Staging Nature: Ecology, Performance, and Environments. Barton, D. L. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, 2012. abstract bibtex This dissertation models ecocritical approaches to theater and performance theory. It examines the trope of "nature" and the ways in which nature is produced and performed, both in the heightened aesthetic performances of the theater and in quotidian performances in public space. Critical performance theorists in recent decades like Baz Kershaw, Una Chaudhuri, Donna Haraway, and Nick Ridout among others describe a nature that is not found, but rather produced by ideological forces always already at work in constructing epistemologies of the non-human. Examining how the various case studies frame and "stage" natural objects, how they situate the viewer as audience, use narrative to represent the lives of non-human others, and encourage or discourage interactive co-performatives across the borders between nature and culture, I seek a better understanding of how binaries in common circulation like "nature" and "culture," "human" and "animal," "domestic" and "wild" are constructed, and what material consequences ensue from such meaning-making practices. The dissertation reads the semiotics of performances about the non-human against the material stakes for the bodies and ecologies involved, and demonstrates how discursive power vis-Ã -vis the non-human is aligned with power over their continued survival. In conclusion, I suggest ethical approaches to the non-human which parallel Bhabha's conclusions with regard to the cultural other: namely, that an emphasis on embodied, phenomenological, enunciatory, and co-performative encounter rather than on binary semiotic constructions and the performance scripts they entail (e.g. menageries, colonialisms, or nature as object of cultural consumption), are hallmarks of more ethical and sustainable ways of relating to the "natural" world. My work examines diverse performances of nature and the non-human: theatrical performances about nature, performances of nature in zoos, and performances of human/non-human interactions in public parks, to name a few. It opens with a nineteenth-century case study about the first giraffe at the Vienna Zoo and the 1828 play the giraffe inspired. It then proceeds through several examples of contemporary performances of and encounters with the non-human world. The dissertation then ends as it began, with a dramatic text, this time representing the author's own attempt as a playwright to stage a critical encounter with nature and the non-human through the art of theatrical performance.
@article{barton_staging_2012,
title = {Staging {Nature}: {Ecology}, {Performance}, and {Environments}},
issn = {9781267619013},
abstract = {This dissertation models ecocritical approaches to theater and performance theory. It examines the trope of "nature" and the ways in which nature is produced and performed, both in the heightened aesthetic performances of the theater and in quotidian performances in public space. Critical performance theorists in recent decades like Baz Kershaw, Una Chaudhuri, Donna Haraway, and Nick Ridout among others describe a nature that is not found, but rather produced by ideological forces always already at work in constructing epistemologies of the non-human. Examining how the various case studies frame and "stage" natural objects, how they situate the viewer as audience, use narrative to represent the lives of non-human others, and encourage or discourage interactive co-performatives across the borders between nature and culture, I seek a better understanding of how binaries in common circulation like "nature" and "culture," "human" and "animal," "domestic" and "wild" are constructed, and what material consequences ensue from such meaning-making practices. The dissertation reads the semiotics of performances about the non-human against the material stakes for the bodies and ecologies involved, and demonstrates how discursive power vis-Ã -vis the non-human is aligned with power over their continued survival. In conclusion, I suggest ethical approaches to the non-human which parallel Bhabha's conclusions with regard to the cultural other: namely, that an emphasis on embodied, phenomenological, enunciatory, and co-performative encounter rather than on binary semiotic constructions and the performance scripts they entail (e.g. menageries, colonialisms, or nature as object of cultural consumption), are hallmarks of more ethical and sustainable ways of relating to the "natural" world. My work examines diverse performances of nature and the non-human: theatrical performances about nature, performances of nature in zoos, and performances of human/non-human interactions in public parks, to name a few. It opens with a nineteenth-century case study about the first giraffe at the Vienna Zoo and the 1828 play the giraffe inspired. It then proceeds through several examples of contemporary performances of and encounters with the non-human world. The dissertation then ends as it began, with a dramatic text, this time representing the author's own attempt as a playwright to stage a critical encounter with nature and the non-human through the art of theatrical performance.},
journal = {ProQuest Dissertations and Theses},
author = {Barton, Derek Lee},
year = {2012},
keywords = {Animals, Biological sciences, Communication and the arts, Ecology, Nature, Performance, Performing Arts, Semiotics, Theater, Theater History, Theater Studies, Zoos},
}
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Examining how the various case studies frame and \"stage\" natural objects, how they situate the viewer as audience, use narrative to represent the lives of non-human others, and encourage or discourage interactive co-performatives across the borders between nature and culture, I seek a better understanding of how binaries in common circulation like \"nature\" and \"culture,\" \"human\" and \"animal,\" \"domestic\" and \"wild\" are constructed, and what material consequences ensue from such meaning-making practices. The dissertation reads the semiotics of performances about the non-human against the material stakes for the bodies and ecologies involved, and demonstrates how discursive power vis-Ã -vis the non-human is aligned with power over their continued survival. In conclusion, I suggest ethical approaches to the non-human which parallel Bhabha's conclusions with regard to the cultural other: namely, that an emphasis on embodied, phenomenological, enunciatory, and co-performative encounter rather than on binary semiotic constructions and the performance scripts they entail (e.g. menageries, colonialisms, or nature as object of cultural consumption), are hallmarks of more ethical and sustainable ways of relating to the \"natural\" world. My work examines diverse performances of nature and the non-human: theatrical performances about nature, performances of nature in zoos, and performances of human/non-human interactions in public parks, to name a few. It opens with a nineteenth-century case study about the first giraffe at the Vienna Zoo and the 1828 play the giraffe inspired. It then proceeds through several examples of contemporary performances of and encounters with the non-human world. 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