the heart and in the land.
A non-profit program based in North Carolina through Art in the Public Interest. A "portal to the field of community arts" including visual art, dance, theatre/performance, public art, music, media arts, literature/narrative. Provides news, documentation, theoretical writing, communications, research and educational information while.
Established in 2004 in an "effort to bring focus and development to "ecodrama" an emerging genre of theatre." Produces the Ecodrama Playwrights Festival and Redwood Festival of New Plays
Live children's theatre to educate audiences about science, nature and the environment.
Hazel Wolf Environmental Film Network
Non-profit organization "dedicated to improving the quality and effective us of environmental media.
Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival
Showcase films and performances on the environment.
Socially conscious theater since 1947. Web site includes descriptions and scripts of productions, an historical overview and bibliography. Holds workshops.
Avant-guard theater since 1970. Web site Lists its many productions (with some descriptions). Has artist residency program.
Here's on example of an eco-theatrical production:
Animal Magnetism (2000):
" Take one environmentally-sensitive chimpanzee, add a rhinocerous with shady business dealings, stir in a generous dollop of live music, plenty of animation and you have the recipe for Animal Magnetism, a raucous love story. Cheri (the chimp) and Tin Tin′s passion plays out on the ground--often amidst giant cartoon projections of themselves--as well as in the air. They soar and swoop and swoon in awe-inspiring aerial pas de deux. More than a love story, Animal Magnetism is also an allegory. It points out our species′ insatiable appetite for destroying natural reasources and the glaring disparities between the first and third worlds. this socio-political- erotico live-action cartoon is one you won′t see on Disney anytime soon!"Earth Pageant: Masks and Music! Puppets and propaganda!
ODC - Artistic Dance Director Brenda Way
"NOBODY PUTS BRENDA IN A CORNER!" Grist interview with Brenda Way about her new dance production on climate change
"Acting to make a difference in our environment"
San Francisco Mime Troupe (not pantomime)
This is ensemble theater specializing in social and political satire, begun as an experiment of the Actor's Workshop in 1959. Mime is meant here "in its classical and original definition, ‘the exaggeration of daily life in story and song.” The website includes a schedule of events, history, an archives, extensive activist links, and information about internships and workshops.
Stage Kids: The Edu-tainment Company
Information about their environmental musical: Environmental Awareness, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
Writes and produces a large number of plays, drama sketches, and participatory drama workshops providing a greater understanding of social and environmental issues in the South Pacific.
- Common Green/Common Ground
"A twenty-one-month (2001-2002) play-building and performance project" in a struggle to protect New York City's commuity gardens which were losing ground to bulldozing for gentrification or other building projects. First envisioned by Jan Cohen-Cruz in collaboration with colleagues, 130 community participants, New York University students and Drama Department technical theater staff, urban environmental advocates, Point Community Development Corporation, the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance.
Described in detail in Jan Cohen-Cruz, Local Acts: Community-Based Peformance in the United States (New Brunswick, New Jersey and London: Rutgers University Press, 2005), Chapter 6, "Methodologies: Storytelling." See also the end of the book's Introduction for additional comments on the project. Book includes examples of stories and testimonials gathered or heard in story circles from community members regarding their experiences with nature and the community gardens. HUNT STACKS-4 PN2267 .C66 2005
Information on the project also available at the web-site of Sabrina Peck who came on board with the project as co-conceptualizer, director and choreographer.
Reviews and comments about the project include:
Rosenthal, Cindy. The "common green/common ground" Performance Project: The Personal, the Political, the Gardens, and NYU, The Drama Review 46:3:175, Fall 2002 132-164 ; and Rosenthal, Cindy. Letters, Etc.: New York's Community Gardens: Follow-up, The Drama Review: 47:1:177, Spring 2003, 8-9. Full-text PDF of these articles available to Carnegie Mellon users via International Index to the Performing Arts database.
- French, William W. Maryat Lee's EcoTheater: A Theater for the Twenty-First Century. Morgantown, West Virginia: West Virginia University Press, 1998.
HUNT STACKS-4 PN2297 .E36 F74 1998A practical handbook of the history and practices of playwright Maryat Lee and her particular brand of theater begun in 1970's in the streets of New York and which extended to Appalachia.
The name refers to the Greek root "eco" (home, house). Lee attempted to create an adaptable, holistic, "indigenous" street theater wherein untrained people from the neighborhood are the actors and scripts are written by and/or adapted to the common stories and "own voice" of local people. Emphasis is on the "actor" coming through the role as themselves, "being" as opposed to performing "on stage" --all of which which inevitably addresses culture, race and gender issues, community and creating a sense of place. Staging anc costuming is rudimentarys. The book includes a chapter on the process of creating EcoTheater and gives examples of scenes.
- Grossman, Samuel L. Earth Stage: A Guide to Theater About Environmental Concerns. Albion, MI: Department of Speech Communication and Theatre, Albion College, 1973.
A handbook developed as the result of a grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation of Battle Creek for a 3-year program with students exploring "the urgency of the environmental crisis." Includes discussion of organizing the program; basic stage sets, lighting and technical equipment; ideas for play scenarios and play scripts developed from improvisation.
(Available via Interlibrary Loan)
The Environment: A Multidisciplinary Research Guide
Art Research Guide: Art and Ecology (Mo Dawley)
Art Research Guide: Art and Society (Mo Dawley)
Architecture: A Research Guide: Sustainable Design (Martin Aurand)Design: Industrial Design: Environmental Design (Mary Kay Johnsen)
Environmental History (Sue Collins)
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July 2, 2008 -- http://www.library.cmu.edu/Research/Arts/Drama/dramenviro.html
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