{"id":756,"date":"2021-12-19T17:13:13","date_gmt":"2021-12-19T17:13:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/24\/?p=756"},"modified":"2023-03-15T11:10:16","modified_gmt":"2023-03-15T11:10:16","slug":"anthropocentrism-on-the-stage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/24\/anthropocentrism-on-the-stage\/","title":{"rendered":"Anthropocentrism on the Stage"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Milo Jur\u00e1ni<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abstract<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

This article offers an analysis of two theatre pieces that seek to extend our awareness of non-human forms of life. Estado Vegetal<\/font> from Chile steps into the world of plant life while Organism Democracy<\/font> is a German-language participatory guideline for performances seeking to create a multi-species society.

Keywords: <\/strong>Anthropocentrism, posthuman ethics, performance art<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Manuela Infante is a playwright, stage director and musician from Chile. Her writings and performances, such as Zoo<\/em>, Realismo<\/em>, Estado Vegetal <\/em>(Vegetative State<\/em>) and How to Turn to Stone<\/em>, reveal strategies for what can be called a non-anthropocentric type of theatre, a non-human-based theatre. In her play Estado Vegetal, <\/em>for example, created in 2017, Infante subverts the anthropocentric in two ways. She speculates on the mysteriousness of plants and imitates plant morphology in  the \u201cbody\u201d of the piece. That is, the notion of Plant itself becomes  the composition, the theme, the plot and the organisation of her play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Infante finds her inspiration in the works of the neurobiologist Stefano Mancuso and the philosopher Michael Marder. Mancuso examines plant intelligence, plant memory and collaboration among plants in different environments. Marder, on the other hand, in his publication Plant-thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life<\/em>,  argues for plants as living beings and confronts our own historical biases. His aim is to facilitate deeper encounters between humans and plants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Infante\u2019s vision of such encounters is found in Estado Vegetal. <\/em>It begins with an accident. Large branches of an old tree suddenly fall cutting power lines and plunging a street into darkness. A fireman, riding down the dark road on a motorbike, hits the tree at speed and emerges into what we would call a vegetative state, a non-human state. Through a series of monologues, we unravel exactly who or what was responsible for the accident. Infante is offering us  a mystery,  a space for contemplation about human\u2013plant relations. \u201cThe thing is, you don\u2019t see a tree move. . . . A tree moves so slowly that it seems still\u201d (2).<\/p>\n\n\n

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Estado Vegetal<\/em>. Teatro a Mil, 2017. Photo: Isabel Ortiz<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

In her play, the natural sciences and humanities blend into a new style, one she calls \u201cvegetable dramaturgy\u201d (14). The plot, the theme, the structure all imitate the logic of plant morphology. One can say that the whole storyline grows from a single seed with the root of the drama being the accident. Other elements branch out from this event with characters appearing \u201cmute alongside the plants that glacially shift into the foreground throughout the play\u201d (31).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Secondary stories reveal how plants grow into their own full lives. A woman speaks with her plants until they grow over her. The young man talks to the trees in his vegetative state and wishes to become more like them. Movement itself eventually stops. Only relationships between things exist. They are only able, as the philosopher Jane Bennet puts it, \u201cto listen and understand their testimonies, and propositions\u201d (110).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marder has argued that \u201cthe predominant use of the verb \u2018to vegetate\u2019 is negative, linked to the passivity or inactivity of animals or human beings\u201d (20). Infante deconstructs those biases. In the drama, plants commit the acts of rebellion to grow and gain space. Plants overwhelm houses. As an eyewitness tells an imaginary policeman: \u201c<\/em>You are interrogating the wrong people\u201d (14).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Plants, of course, use a biochemical language consisting of chemical reactions and transformations to communicate with things and to react to things. In the penultimate scene of Estado Vegetal,<\/em> the young man reveals his sympathy for such communication:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I want to use signifiers that taste of iodine. Signs that can only be deciphered with touch. Sentences that if exposed to the sun, refract into mineral spectrums of blues and greens. I want to deliver speeches of poison. Let us recite poems whose lines only rhyme their levels of acidity.<\/p>\n15\u201316<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Infante clearly crosses the boundaries between reality and fantasy. Her depictions are dramatically ambiguous. They don\u2019t explain what is real and what is not. This uncanny quality blurs the lucid image we hold of plants pushing the viewer off-balance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Girl:  Did you see anything?
The tree screams..<\/span>
Yes? Yes.
He speaks. He screams.<\/span>
How?
Like a stadium. Like this.
Haaaaa, haaaa.
The tree is not one, it is many. The tree speaks with all its voices.<\/span><\/p>\n5<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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