Abstract
Attempts to convey the urgency of the climate crisis often rely on the figure of the child. From Greta Thunberg via school-striking students to the grandchildren invoked in the titles of bestselling books about global warming, appearances of children seem especially effective in protesting the loss of a habitable planet. The iconic child that needs saving (or becomes the planet’s saviour) is equally prominent in British plays about climate change. Drawing on queer critiques of the conceptual short circuit between the child and the future, this article identifies two waves of UK eco-theatre: the first wave endorses hetero-nuclear family bonds and future-oriented thinking; the second wave traces alternative relations to nonhuman, ageing, or ailing Others in the present. The first part of the article revisits critiques of reproductive futurism; the second examines the straight ecologies that characterise the first wave of eco-theatre, based on a detailed analysis of Duncan Macmillan’s play Lungs (Studio Theatre, Washington, DC/Sheffield Crucible, 2011). The final part considers climate-change plays that sever reproductive timelines, as exemplified by Caryl Churchill’s Escaped Alone, Lucy Kirkwood’s The Children, and Stef Smith’s Human Animals (all Royal Court, 2016).
About the author
is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer of English Literature and Culture at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. She is the author of Theatre on Terror: Subject Positions in British Drama (2017). Her research focuses on dramatic responses to war, (counter-)terrorism, neoliberalism, and climate change. She has also worked in the field of gender and queer studies, writing on the biopolitics of pregnancy, birth, and public breastfeeding and more recently on trans narratives in Chilean cinema. Her articles on contemporary UK theatre have appeared in international journals such as Humanities, Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies, and Performance Paradigm.
Works Cited
Akbar, Arifa. “Lungs Review: Claire Foy and Matt Smith Shine in Climate Crisis Drama.” The Guardian, 20 Oct. 2019. Web. 19 Oct. 2020. <https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2019/oct/20/lungs-review-old-vic-london-claire-foy-and-matt-smith-shine-in-climate-crisis-drama>.Search in Google Scholar
Angelaki, Vicky. Social and Political Theatre in 21st-Century Britain: Staging Crisis. Bloomsbury: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2017. Print.Search in Google Scholar
Arons, Wendy. “Tragedies of the Capitalocene.” Journal of Contemporary Drama in English 8.1 (2020): 16–33. Print.10.1515/jcde-2020-0003Search in Google Scholar
Billington, Michael. “Human Animals Review: Fur Flies in Chilling Vision of Dystopian London.” The Guardian, 25 May 2016. Web. 30 Oct. 2020. <https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/may/25/human-animals-review-royal-court-theatre>.Search in Google Scholar
Chaudhuri, Una. “Anthropo-Scenes: Theater and Climate Change.” Journal of Contemporary Drama in English 3.1 (2015): 12–27. Print.10.1515/jcde-2015-0002Search in Google Scholar
–-, and Shonni Enelow. Research Theatre, Climate Change, and the Ecocide Project: A Casebook. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Print.10.1057/9781137396624Search in Google Scholar
Churchill, Caryl. Escaped Alone. London: Nick Hern Books, 2016. Print.10.5040/9781784603595.00000002Search in Google Scholar
Colebrook, Clare. “The Once and Future Humans: Between Happiness and Extinction.” Against Life. Ed. Alastair Hunt and Stephanie Youngblood. Evanston: Northwestern UP, 2016. 63–85. Print.Search in Google Scholar
Duden, Barbara. Disembodying Women: Perspectives on Pregnancy and the Unborn. Trans. Lee Hoinacki. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1993. Print.Search in Google Scholar
Duffy, Clare. Arctic Oil. London: Oberon Books, 2018. Print.Search in Google Scholar
Edelman, Lee. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Durham: Duke UP, 2004. Print.Search in Google Scholar
Ensor, Sarah. “Terminal Regions: Queer Ecocriticism at the End.” Against Life. Ed. Alastair Hunt and Stephanie Youngblood. Evanston: Northwestern UP, 2016. 41–61. Print.Search in Google Scholar
Gardner, Lyn. “Lungs: Review.” The Guardian, 25 Oct. 2011. Web. 19 Oct. 2020. <https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2011/oct/25/lungs-crucible-sheffield-review>. Search in Google Scholar
Gilbert, Sophie. “Escaped Alone Finds Comfort at the End of the World.” The Atlantic, 21 Feb. 2017. Web. 22 Oct. 2020. <https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/02/escaped-alone-caryl-churchill-bam/517191>. Search in Google Scholar
Haraway, Donna. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham: Duke UP, 2016. Print.Search in Google Scholar
Hoydis, Julia. “A Slow Unfolding ‘Fault Sequence’: Risk and Responsibility in Lucy Kirkwood’s The Children.” Journal of Contemporary Drama in English 8.1 (2020): 83–98. Print.10.1515/jcde-2020-0007Search in Google Scholar
Hudson, Julie. “‘If You Want to Be Green Hold Your Breath’: Climate Change in British Theatre.” New Theatre Quarterly 28.3 (2012): 260–271. Print.10.1017/S0266464X12000449Search in Google Scholar
Johns-Putra, Adeline. “Climate Change in Literature and Literary Studies: From Cli-Fi, Climate Change Theater and Ecopoetry to Ecocriticism and Climate Change Criticism.” WIREs Climate Change 7.2 (2016): 266–282. Web. 9 Dec. 2020. <https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.385>.Search in Google Scholar
Kirkwood, Lucy. The Children. London: Nick Hern Books, 2016. Print.Search in Google Scholar
Lakind, Alexandra, and Chessa Adsit-Morris. “Future Child: Pedagogy and the Post-Anthropocene.” Journal of Childhood Studies 43.1 (2018): 30–43. Print. 10.18357/jcs.v43i1.18263Search in Google Scholar
MacCormack, Patricia. The Ahuman Manifesto: Activism for the End of the Anthropocene. London: Bloomsbury, 2020. Print.10.5040/9781350081130Search in Google Scholar
Macmillan, Duncan. Lungs. London: Oberon Books, 2011. Print.10.5040/9781350208056.00000003Search in Google Scholar
Matheou, Demetrios. “Lungs: Theater Review.” The Hollywood Reporter, 20 Oct. 2019. Web. 19 Oct. 2020. <https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/lungs-theater-1248893>. Search in Google Scholar
Meany, Helen. “The Children Review: Lucy Kirkwood’s Taut Tale of Human and Atomic Meltdown.” The Guardian, 8 March 2019. Web. 22 Oct. 2020. <https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2019/mar/08/the-children-review-lucy-kirkwood-taut-tale-of-human-and-atomic-meltdown>.Search in Google Scholar
Merritt, Stephanie. “Climate Change Play 2071 Aims to Make Data Dramatic.” The Guardian, 5 Nov. 2014. Web. 22 Nov. 2020. <https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/nov/05/climate-change-theatre-2071-katie-mitchell-duncan-macmillan>.Search in Google Scholar
Northmore, Henry. “Lungs Win the Fringe Sustainable Practice Award 2015.” The List, 28 Aug. 2015. Web. 20 Oct. 2020. <https://edinburghfestival.list.co.uk/article/74206-lungs-win-the-fringe-sustainable-practice-award-2015>.Search in Google Scholar
Payne, Nick. If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013. Print.Search in Google Scholar
Sandilands, Catriona. “Queer Life? Ecocriticism after the Fire.” The Oxford Handbook of Ecocriticism. Ed. Greg Garrard. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2014. 305–319. Print.10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199742929.013.015Search in Google Scholar
Sheldon, Rebekah. The Child to Come: Life after the Human Catastrophe. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2016. Print.10.5749/minnesota/9780816689873.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Smith, Stef. Human Animals. London: Nick Hern Books, 2016. Print.10.5040/9781784603779.00000002Search in Google Scholar
Svich, Caridad. “Duncan Macmillan’s Theatre of Luminous Motion: An Interview by Caridad Svich.” Contemporary Theatre Review 23.3 (2013): 450–454. Print.10.1080/10486801.2013.765119Search in Google Scholar
Watts, Grace. “Review: Lungs, Southbank Centre.” A Younger Theatre, 14 June 2015. Web. 19 Oct. 2020. <https://www.ayoungertheatre.com/review-lungs-southbank-centre>.Search in Google Scholar
© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston