Reflecting on Environmental Change through Site-based Performance

The aim of this network will be to examine the potential of site-based performance as a means of investigating and representing the dynamics of environmental change. We define site-based performances as events located in spaces whose physical features and/or known histories will in some way shape the meaning-making processes of performers, audiences and potentially the wider public. This is distinct from the conventional treatment of theatre stages as neutral vessels for self-sufficient performances.

A performance event sited in and reflecting on a given environment can be a highly appropriate way to focus attention on environmental questions. Its impact can be immediate, in engaging diverse members of the public and prompting them to look at their surroundings afresh. However, most site-specific performance practice tends (naturally enough) to be explicitly local in orientation-reflecting on local history or community identity, for example, or the perceptual properties of a given landscape. This network aims to foreground the critical question of how such performance strategies can best be directed toward engaging spectators / participants with the global question of environmental and climatic change. How can changes on the global/macro level be perceived and comprehended within the local/micro? Equally importantly, how can the local specifics of human habitation and environmental impact be used as a means by which to comprehend impacts on the global ecosystem? By addressing the immediate and intimate, can problems such as the greenhouse effect, that might too easily seem abstract and overwhelming, be 'brought home' in a manner that is both comprehensible and relevant? What kinds of efficacy or agency might become possible by using performance as a tool to help us reconceive of the environment as the very source of our human drama, rather than simply a 'backdrop' to it?

The network will seek to 'join the dots' of this debate by various means. On the one hand, we will examine existing forms of site-based practice which are already seeking to connect the micro and macro. Often such practitioners work in relative isolation, with little wider recognition of their work, so one task will be to identify and compare examples of 'best practice,' and to consider what general lessons might be extrapolated from these cases. On the other hand, the network will have an eye toward generating new, critically-informed practice. Although we do not expect to generate concrete performance outcomes during the 2010-11 timeframe of the grant, it is envisaged that lead participants will propose outline plans for projects in the preliminary stages of development. These outlines or scenarios will focus the investigations of the network around the theoretical, logistical and environmental issues that they raise. A crucial interpretive foil to these speculative explorations will be the actual locations of the network's three workshops, which have been chosen for their iconic status as locations that embody (and perform) contrasting types of environmental stress.

The network will draw together theatre/performance specialists with a variety of expertise and contrasting interpretive perspectives. The participants include: practitioner-researchers specialising in experimental, site-oriented performance practice; theoretically-oriented critics engaging with questions of ecology and performance on a more conceptual/global level; applied/educational theatre specialists whose expertise lies in the engagement of specific constituent audiences with particular issues germane to their well-being.

The network will also draw on expert input from other disciplinary areas, especially geography (thereby continuing the productive dialogues that developed at the AHRC's Living Landscapes conference in Aberystwyth, 2009), and from performance practitioners, activists and educationalists from beyond the university sector.

Who will benefit from this research?

- A select range of external stakeholders, including government agencies and NGOs, have been identified as potential beneficiaries of this network's investigations. These include the Environment Agency, the National Trust, the Forestry Commission and the Arts Councils of England and Scotland, each of which we will seek to engage in targeted ways as the network progresses. We anticipate that there may also be further, future relevance and impact for other such agencies with a stake in the role of the arts as a means of communicating and interpreting issues around environmental change, conservation and heritage sites.

- A widening range of professional theatre artists and performance makers are seeking to engage with the question of environmental change through their practices. Since such eco-sensitive performance practices are still emergent and developing, there will be particular interest from this sector in the outcomes of a focused network debate around the creative and critical questions relating to such work.

- The broader general public constitute the target audience for performance makers, and will potentially benefit from the network through its impact on public performance practice in sites of historical and environmental significance. A key concern of the network is the issue of how best to use performance as a tool to engage a diverse public, including children, with pressing issues of environmental change.

How will they benefit from this research?

It is appropriate to be cautious in the claims that can be made for a network discussion of limited time-frame. Nonetheless, the network's ambition is that the groups and agencies identified above will each benefit, in the short to medium term, from a focused attempt to pull together and further progress existing debates around the uses of site-based performance and strategies for raising awareness of specific environmental challenges.

Site-based performance is a highly appropriate tool for focusing public awareness on the immediate environment, and each of the stakeholders identified has shown an engagement with the possibilities of performance as an interpretive tool. By rapidly progressing debate on these potentialities, the network can contribute to the effectiveness of public agencies in communicating key messages through creative means. This could eventually contribute to a wider public awareness of sustainability issues and of the need to plan for - as well as mitigate the effects of - anticipated environmental change.


What will be done to ensure that they benefit from this research?

The network will seek to engage key beneficiaries in all stages of its workshop discussions, by inviting carefully targeted individuals to attend and contribute to these meetings (see Impact Plan). It is hoped that these dialogues will then result in emerging collaborations between researchers, artists and public agencies - particularly in the form of specific, site-based performance projects. The dissemination of the network's discussions through dedicated website, concluding symposium and themed journals will enable further beneficiaries to become aware of, and involved with, these developing concerns beyond the lifetime of the network itself.

The core network members collectively boast a huge range of diverse experience in developing public engagement with theatre/performance practice, as well as awareness of the uses which can be made of such practice. This expertise will be pooled and exploited through the network discussions, and through the ongoing collaborative projects that we hope it will stimulate.