{"id":687,"date":"2022-12-17T21:46:55","date_gmt":"2022-12-17T21:46:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/26\/?p=687"},"modified":"2022-12-26T09:24:40","modified_gmt":"2022-12-26T09:24:40","slug":"theatre-ecology-and-the-secret-life-of-naturalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/26\/theatre-ecology-and-the-secret-life-of-naturalism\/","title":{"rendered":"Theatre, Ecology and the Secret Life of Naturalism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Andrew Burton<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Naturalistic theatre\u2014with its traditionally carbon-heavy sets, its domestic settings, its implicit anthropocentrism, its historic tendency to \u201cproffer a wholly social account of human life\u201d (Chaudhuri), its narrative tendency towards systems of closure and phallocentrism (Aston, Feminism and Theatre)\u2014might seem to have little to offer contemporary ecological playwriting. However, as this article seeks to demonstrate through a reading of plays by Lucy Kirkwood, Steve Waters, Annie Baker and Caryl Churchill, naturalism plays a vital\u2014albeit often hidden\u2014role in the dramaturgy of a number of contemporary plays which address our current ecological crisis.

Keywords<\/strong>: naturalism, dramaturgy, ecodramaturgy, hypernaturalism, ecology, theatre, Kirkwood, Waters, Baker, Churchill<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

In her seminal 1994 essay, \u201c\u2018There Must Be a Lot of Fish in That Lake\u2019: Toward an Ecological Theater,\u201d Una Chaudhuri noted a \u201cdisastrous coincidence, in the second half of the nineteenth century, between the age of ecology and the birth of naturalism\u201d (23). Chaudhuri\u2019s piercing analysis skewers what she sees as naturalism\u2019s inefficacy in tackling environmental issues:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

In the theater, naturalism (and then, more tendentiously, realism) hid its complicity with industrialization\u2019s animus against nature by proffering a wholly social account of human life. . . . Though its thematics kept in touch with nature through images of cherry orchards, wild ducks, and polluted baths, the ideological discourse of realism thrust the nonhuman world into the shadows.<\/p>\n24<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Since the publication of Chaudhuri\u2019s essay, the field of Performance and Ecology has mushroomed, and the vast majority of artistic work in this field is distinctly non-naturalistic. Wendy Arons\u2019s and Theresa J. May\u2019s eclectic Readings in Performance and Ecology<\/em> (2012), for example, brings together essays on a variety of innovative forms, from audio walks to somatic interventions. Lisa Woynarski\u2019s insightful Ecodramaturgies<\/em> (2020) looks at a range of formally experimental performance events which include \u201csite-based, participatory, immersive, installation, activism, film, live art and text-based plays,\u201d which she reads from \u201can intersectional ecological perspective\u201d (6). And Chaudhuri\u2019s own current work in this field continues to shed fresh critical light on formally experimental and non-naturalistic ways of exploring what she terms \u201cecospheric consciousness,\u201d a term she elaborates in the podcast Multispecies Worldbuilding Lab<\/em> (Chaudhuri and Zurkow) and in initiatives which include DearClimate.net and Climate Lens.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond Chaudhuri\u2019s observation of it \u201cproffering a wholly social account of human life,\u201d naturalism has long been perceived as an inherently conservative form. For theatre scholar Catherine Love, attempts to convey complex environmental issues \u201cwithin the interpersonal dramas with which audiences are more familiar . . . risks reinforcing the anthropocentrism that got us into this mess in the first place\u201d (226). For Woynarski,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

[e]cological issues are often presented in a homogenous way, based on a narrative of a singular problem in need of a \u201csolution\u201d . . . Cultural works, such as theatre and performance, can reproduce these problems by creating an image of ecological work as \u201cgreen and pleasant,\u201d middle class, white, singular and reductive.<\/p>\n34<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

She cites Steve Waters\u2019 The Contingency Plan<\/em>\u2014which I discuss in some detail in this article\u2014as an example of such work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Articulating the feminist critique of realism, Elaine Aston (Feminism and Theatre<\/em>) observes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

In narrative terms, dramatic and theatrical texts in the realist tradition operate systems of \u201cclosure.\u201d Their well-constructed or well-made forms follow a linear pattern from exposition to crisis and ultimate resolution. The subject of this narrative is male and its discourse is phallocentric. . . .<\/p>\n40<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This male focalisation of realist narrative puts it at odds with contemporary ecological thinking, such as the \u201ctentacular thinking\u201d proposed by Donna J.  Haraway (30\u201357) and the field of queer ecology which recognises that<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

life-forms constitute a mesh<\/em>, a nontotalizable, open-ended concatenation of interrelations that blur and confound boundaries at practically any level: between species, between the living and the nonliving, between organism and environment.<\/p>\nMorton 2013, 275\u201376<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Furthermore, naturalistic theatre productions are traditionally carbon-intensive, a factor May suggests should be taken into account when considering the impacts of ecodramaturgy as methodology, by \u201cexamining how theater as a material craft creates its own ecological footprint and works both to reduce waste and invent new approaches to material practice\u201d (May 4).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet despite this plethora of arguments as to why naturalism might be unsuitable as an ecodramaturgical form, in this article I attempt to demonstrate that, in fact, a range of naturalisms operate within contemporary ecological playwriting, fulfilling a vital\u2014albeit often hidden\u2014function. Progressing from overt to covert forms along what I call the naturalistic spectrum, these naturalisms function in surprising ways, sharing rhizomic connections which lead back to the mother tree of late nineteenth-century European Naturalism. At the most overt extreme of this naturalistic spectrum, I position Lucy Kirkwood\u2019s The Children<\/em> (2016) as\u2014with its closed time, closed space \u201cpressure cooker\u201d structure; its uninterrupted, \u201creal time\u201d successional temporality; and its focus on a moral issue that needs urgently to be resolved\u2014it exemplifies a familiar, conventional form of naturalism that adheres closely to \u00c9mile Zola\u2019s prescriptions of what naturalistic theatre should be, as outlined in his 1881 essay \u201cNaturalism on the Stage.\u201d I move on to examine Steve Waters\u2019 On the <\/em>Beach, the first in his diptych of plays The Contingency Plan<\/em>, originally produced at the Bush Theatre in London in 2009 and subsequently rewritten for production at the Sheffield\u2019s Crucible Theatre (U.K.) in autumn 2022. I explore how On the Beach<\/em> represents a strain of naturalist symbolism which admits the more-than-human world, aligns human and avian environmental vulnerabilities and reveals its deepest meanings through subtle striations of motif and symbol. Next, I investigate hypernaturalism\u2019s contribution to contemporary ecological playwriting with a reading of Annie Baker\u2019s The Antipodes<\/em> (2017). I suggest that hypernaturalism\u2019s excessive focus on the minutiae of the mimetic onstage world and its tendency to eschew narrative momentum in favour of mood, atmosphere and subtext helps thematically to foreground the hyperobject (Morton, Hyperobjects<\/em>) of global warming and ecological devastation which impacts the play\u2019s diegetic offstage spaces. Towards the covert extreme of the naturalistic spectrum, I consider Caryl Churchill\u2019s Escaped Alone<\/em> (2016) as an example of disrupted naturalism. I argue that Churchill\u2019s non-naturalistic dramaturgy\u2014including the introduction of monologues and the dismantling of naturalism\u2019s invisible fourth wall\u2014depends for its existence on the presence of a naturalistic edifice, the fracturing of which reveals the play\u2019s radical political intent. Before analysing the above texts, however, it will be worthwhile pausing to consider precisely what I mean by the term \u201cnaturalism\u201d and its derivatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I Talk About When I Talk about Naturalism<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

The terms \u201cnaturalism\u201d and \u201crealism\u201d are frequently confused within critical discourse. Christopher Innes sums up this widespread confusion with his observation that<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

[t]he terms \u201cNaturalism\u201d and \u201cRealism\u201d are particularly ambiguous. . . . [E]ach term tends to be used more imprecisely than other literary or artistic designations, and both have been defined in various competing, even mutually exclusive ways. . . . \u201cNaturalism\u201d and \u201cRealism\u201d are frequently interpreted in the broadest sense as synonyms. . . . <\/p>\n3\u20134<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Further, in his \u201cA Lecture on Realism,\u201d Raymond Williams points out that<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Naturalism is originally the conscious opposition to supernaturalism and to metaphysical accounts of human actions, with an attempt to describe human actions in exclusively human terms, with a more precise local emphasis.<\/p>\n65<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

He goes on to note that<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

the terms naturalism and realism . . .  are for a time interchangeable, even complicated by the fact that in a famous definition Strindberg called naturalism the method which sought to go below the surface and discover essential movements and conflicts, while realism, he said, was that which reproduced everything, even the speck of dust on the lens of the camera. As I suppose we all now know, the eventual conventional distinction was the same but with the terms the other way round.<\/p>\n65<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

What I talk about when I talk about naturalism stems from Williams\u2019 1977 essay \u201cSocial Environment and Theatrical Environment: The Case of English Naturalism.\u201d In it, he argues that there are three relevant senses of \u201cnaturalism\u201d and its derivatives in contemporary usage. The first, he says, \u201cindicates a method of \u201caccurate\u201d or \u201c\u2018lifelike\u2019 reproduction\u201d which \u201cbegan in English around 1850, mainly in relation to painting\u201d (203). The second sense, he notes, \u201cbegan in the late sixteenth century in a form of conscious opposition, or at least distinction, between revealed (divine) and observed (human) knowledge\u201d (203). The third sense \u201cindicates a movement in which the method of accurate production and the scientific philosophical position are organically and usually consciously fused<\/em>\u201d (203; my emphasis). It is in this organic fusion that I situate my meaning of \u201cnaturalism.\u201d Thus, for example, I view Lucy Kirkwood\u2019s The Children<\/em> as naturalistic because the characters and their domestic interior are reproduced in lifelike detail, whilst the conflicts and undercurrents operating in the play flow from human rather than supernatural, metaphysical or divine origins.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
The Children<\/em>\u00a0by Lucy Kirkwood. Photo: Johan Persson\/ArenaPAL<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
Lucy Kirkwood\u2019s The Children<\/em><\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

In The Children<\/em>, Kirkwood employs an overt form of naturalism that conforms closely to Zola\u2019s prescriptions for what naturalism should be. The action takes place within the single, interior setting of a cottage on the east coast of England in a summer evening. There are no intervals or act breaks to disrupt the narrative, which unfolds as one continuous, uninterrupted scene. Stage directions provide detailed information about hand props and furnishings and, intriguingly, we learn that  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

the room is at a slight tilt. The land beneath it is being eroded. But this should not be obvious to the naked eye, and only becomes apparent when, for example, something spherical is placed on the kitchen table. <\/p>\nKirkwood, The Children<\/span> 4<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The subtly skewed room acts as a constant visual reminder of the precariousness of the situation the characters find themselves in. Far from being a rural idyll, the cottage is, in fact, a sanctuary where Hazel and Robin, a married couple in their mid-sixties, have sought refuge following a recent devastating accident at a nearby nuclear power plant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thirty-five years earlier, Hazel and Robin worked as scientists at the nuclear plant and had been aware of design flaws in the plant\u2019s safety systems, which may have contributed to the accident. One of their former colleagues, Rose, pays them a surprise visit, the purpose of which is to try to persuade them to join her in a clean-up operation at the plant. As she explains:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

When I heard about the wave, and the meltdown, when I saw it on the news, and understood the full, the mess, the meaning of this, the thought came into my head immediately. . . . Right now I\u2019m looking for a team of twenty people over the age of sixty-five. To take over and let the young ones go, while they still have the chance, while there\u2019s still the possibility of, well, life.<\/p>\nKirkwood, The Children<\/span> 49<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The play\u2019s central narrative question is whether Rose will be able to persuade Hazel and Robin to join her in this clean-up operation. Kirkwood\u2019s decision to employ a closed time, closed space dramaturgy enables her to subject the characters to extreme emotional pressure, with no possibility of escape and no opportunity of deferring the moral decision. Safely ensconced behind naturalism\u2019s fourth wall, the audience is afforded a unique vantage point from which to witness the characters\u2019 reactions under pressure, as uncomfortable home truths are revealed and the characters\u2019 moral integrity comes under the spotlight. Naturalism\u2019s dramaturgy of confinement serves to raise the play\u2019s emotional stakes: what Rose offers Hazel and Robin, in effect, is the choice between living in denial and the possibility of moral redemption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Children<\/em>\u2019s detailed naturalistic interior helps Kirkwood\u2019s nuanced subtextual writing to provide the audience with subtle hints that Rose must have visited the cottage more recently than she professes. For example, we learn that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

ROSE sits in a battered armchair. <\/em>
Without looking she reaches under it and pulls out a footstool,<\/em>
rests her feet on it. <\/em>
HAZEL watches her<\/em>.<\/p>\nKirkwood, The Children<\/span> 7<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Then, a couple of pages later: \u201cROSE finds a glass in the first cupboard she opens.<\/em> \/ HAZEL watches her<\/em>\u201d (9).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We watch Hazel watching Rose, and by observing Rose\u2019s non-verbal mimetic actions, we begin to discern the scene\u2019s subtext; that Rose must have visited the cottage much more recently than she pretends. This, indeed, turns out to be true, as we later learn that Robin and Rose enjoyed romantic trysts in the cottage until relatively recently, unbeknownst to Hazel. The toxicity of this love triangle is a domestic mirror of the toxic environmental obscenity (Greek ob sken\u00e9<\/em>, \u201coffstage\u201d) of the nuclear radiation that lies beyond the cottage doors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While The Children<\/em>\u2019s mimetic onstage world is represented with detailed verisimilitude, its diegetic offstage world remains hazy. Describing the nuclear fallout whilst making tea, for example, Hazel tells Rose:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

When we went back to the house, after the wave, after the explosions, I felt like, it\u2019s stupid but, I felt like I could see<\/em> it the radiation hanging in the air a sort of a sort of filthy glitter suspended and I didn\u2019t like it. . . . <\/p>\nKirkwood, The Children<\/span> 12<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The more the play\u2019s interior world focuses on prosaic verisimilitude, the more its exterior world tends towards lyrical expressionism. Kirkwood acknowledged this tension in interview, explaining that: \u201cI think that exterior world is where I allowed the poetry to sit\u201d (Personal Interview). The heightened lyricism of The Children<\/em>\u2019s offstage world, further emphasised by the play\u2019s closing moments in which a church bell can be heard \u201c[a]s if from under the water\u201d (Kirkwood 79), reveals an uncanny vital materialism (Bennett) at play, which naturalism\u2019s conventions dictate must reside solely within the play\u2019s potent diegetic offstage imaginary.  <\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
Peter Forbes (Robin) in On the Beach<\/em>. Photo: Marc Brenner<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
Steve Waters\u2019 On the Beach<\/em><\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

A similar tension between the detailed, mimetic onstage world and the hazy, diegetic offstage world is also evident in Steve Waters\u2019 On the Beach<\/em>, the first play in the diptych The Contingency Plan<\/em>. On the Beach<\/em> is set \u201c[a]bove a salt-marsh, on Robin and Jenny\u2019s land in North West Norfolk\u201d (2), an ostensibly exterior but functionally interior location. This liminal space acts as an ecotone between the domestic (signified by Robin and Jenny\u2019s nearby house) and the wilderness (signified by the North Sea). Such ecotones are inherently sites of tension; as Morton reminds us, the \u201ctone\u201d of \u201cecotone\u201d is an aesthetic quality that denotes \u201cthe tension in a string or muscle. . . . It also, significantly, refers to a notion of place; hence \u2018ecotone,\u2019 a zone of ecological transition\u201d (Ecology Without Nature<\/em> 43).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The hazy offstage space of the ocean\u2014thematically linked to Will and his father Robin\u2019s glaciological work on ice melt rates in the Antarctic\u2014is conjured by characters\u2019 references to \u201cGovernor\u2019s Point\u201d (Waters 3), which Jenny dismissively refers to as \u201ca great big lump of sand in the North Sea\u201d (4). References to Governor\u2019s Point recur as a leitmotif throughout the play, soaking into the audience\u2019s imagination as a potent but unseen signifier of rising sea levels and reinforcing the play\u2019s overarching thematic focus. But Governor\u2019s Point itself lacks detail, visible even to the characters on stage only via powerful binoculars and located somewhere \u201cout Brancaster way\u201d (3). Despite this haziness, or possibly because of it, it retains a symbolic power in, indicatively, much the same way that Madame Ranyevskaia\u2019s beloved cherry orchard in Chekhov\u2019s eponymous 1904 play is referred to but never quite seen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The audience for Waters\u2019 On the Beach<\/em> sits behind naturalism\u2019s invisible fourth wall, a position which feels simultaneously domestic and vulnerable to the elements. The audience pries into the minutiae of Robin and Jenny\u2019s domestic life but is unable to intervene, even when witnessing physical violence\u2014as when \u201cWILL swipes out at ROBIN, who stumbles and falls\u201d<\/em> (Waters 57)\u2014or coercive controlling behaviour\u2014as when Robin destroys Jenny\u2019s mobile phone towards the end of the play. Indeed, econaturalism\u2019s invisible fourth wall could be interpreted as a metonymy for humanity\u2019s contemporary, uneasy position vis-\u00e0-vis global warming and ecological crisis; we sit on the metaphorical fence and watch from a privileged yet impotent position, seemingly unable to act while the tragic consequences of our anthropogenic carbon addiction play out with nightmarish inevitably.  While the sense of privileged impotence may be a legacy of naturalism\u2019s roots in nineteenth-century bourgeois drama, the sense of tragic inevitability relates to the narrative\u2019s temporal structure. In \u201cHamartia in the Anthropocene,\u201d Jennifer Wallace explains that<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

[c]arbon emissions, which cause global warming and climate change, follow a complex but inexorable schedule. . . . So extended is the plot of the climate\u2019s tragic narrative that we are now experiencing the temperature rise caused by carbon emissions released in the 1970s while simultaneously laying down the conditions for global warming forty years from now.<\/p>\n153\u201354<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

And indeed, Waters situates the point of moral failure in On the Beach<\/em> forty years previously (in the 1970s), when ex-glaciologist Robin failed to speak up about what he knew were inaccurate reports of Antarctic ice sheet melting rates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Waters plays a further deft dramaturgical trick by bringing the hazy diegetic wilderness and the detailed mimetic interior areas together in the form of a scale model that Robin has constructed to test his hypothesis about the catastrophic sea surge which he predicts is imminent. Robin\u2019s scale model, described as \u201ca relief map of the [nature] reserve within a tank with markings on the side\u201d <\/em>(Waters 43), is a totem of the wilderness contained within the domestic realm. He pours water into it, releases a scaled-down sluice gate and even agitates the water with his hands to demonstrate his predictions for the tidal surge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the beginning of the play, Will brings his girlfriend, Sarika, to Robin\u2019s and Jenny\u2019s off-grid home to meet his parents. She is a senior civil servant working on climate policy with Robin\u2019s ex-colleague Colin Jenks, who is the government\u2019s current Chief Scientific Advisor. We learn that in the late 1970s, when Jenks and Robin worked together measuring the rates of ice-melt in the Antarctic, Robin unearthed data that contradicted the \u201cstability hypothesis\u201d on which Jenks has continued to base his conservative scientific modelling. While Jenks gained an influential position as a senior civil servant, Robin moved to the off-grid coastal property in Northwest Norfolk in the late 1970s and has remained there ever since with Jenny, haunted by his moral failings. Sarika has persuaded Will, a glaciologist in his father\u2019s footsteps, to present his recently researched scientific evidence to the government, with the aim of injecting a sense of urgency into its climate policy planning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At first glance, On the Beach<\/em> might indeed appear to be merely proffering Chaudhuri\u2019s \u201cwholly social account of human life\u201d; yet from the play\u2019s outset, the more-than-human world makes its presence felt through the play\u2019s striations of symbol and motif. The first nonhuman animal we encounter is referred to in the play\u2019s opening moments. Robin looks through his \u201ctelescope of considerable power\u201d (Waters 3) and spots an unusual bird with distinctive white plumage which has landed on Governor\u2019s Point. Robin explains that the bird is a \u201cEurasian spoonbill no less\u201d which appears to be \u201cBack after a four-hundred-year break!\u201d (4) and wastes no time in linking the bird\u2019s appearance with changing weather patterns in southern Europe: \u201cCan\u2019t be easy nesting on the Med now, those dried out estuaries; needs eels, mud, brackish water\u201d (5). The Eurasian spoonbill, starkly incongruous in this North Sea location, is thus presented as a signifier of disrupted weather patterns, an augury of impending environmental devastation. This has the effect of linking human and avian vulnerabilities; just as the spoonbill has been displaced by changes to its natural habitat, so Robin and Jenny will go on to face fatal displacement by the devastating tidal surge Robin has been predicting. In this way, Waters signposts very early in the play that the needs of human and more-than-human animals are deeply intertwined and that birds are the vectors for these prescient messages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The symbolic role of birds within On the Beach<\/em> becomes even more apparent when we consider the significance of the characters\u2019 names. Three out of four of them carry the names of birds; Robin, Jenny (the traditional common name for a female wren) and Sarika, who explains \u201cWeirdly it [my name] means cuckoo in Hindi\u201d (Waters 34). Although the effects of this nomenclature operate at a largely unconscious level, it is striking that the robin and the (Jenny) wren are both resident native British birds, while the cuckoo is a summer migrant and a brood parasite to boot. And indeed, Sarika functions as a metaphorical cuckoo in Robin\u2019s nest; tempting away Robin\u2019s and Jenny\u2019s only offspring and \u201cmigrating\u201d south with him, to a cabinet room in Whitehall, which provides the claustrophobic setting for The Contingency Plan<\/em>\u2019s second play Resilience<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Robin\u2019s isolationism becomes increasingly clear as the play progresses, articulated in his somewhat unhinged speech towards the end of On the Beach<\/em>, when he has cut off his and Jenny\u2019s telephonic communication with the outside world, insisting \u201cBeing alone is actually our strength. If we can prevail alone you know we will be stronger\u201d (Waters 77). His outburst\u2014 reminiscent of Thomas Stockmann\u2019s isolationist speech towards the end of Ibsen\u2019s 1882 An Enemy of the People<\/em> (\u201cthe strongest man in the world is he who stands alone\u201d) (222)\u2014is directly linked to his mistrust of Sarika and the governmental scientific authority she represents, complicated by the fact that the department Sarika works for is headed by Robin\u2019s longstanding nemesis, Jenks. The xenophobia Robin displays towards Sarika and his chauvinistic isolationism are presented as a form of nativism linked to Robin\u2019s concerns for conservation in the Site of Special Scientific Interest, in which he and Jenny have built their off-grid Shangri La, or utopia.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
Annie Baker\u2019s The Antipodes. <\/em>Photo: Manuel Harlan for The Theatre Times<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
Annie Baker\u2019s The Antipodes<\/em><\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

The Antipodes<\/em> exhibits a form of hyper econaturalistic dramaturgy in which an excessive focus on the minutiae of the mimetic onstage world contextualises the horrors of global warming and ecological devastation unfolding in the play\u2019s offstage spaces. In addition to naturalism\u2019s constituent elements with which we are familiar\u2014”natural\u201d sounding dialogue; no monologues or direct audience address; the presence of an invisible fourth wall; a linear plot; a causal narrative pattern progressing sequentially from exposition to crisis then resolution; realistic props, costumes, stage furniture and sets; a narrative focus on a single moral problem that needs to be resolved\u2014I argue that hypernaturalistic plays such as The Antipodes <\/em>exhibit three other defining characteristics: they tend to eschew narrative momentum; they tend to focus on mood, atmosphere and subtext at the expense of plot; and they tend to deploy a dramaturgy of intense confinement. Each of these characteristics is used in The Antipodes<\/em> to foreground the play\u2019s overarching thematic concern with the contemporary ecological crisis. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Antipodes<\/em> is set in a windowless meeting room, reinforcing the characters\u2019 isolation from the outside world, a place that has become so hostile that near the end of the play, Sandy\u2014one of the main characters\u2014announces his intention to a move north to live in a cooler zone, effectively becoming a climate refugee. When the play opens, we see seven characters, ranging in age from their early twenties to their early fifties, sitting around a large conference table, taking part in a brainstorming session which is being led by the oldest character Sandy, who is aged \u201cfifty-five to seventy.\u201d<\/em> We meet the characters in medias res, sharing ideas about various sorts of monsters. It appears that the purpose of the brainstorming session is to generate stories which will contribute either to a pitch for funding a feature film, or perhaps an advertising campaign. The actual reason is never clarified. Sandy tells them that<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

the most important thing is that we all feel comfortable saying whatever weird shit comes into our minds so we don\u2019t feel like we have to self-censor and we can all just sit around telling stories. Because that\u2019s where the good stuff comes from.<\/p>\nBaker 15<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Sandy is central to how environmental fears are expressed in the play. Although he has been facilitating the brainstorming sessions, two thirds of the way through the play his personal assistant Sarah suddenly announces: \u201csorry but he\u2019s not gonna be able to come in today\u201d (Baker 61). In a series of brief vignettes, Sarah offers increasingly implausible reasons for his absence. But, suddenly, just as we are giving up hope of seeing him again, Sandy appears \u201cin the doorway, wearing sunglasses\u201d<\/em> (63). He is clearly in a hurry to leave\u2014 \u201cthings are pretty crazy so I gotta head home in a few \/ minutes\u201d (64) he explains\u2014but before doing so he delivers an impassioned speech which reiterates the importance of stories:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

We need stories. As a culture. It\u2019s what we live for. These are dark times. Stories are a little bit of light that we can cup in our palms like votive candles to show us the way out of the forest.<\/p>\n64<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

As the play premiered in New York in April 2017, in the early months of Trump\u2019s presidency, it is tempting to read the \u201cdark times\u201d primarily as a comment on the political, social and economic turmoil of his divisive tenure. But the \u201cdark times\u201d surely also refers to the climate crisis engulfing the play\u2019s Umwelt<\/em>; Sandy ends his speech a few lines later with a valedictory warning to the participants to \u201cStay safe in this crazy weather\u201d (64).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201ccrazy weather\u201d manifests itself several pages later when\u2014the participants having agreed to stay for the entire weekend in the meeting room to finish the project on time\u2014there is \u201cA single thunderclap\u201d <\/em>(Baker 72), which wakes Eleanor and causes the lights briefly to \u201cflicker off and then on again\u201d <\/em>(72). After the participants call Sarah, she appears \u201c[s]lightly less chipper than usual\u201d <\/em>(76) and breaks the news to them that \u201capparently one of his [Sandy\u2019s] houses got hit really hard by the storm\u201d (77). When participants Danny M1 (so named because there is another character, Danny M2, both of whose surnames begin with the letter M, but Danny M2 joined the group later), Eleanor and Josh express their surprise and sympathy, Sarah elaborates:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Yeah. Really scary. A lot of water damage and I think a trampoline blew into the ocean or something. It\u2019s lucky they were in their other house.<\/p>\n77<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The climate devastation which has occupied the play\u2019s subtext and background until this point now gate-crashes its thematic foreground. When he makes a surprise reappearance towards the end of the play, Sandy explains, \u201cOur beach house is fucked . . . It\u2019s been a wild ride\u201d (81).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is no coincidence that Sandy, the powerful and mercurial facilitator of the brainstorming sessions in The Antipodes<\/em>, carries the name of the post-tropical cyclone that so devastated New York in 2012, five years before The Antipodes<\/em> received its premiere in that city. Like his superstorm namesake, Sandy in the play leaves a trail of destruction in his wake, disrupting the lives of the other characters who will be forced to find alternative employment after he decides to put their project on \u201cpermanent hiatus.\u201d While the unpredictable Sandy is free to come and go as he pleases, the play\u2019s hypernaturalistic dramaturgy of intense confinement demands that the participants remain within the oppressive windowless meeting room, brainstorming monster narratives with no clear purpose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Human meddling is portrayed within the play as being responsible for a variety of environmental disasters. This is perhaps most strikingly illustrated when, during one of the play\u2019s many moments of narrative suspension, notetaker Brian asks his fellow participants: \u201cGuess how old the world\u2019s oldest animal is[?]\u201d (Baker 33). Several answers are given, all of them underestimates. Then, Brian, who has looked up the answer on his laptop, explains: \u201cThe oldest animal in the world is Ming the Clam. She\u2019s Five Hundred and Seven\u201d (33). The participants express surprise and are curious to know more, but the mood darkens when Brian reads the rest of the article: \u201cShe\u2019s an Icelandic ocean . . . Qua Hog. . . . They counted the rings on her shell. Like a tree I guess . . . But . . . oh shit. They killed her . . . \u2018Ming was unfortunately killed by researchers when they opened her shell to figure out how old she was\u2019\u201d (33\u20134). This prompts Josh to observe: \u201cThat is like such an example of how screwed up everything is right now. That is like . . . perfect\u201d (34). The play\u2019s eschewal of narrative momentum and its focus on mood and atmosphere enable exchanges such as this to resonate, foregrounding the play\u2019s overarching thematic concerns with the anthropogenic destruction of the natural world.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
Escaped Alone<\/em>\u00a0by Caryl Churchill. Photo: Johan Persson\/ArenaPAL<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
Caryl Churchill\u2019s Escaped Alone<\/em><\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

In her insightful revision of the feminist critique of realism, Aston asked whether there could still be \u201croom for realism on the English stage\u201d after Sarah Kane\u2019s Blasted<\/em> (1995), which \u201cradically ruptured\u201d (21) the social realist tradition (\u201cRoom for Realism?\u201d). In our current state of global climate and ecological crises, perhaps Aston\u2019s question might usefully be reframed: could there still be a niche for naturalism within contemporary ecological playwriting after Caryl Churchill\u2019s Escaped Alone<\/em> (2016)?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Churchill\u2019s play, three female characters, Sally, Vi and Lena, \u201call at least seventy\u201d (4), meet in Sally\u2019s backyard and indulge in ostensibly superficial conversation. They are joined by another septuagenarian, Mrs Jarrett, who\u2014unlike the others\u2014periodically steps outside the backyard to utter apocalyptic visions of an ecologically devasted world and, in doing so, ruptures the play\u2019s naturalistic fa\u00e7ade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Referring to the original 2016 Royal Court production, Aston (Restaging Feminisms<\/em>) explains:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

There are eight garden scenes each punctuated by a monologue, the latter voiced . . . from a darkened stage surrounded by dual, rectangular frames of glowing electric light.The design of the brightly lit garden, complete with fence, wooden shed, lawn, foliage and an assortment of chairs, provides a stark contrast to the void from which Mrs J speaks.  The former setting is estranged by its juxtaposition with the latter: a technique of scenic dislocation that disturbs the familiarity of the garden.<\/p>\n101<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The estrangement Aston observes aligns with Bertolt Brecht\u2019s Verfremdungseffekt<\/em>,which is inherently political in intent; rather than passively suspending its disbelief, the audience is invited to engage intellectually and critically with the play\u2019s exploration of humanity\u2019s dysfunctional relationship with the nonhuman world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a similar way to how the Leeds hotel bedroom in which Blasted<\/em> opens is suddenly transformed into a battlefield of unspeakable human suffering, so the suburban familiarity of \u201cSally\u2019s backyard\u201d on \u201cA number of [summer] afternoons\u201d is problematised by Mrs Jarrett\u2019s jarring monologues. These utterances represent a form of monologic dislocation, echoing the play\u2019s scenic dislocation; not only do they undermine the naturalistic edifice of the play, but they reintroduce aspects of supernaturalism and metaphysics which, Raymond Williams reminds us, naturalism originally opposed. Furthermore, their starkly apocalyptic tone puts them at odds with the social niceties of the conventional naturalistic dialogue with which the play opens. Mrs J, for example, says:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Rats were eaten by those who still had digestive systems, and mushrooms were traded for urine. Babies were born and quickly became blind. Some groups lost their sexuality while others developed a new morality of constant fucking with any proximate body . . . Songs were sung until dry throats caused the end of speech.<\/p>\nChurchill 8<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

As Grochala observes in The Contemporary Political Play: Rethinking Dramaturgical Structure<\/em> (2017): \u201cIf a text articulates a politics through its representation of structures, then a play can be thought of as a particularly powerful agent for change\u201d (58). She goes on to explain that<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

[p]lays can be seen as carrying reactionary political messages within their form when they reproduce, rather than, reimagine, social structures through their dramaturgical structures.<\/p>\n69<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Churchill\u2019s decision to reimagine social structures by rupturing the play\u2019s naturalistic form in this way\u2014by introducing monologues; by offering the possibility of direct audience address; by challenging the inviolability of naturalism\u2019s invisible fourth wall; and by dispensing with conversational etiquette\u2014represents an urgent and political call for change, for a rejection of human exceptionalism in favour of a restored relationship between humans and nonhumans. Time and again, characters express excessive fear of wild or feral animals. Sally, for example, says:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

pigeons are like rats . . . and pigeons like rats leads to cats rats cats rats are filthy plague everywhere, only how many feet from a rat, and pigeons are filthy, rats are filthy, cats are filthy their bites are poison they bite you and the bite festers, but that\u2019s not it that\u2019s not it I know that\u2019s just an excuse to give a reason I know I\u2019ve no reason I know it\u2019s just cats cats themselves are the horror because they\u2019re cats and I have to keep them out. . . .<\/p>\n24\u20135<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The characters\u2019 lives are also being devastated by the climate crisis raging outside their illusory suburban sanctuary. Lena, for example, explains that \u201cI sat on the bed this morning and didn\u2019t stand up till lunchtime. The air was too thick. It\u2019s hard to move, it\u2019s hard to see why you\u2019d move\u201d (Churchill 32). By the time we reach the end of the play, conventional naturalistic dialogue has been all but abandoned, replaced by disjointed, apocalyptic utterances in which the shadow of ecological crisis looms large. Lena, for example, says, \u201c[t]he sun\u2019s gone\u201d (42), while Sally asks, \u201cwhy did the chicken not cross the road?\u201d (42), to which Vi mordantly replies, \u201ca car was coming\u201d (42). Churchill\u2019s decision to deploy this chicken joke is far from coincidental; it subtly evokes the palpable sense of menace which permeates the subtext of Pinter\u2019s The Birthday Party<\/em> (1958).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Pinter\u2019s play, Stanley has sought refuge in a seaside boarding house, but henchmen McCann and Goldberg arrive on the scene and play a disturbing game of verbal dominance with him, culminating in physical violence. Just before the violence erupts, Goldberg poses the question: \u201cWhy did the chicken cross the road?\u201d (51), which Stanley finds himself incapable of answering. Sally\u2019s inversion of this question reinforces the sense that the natural world itself is out of kilter, human and nonhuman worlds having become so fundamentally misaligned that chickens no longer obligingly cross roads. Towards the end of Escaped Alone<\/em>, Mrs J repeats\u2014no fewer than twenty-five times\u2014the phrase \u201cterrible rage,\u201d and as with Extinction Rebellion\u2019s customary valediction \u201cwith love and rage,\u201d it is here that the play\u2019s most urgent and resonant call for political change resides. Performative eco activism\u2014as demonstrated, for example, in Extinction Rebellion\u2019s 2019 campaign \u201cThe Sea is Rising and so are We\u201d\u2014has the ability to catalyse behavioural change through the presence of live spectators bearing witness to ecological lament. Escaped Alone<\/em> also bears witness to ecological lament and, through its disruption of naturalistic form, directly challenges the audience to effect change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusions<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Naturalism\u2014on account of its perceived conservatism, phallocentrism, anthropocentrism and its traditionally carbon-intensive material production\u2014would appear to have little to offer playwrights whose work addresses our current ecological crisis. However, this article has argued that naturalism performs a vital, albeit often concealed, function within contemporary ecodramaturgy. Conceptualising theatrical naturalism, after Williams (\u201cSocial Environment and Theatrical Environment: The Case of English Naturalism\u201d) as the \u201corganic fusion\u201d of lifelike reproduction with a human\u2014as opposed to supernatural or divine\u2014account of character behaviour, I propose that a naturalistic spectrum exists within contemporary ecological playwriting. At one extreme of this spectrum, I suggest that there is a form of overt, immediately recognisable naturalism, exemplified by Lucy Kirkwood\u2019s The Children<\/em>, in which a closed time, closed space \u201cpressure cooker\u201d dramaturgy presents the characters with an emotional imperative to make a moral decision with the clock ticking and with no possibility of deferring the decision. Further along the spectrum, I have shown that there is a form of naturalist symbolism which admits the more-than-human world and decentres naturalism\u2019s traditional anthropocentric focus by aligning human and nonhuman environmental vulnerability, as exemplified by Steve Waters\u2019 On the Beach<\/em>, the first play in his diptych The Contingency Plan<\/em>. The play uses symbolism to show birds both as harbingers of climate crisis and as signifiers of conservation nativism. Progressing along the naturalistic spectrum, I have shown how Annie Baker\u2019s play The Antipodes<\/em> conjures the obscenity of climate devastation taking place in its offstage world through exploiting hypernaturalism\u2019s tendency to create detailed mimetic onstage worlds and by eschewing narrative momentum in favour of a focus on mood, atmosphere and subtext. Towards the most covert extreme of the naturalistic spectrum, I have argued that Caryl Churchill\u2019s formally experimental play Escaped Alone <\/em>reimagines social structures in an ecologically damaged world by dismantling naturalistic conventions. By challenging the inviolability of naturalism\u2019s invisible fourth wall and by deploying monologic dislocation alongside what Aston (Restaging Feminisms<\/em>) calls \u201cscenic dislocation,\u201d the play articulates its radical political intent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n
Bibliography<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Arons, Wendy, and Theresa J. May. Readings in Performance and Ecology<\/em>. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aston, Elaine. An Introduction to Feminism and Theatre<\/em>. Routledge, 1995.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—. \u201cRoom for Realism?\u201d Twenty-First Century Drama<\/em>, edited by Si\u00e2n Adiseshiah and Louise LePage, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp.17\u201335.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—. Restaging Feminisms<\/em>. Palgrave Pivot, 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Baker, Annie. The Antipodes<\/em>. Nick Hern Books, 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter<\/em>. Duke UP, 2010.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chaudhuri, Una. \u201c\u2018There Must Be a Lot of Fish in That Lake.\u2019 Toward an Ecological Theater.\u201d Theater<\/em>, vol. 25, no. 1, 1994, pp. 23\u201331.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chaudhuri, Una, and Marina Zurkow. \u201cDear Climate<\/a>.\u201d Multispecies Worldbuilding Lab<\/em>, episode 10, 2 Sept. 2021. Accessed 6 Sept. 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chekhov, Anton. The Seagull<\/em> in Anton Chekhov Plays<\/em>. Translated by Elisaveta Fen, Penguin Books, 1959.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Churchill, Caryl. Escaped Alone<\/em>. Nick Hern Books, 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Extinction Rebellion. \u201cThe Sea Is Rising and so Are We<\/a>.\u201d YouTube, uploaded by Extinction Rebellion UK, 18 Aug. 2019. Accessed 9 Sept. 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Haraway, Donna J. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene<\/em>.  Duke UP, 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

http:\/\/www.dearclimate.net\/<\/a>. Accessed 6 September 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/howlround.com\/climate-lens<\/a>. Accessed 6 September 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ibsen, Henrik. An Enemy of the People<\/em>. Plays: Two.<\/em> Methuen World Classics, translated by Michael Meyer, Eyre Methuen, 1980.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Innes, Christopher. A Sourcebook on Naturalist Theatre<\/em>. Routledge, 2000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kane, Sarah. Blasted<\/em>. Methuen, 2001.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kirkwood, Lucy. Personal interview. 24 May 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—. The Children<\/em>. Nick Hern Books, 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Love, Catherine. \u201cFrom Facts to Feelings: The Development of Katie Mitchell\u2019s Ecodramaturgy.\u201d Contemporary Theatre Review<\/em>, vol. 30, no. 2, May 2020, pp. 226\u201335.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

May, Theresa J. Earth Matters on Stage<\/em>. Routledge, 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Morton, Timothy. Ecology Without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics<\/em>. Harvard UP, 2007.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—. \u201cGuest Column: Queer Ecology.\u201d  PMLA<\/em>, vol. 125, no. 2, 2010, pp. 273\u201382.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—. Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World<\/em>. U of Minnesota P, 2013.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pinter, Harold. The Birthday Party<\/em>. Methuen, 1960.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wallace, Jennifer. \u201cHamartia in the Anthropocene.\u201d Tragedy Since 9\/11: Reading a World out of Joint<\/em>.  Bloomsbury, 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Waters, Steve. The Contingency Plan. <\/em>Nick Hern Books, 2009.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Williams, Raymond. \u201cA Lecture on Realism.\u201d Screen<\/em>, vol. 18, no. 1, 1977, pp. 61\u201374.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—. Social Environment and Theatrical Environment: The Case of English Naturalism.\u201d  English Drama: Forms and Developmen, <\/em>edited by Marie Axton and Raymond Williams. Cambridge UP, 1977, pp. 203-23.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Woynarski, Lisa. Ecodramaturgies: Theatre, Performance and Climate Change<\/em>. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zola, \u00c9mile.  \u201cNaturalism on the Stage.\u201d Playwrights on Playwriting<\/em>, translated by Samuel Draper, edited by Toby Cole, Hill and Wang, 1961. <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

*<\/a>Andrew Burton<\/strong> is a fixed-term teacher in the Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies at the University of Essex UK, where he is also a PhD candidate. His thesis re-evaluates the role and potential of naturalism within contemporary ecological playwriting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Copyright \u00a9<\/strong> 2022 Andrew Burton
Critical Stages\/Sc\u00e8nes critiques<\/em> e-ISSN:2409-7411<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Creative<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

This work is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution International License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1029,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-special-topic"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/26\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/27\/2022\/12\/Escaped-Alone-by-Caryl-Churchill-Photo-credit-Johan-Persson-ArenaPal.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=687"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1032,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687\/revisions\/1032"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}