{"id":969,"date":"2022-12-06T18:13:26","date_gmt":"2022-12-06T18:13:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/26\/?p=969"},"modified":"2022-12-20T21:49:50","modified_gmt":"2022-12-20T21:49:50","slug":"ecology-and-the-ethical-milieu-a-levinasian-ecological-reading-of-joe-whites-mayfly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/26\/ecology-and-the-ethical-milieu-a-levinasian-ecological-reading-of-joe-whites-mayfly\/","title":{"rendered":"Ecology and the Ethical Milieu<\/em>: A Levinasian Ecological Reading of Joe White\u2019s Mayfly<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Martin Riedelsheimer<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Combining ecological and ethical perspectives, this article first traces an argument concerning the co-dependency of ethics and ecology and then transfers it to the context of the stage in a reading of Joe White\u2019s 2018 debut play Mayfly<\/font>. While Emmanuel Levinas\u2019s ethics is clearly humanist and hence almost by necessity anthropocentric, his existential philosophy opens up an avenue to engage with ecology by redirecting the moment of transcendence that in Levinas\u2019s thought is key to any ethical encounter towards the milieu<\/font>, or medium, in which such encounters take place. Its mediating role in ethical encounters makes the preservation of the milieu<\/font>, which appears as the concretised environment, or stage, of the encounter, an ethical responsibility that is at the same time an ecological one. The practical implications of this theoretical discussion can be seen in Mayfly<\/font>. Although \u201cthe environment\u201d is not the centrepiece of the play\u2019s action, the play and its production at the Orange Tree Theatre are full of moments that foreground the background against which interactions take place. In this way, the play\u2019s milieu<\/font> becomes a disruptive force that forms the basis for a new-found ethical togetherness among the characters and by implication ecological preservation becomes an ethical imperative.

Keywords<\/strong>: Emmanuel Levinas, Joe White, Mayfly<\/font>, ecology, ethics, milieu<\/font><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recent years have seen theatre and drama studies take an increased interest not just in ecology (see, for example, Angelaki; Lavery; May; Woynarski; Middeke and Riedelsheimer) but also in ethical questions, frequently with a focus on Levinasian ethics (see, for example, Grehan; Aragay and Monforte; Aragay and Middeke). This article hopes to combine these two critically productive angles in an eco-ethical reading of Joe White\u2019s 2018 play Mayfly<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Emmanuel Levinas\u2019s ethics and ecology are not obviously compatible, Dave Boothroyd has argued that ecology may be reconciled with Levinas\u2019s ethics via his existential philosophy: the transcendent moment that demands an ethical response would then be directed \u201cdownward\u201d to the materiality of existence itself, to the milieu <\/em>in which ethical encounters take place and on which they are hence to some extent dependent. Inevitably, and somewhat paradoxically, this approach entails a foregrounding of the background, or of the mediation of these encounters, whilst maintaining its status as background.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of this can be traced in Mayfly<\/em>. White\u2019s play is not overtly concerned with ecology, but rather with the effects of bereavement on its four characters, who all struggle with the loss of a beloved person. However, despite this focus, Mayfly<\/em> is shot through with moments during which the natural surroundings of the characters\u2019 interactions are foregrounded. The play places this natural environment, which is then also an ethical environment, centre stage through its use of recurring motives that are interwoven with the play\u2019s setting and realised, for example, in ambient sound effects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Mayfly<\/em>, nature itself becomes a force that disrupts the characters\u2019 grief, which seems to be an all-encompassing totality that dominates their lives. It is their concrete surroundings that bring the mourning characters together and energise them, providing the basis for a new-found togetherness. As embodied by the play\u2019s eponymous mayflies, although this environment can then unfold a regenerative power, it is also extremely fragile. From this follows the ethical imperative of preserving the milieu<\/em>, because it is the \u201cstage\u201d on which human encounters take place and hence a necessary precondition for any ethical action to become concrete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ecological Thinking and Levinasian Ethics<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Although Emmanuel Levinas is not known as a particularly \u201cgreen\u201d philosopher, his ethics seems in some sense predestined for ecological thinking: just like our relation with nature is not one built on a contract or on a form of rational reciprocity, so the ethical relation in Levinas is always an asymmetrical, non-reciprocal relation with an unknowable Other (see, for example, \u201cTime and the Other\u201d 48 and Ethics and Infinity<\/em> 98). However, any attempt at \u201cecologising\u201d Levinas comes with two major problems: first, it would appear that there is no place for non-human nature in Levinas\u2019s ethics, which is why it has been called \u201cunabashedly anthropocentric\u201d (Atterton, \u201cLevinas\u2019s Humanism\u201d 709)\u2014so, to a certain extent, any such approach is reading Levinas against Levinas. Second, this leads to a question about transcendence, a notion crucial to Levinas: can the ethical transcendence of infinity, which exceeds ontological categories and so breaks up totality, be found anywhere else but in what Levinas terms the epiphany of the face of the Other? In other words, is it possible that \u201cresponsibility ultimately involves not only that singular face lying before me but also the living world lying beyond that face\u201d (Edelglass, Hatley and Diehm 5)?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scholarly discussion of Levinas and ecology has so far mostly pursued two approaches to \u201cecologising\u201d Levinasian thought, both of which seem to bear on theatre and drama\u2019s own ecologies: first, a number of scholars have sought to extend to the human relationship with non-human nature the ethical responsibility that for Levinas arises from the encounter with the face of another human being (see, for example, Diehm\u2019s \u201cGaia\u201d and \u201cAlterity\u201d; Martin; and, for a discussion of the Levinasian \u201cface\u201d in animals, Atterton\u2019s \u201cFacing Animals\u201d and \u201cLevinas\u2019s Humanism\u201d). Broadly speaking, this is an approach that contests and expands Levinas\u2019s somewhat narrowly human-centred ethics to find in non-human nature (traces of) the transcendence of infinite alterity that for Levinas imposes responsibility on us.[1]<\/sup><\/a> Such a move is in line with thinking about our relationship with the non-human world as inscrutably complex. Timothy Morton, for example, has described the interconnection of all life forms and non-life forms (such as stones) on Earth as \u201cthe mesh,\u201d a form of entanglement that is \u201cinfinite and beyond concept\u2014unthinkable as such\u201d (\u201cThe Mesh\u201d 24). The mesh, then, would seem to possess alterity that inherently resists ontological categories\u2014just like the alterity of the human Other in the ethical relation.[2]<\/sup><\/a> This would suggest that it is possible to go beyond Levinas and recognise our responsibility towards the mesh. As, inevitably, theatrical performance takes place in a non-human, \u201cnatural\u201d environment, it creates a space in which encounters with\/in the mesh are ubiquitous\u2014and in which our ethical obligations towards the mesh are hence staged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The focus of this article, however, will be on the second way in which Levinas\u2019s philosophy and ecology may coalesce. Boothroyd has suggested that rather than seeking the infinite transcendence of the face in nature, turning towards Levinas\u2019s thought on the materiality of existence itself in what can be described as \u201ctransde<\/em>scendence\u201d may be a more fruitful way of opening up Levinas for ecology. This is in line with a central strand in Levinas\u2019s thought that is directed against (Heidegger\u2019s) ontology, which for Levinas has a totalitarian impetus. Rather than ontology\u2019s \u201cimpersonal\u201d Being, Levinas places the existent[3]<\/sup><\/a> at the centre of his philosophy (Levinas, Totality and Infinity<\/em> 45; see Boothroyd 776). For this reason, he also rejects any \u201contology of nature\u201d in which nature becomes a \u201cfaceless generous mother\u201d (Totality and Infinity<\/em> 47) synonymous with Being.[4]<\/sup><\/a> The transdescending<\/em> perspective in Levinas\u2019s work, as suggested by Boothroyd, is directed against this faceless ontology and instead aims at \u201cthe materiality of the sensate life of the existent\u201d (Boothroyd 775) and at disrupting totality by reducing it to the fundamentals of existing. It seeks transcendence not in the infinite height of the face of the human Other, but in the materiality of existents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Levinas\u2019s phenomenological account, existents form into subjects out of a neutral \u201cbackground noise,\u201d which he calls the il y a<\/em>. The il y a<\/em> is an \u201canonymous rumbling of existence\u201d (Critchley 20) that Levinas describes as \u201catmosphere of presence, . . . the impersonal, non-substantive event of the night and the there is<\/em>,\u201d which \u201cis like a density of the void, like a murmur of silence\u201d (Existence and Existents<\/em> 63\u201364). Out of this background murmur, existents materialize in a process called individuation or separation. Indeed, Boothroyd sees this as \u201cthe existential condition necessary for the \u2018earthly\u2019 dimension of the face-to-face\u201d (776) and hence for the ethical relation to the human Other. In other words, any such relation must take place in the concreteness of existents\u2014both of the human existents and of their surroundings, all of which have separated from the il y a<\/em> prior to the face-to-face encounter. It is in this context that non-human nature has its place in Levinas\u2019s philosophy of existence: it is \u201cany localized ecology of such existents, which together constitute a milieu<\/em>\u201d (Boothroyd 777). Nature, in this sense, is then a precarious, impermanent and momentary constellation of interrelated existents.[5]<\/sup><\/a> This means that, crucially, it does not exist as a totality anterior to existents but coincides with the individuation of the existent, which must have implications for the role of nature in the ethical relation: as Simon Critchley stresses, for Levinas, \u201cethics is lived in the sensibility of an embodied exposure to the other\u201d (21). It is always the encounter with a concrete, flesh-and-blood Other. As a consequence, it can never take place in the space of abstraction\u2014it can only exist in a concrete, material environment, in the immanence of the milieu <\/em>that resists totality, in \u201cnature.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As such, a subject\u2019s natural surroundings are the \u201cframework\u201d without which ethics is not possible. Indeed, this milieu <\/em>really is the \u201cmedium\u201d (Levinas, Totality and Infinity<\/em> 130) in which the ethical relation takes place and, therefore, the \u201cprimal scene of totality\u2019s breach\u201d (Boothroyd 783). This means that there is a close connection between the natural environment in which we interact and ethics. As the medium of the ethical encounter, it is \u201cirreducible to . . . operational references\u201d (Sallis 157), but, rather, writes Levinas, \u201ca common fund or terrain, essentially non-possessable, \u2018nobody\u2019s\u2019: earth, sea, light, city,\u201d or, as he goes on to call it, \u201cthe elemental\u201d (Totality and Infinity<\/em> 131). We experience the elemental with the immediacy of \u201cmediation itself<\/em>\u201d (Boothroyd 783). It is the terrain in which individuation and any ethical encounter come to pass: as it were, the elemental is the theatre in which ethics plays out\u2014like the theatre, the milieu <\/em>is both a physical space and a moment of mediation; and like the theatre, or a theatrical performance, it is impermanent, contingent and beyond the fixity of totality.<\/p>\n\n\n

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A Levinasian eco-ethics may be envisaged as an obligation towards nature as the milieu <\/em>in which the ethical relation unfolds. Photo (Emmanuel Levinas): Wikimedia Foundation<\/a>. Bracha L. Ettinger. Accessed 27 Nov. 2022<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Overall, then, in Levinas\u2019s philosophy of existence, nature, as the elemental or the milieu<\/em>, is constituted through individuation and, as such, only exists in the instance of separation of an existent from existence, which means that it can only ever be accessed in its concrete particularity, never as a totality. Boothroyd adds that this notion of nature also resists any anthropocentrism because the human existent and the elemental are co-dependent, from which he derives human responsibility for nature and the need for \u201cethical respect\u201d towards nature (784). This is, then, ultimately how a Levinasian eco-ethics may be envisaged: as an obligation towards nature as the milieu <\/em>in which the ethical relation unfolds. This obligation is derived from nature\u2019s separation from the il y a<\/em> as a concrete \u201cecology of existence,\u201d a \u201cmesh\u201d in Morton\u2019s sense, that is accessible only in its particularity and that is the medium of ethics itself. As the medium of the ethical encounter, the milieu <\/em>must be preserved to make ethics possible in the first place, and the obligation to do so is itself an ethical one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ethical Milieu <\/em>in Mayfly<\/em><\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Joe White\u2019s Mayfly<\/em>, which premiered at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond, London, in 2018, is a play that showcases how ethics, understood in a Levinasian sense, and our obligation towards nature are closely interlinked. In many ways, it can be considered to only ever implicitly address questions of ecology. In Mayfly<\/em>, the middle-aged couple Ben and Cat and their daughter Loops are struggling with the loss of their son\/brother Adam to suicide. The play is set on the first anniversary of his death and explores various configurations and interrelations in which the characters attempt to come to terms with their grief. Mayfly<\/em> begins with Ben being rescued from a river, in which he attempted to drown himself, by a young man called Harry, who emerges out of the blue. Over the course of the play, Harry establishes close connections with all three family members, each of whom he meets separately at first. In the last scene, all four of them come together for a family dinner. This is when Harry realizes that Loops, who had asked him out on a date, and her parents need Harry as a replacement for Adam. Taken aback, he wants to leave but is stopped by Loops, who makes him realize that she feels a genuine connection between them. The play ends with Harry and Loops kissing. Mayfly<\/em> is thus an enquiry into grief and the way it affects relations between survivors but also, as the blurb on the cover of the play has it, an exploration of \u201crebirth in the aftermath of tragedy.\u201d As such, it presents ethical encounters in Levinas\u2019s sense, perhaps most prominently in the opening scene\u2014Ben being saved from drowning\u2014and in the closing moments\u2014a speechless encounter between Loops and Harry that makes Harry change his mind and stay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What permeates the entire play, however, is a strong ecological undercurrent: in many ways, the secret protagonist in Mayfly<\/em> is the milieu<\/em> in Levinas\u2019s sense; that is, the environment in which the encounters between the characters take place. The way nature is woven into the fabric of the play serves to disrupt the totality of grief that engulfs its protagonists. This is why its regenerative impulse attains an ethical dimension, through which Mayfly<\/em> implies both the ethical power of the milieu <\/em>and our obligations towards it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the very beginning, the characters are, quite literally, steeped in, and struggling with, their natural surroundings that emerge as a force of disruption to their lives. After the play opens with Harry pulling Ben out of a river, their subsequent dialogue reveals that, although Ben initially claims he slipped and fell in, it was, in fact, a suicide attempt that Harry prevented. Interestingly, it is not the moment of ethical decision making\u2014the moment when Harry decides to jump into the river himself to rescue Ben\u2014that is foregrounded here but its immediate aftermath. While Harry\u2019s rescuing act certainly is in line with the self-sacrificing obligation towards the Other in their extreme vulnerability that Levinas\u2019s ethics requires, the focus here is on the awkward exchange that follows. After warning Ben that there is a danger of drowning on dry land after swallowing too much water, Harry suggests they sit down by the river to recover and observes the scenery, commenting on the swarms of what Ben tells him are mayflies. When Harry finds out about their short one-day lifespan, in an attempt to uplift Ben, he tries to interpret this transience as positive: \u201cJust. Amazing what can happen in a day. Ennit. In one<\/em> day. \u2018Mazing. How much can change -\u201d (White 12). This marks the first instance in the play where nature is portrayed as a disruptive force of change. As the dialogue continues, this is reinforced when Ben tries to explain what made him wade into the water and he claims \u201cit\u2019s just this place\u201d (14), which apparently never changes\u2014only later does the audience find out that it is the first anniversary of Adam\u2019s suicide and that Adam hanged himself on that very spot (80). Harry, oblivious to all of this, counters by quoting Heraclitus\u2019s famous \u201cNo man ever steps in the same river twice. For it\u2019s not the same river. And he\u2019s not the same man\u201d (14). Harry here repeats the motif of change: nature, the scenery in which the play\u2019s encounters take place, is not a uniform totality\u2014rather, the implication is, it is the milieu <\/em>in which humans interact. As such, it is, as Harry points out, impermanent and open to change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This mutability is above all contrasted with the grieving family\u2019s perception of time and memory. While the action of the play spans just one day\u2014the life span of a mayfly\u2014the way Ben, Cat and Loops have experienced time since Adam\u2019s suicide is uniform and totalising. Their loss has estranged them from each other and tied them up in their memories of Adam. For a year, Loops has worn nothing else but her dead brother\u2019s military camouflage clothes; Cat is still calling Adam\u2019s voicemail every day and spends her time watching old home videos of her children and her own youth with Ben; Ben wants to kill himself; and they all barely talk to each other. None of them seems to have found a way to come to terms with their loss; they are \u201cconsumed by misery\u201d (Gardner), as they are engulfed in these repetitive grieving patterns: \u201c\u2018One day at a time…\u2019 that\u2019s what they all say,\u201d exclaims Cat exasperatedly, \u201cIn all my (magazines). Idiots. Every day\u2019s the same. Ennit\u201d (White 27).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pitched against this totality is nature\u2019s mutability. The structure of the play is held together by the recurring motifs of the mayflies and the river, part of an ecosystem that stands for change, renewal and disruption: the sounds of mayflies buzzing and swarming and the river gurgling repeatedly puncture the play, particularly in key scenes (White 56, 57, 58, 81, 83). Crucially, this does not mean that nature is portrayed as a monolithic force, that is, as the \u201cfaceless generous mother\u201d Levinas rejects (Totality and Infinity<\/em> 47). Rather, it remains the milieu<\/em>, the scenery against which ethical encounters are enacted. While Mayfly<\/em> begins with Harry asserting his somewhat esoteric belief in a higher power that made him take a different way to work and so save Ben from drowning\u2014\u201clike something is looking out for you\u201d (White 13)\u2014this notion of the supernatural is questioned as a human projection as the play progresses. In particular, Loops rejects the existence of any higher power or of the afterlife; for example, when she tells Harry, \u201cI thought I saw a ghost once, but it was just a bin bag in a tree . . .\u201d (45).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rather than as a force that actively shapes human lives, nature appears as impassive to human grief and suffering. Thus, on their date collecting magic mushrooms on Clee Hill, Loops and Harry observe the sheep there. While Loops complains about their blank stares, Harry likens the scene to a well-known painting, Pieter Bruegel the Elder\u2019s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus<\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Reminds me of that painting. You know, with the boy in the water. He\u2019s been flying, or something, and he fell, and it\u2019s the moment after he hit the sea, and you see his little leg, there, disappearing in\u2014and all these blokes, these farmers and that, and all these sheep are just carrying on, staring blank, like nothing happened… which, I guess, it didn\u2019t, to them.<\/p>\n42<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

There is no intent, benign or otherwise, to the milieu<\/em>. As the \u201cprimal scene of totality\u2019s breach,\u201d it is not an \u201cinterested party.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus<\/em> (c. 1560). As Icarus is drowning (bottom right corner), the farmers and sheep carry on \u201clike nothing happened.\u201d Photo: Wikimedia commons<\/a>. Accessed 26 Nov. 2022<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

However, for the theatrical ecology of Mayfly<\/em> the role of the mayflies and the river clearly is more than just that of metaphors signifying change. They are, in fact, part of the milieu <\/em>in which the ethical encounters between the protagonists take place and that makes any disruption of their grief possible in the first place. The river is not just the biosphere in which the mayflies spend their brief lives; it is also the river in which Ben tries to drown himself and so, at the same time, the location of his \u201crebirth\u201d when he is saved. It is the space in and with which the human protagonists interact\u2014necessarily, the river is part of the interconnectedness of what Morton calls the mesh, which includes human existence and, by definition, can only be encountered from within\u2014but it is also the very mediation between them, the stuff that energises them and resists totality. Again, it is Harry who explains this, in a speech that seems to come uncannily close to describing the Levinasian separation of the existent from existence:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There\u2019s a lot that happens. We just can\u2019t ever know it. . . . First rule of thermodynamics, right, says the energy in the universe will always be a constant. Forever. Whatever happens. The same. It won\u2019t change when people die, or stars get sucked into black holes… So, so, so when we<\/span>… die… that energy inside us, inside everything, just… Finds somewhere else to go… cos energy is like this… this river, right. Flowing on and on, forever, this giant invisible river, through everything, and every now and then, something leaps out of it and becomes something<\/span> for a bit, solid, has a… little life… before it… falls back in… becomes the river again. Carries on flowing… And that\u2019s it.<\/p>\n55<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This is the \u201cenergy\u201d of the river or the mayflies: it is the mediation of the milieu <\/em>in which individuation and ethical encounters take place. In keeping with the play\u2019s frequently ironic detachment, Harry comes to this insight whilst under the influence of magic mushrooms that he and Loops have sampled, and it is probably a combination of his words and the effects of the mushrooms that leads Loops to have an increasingly frantic flash of memory in which, for the first time, she opens up about the loss of her brother, whose dead body she was the first to find. She acknowledges the all-encompassing grief impacting on her and her family: \u201c[A]ll of us just stopped for a very long time for a very long time until today until\u2014\u201d (56). As Loops breaks down after admitting this, mayflies are swarming. Now a physical presence on stage, as indicated by the stage directions, rather than merely observed by Ben and Harry at the beginning of the play, the mayflies embody the very disruption of Loops, Ben and Cat\u2019s grief: as much as this disruption is brought about through their encounters with Harry, these encounters depend on their milieu <\/em>and the possibility for change it affords.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Evelyn Hoskins as Loops in the 2018 production of Joe White\u2019s Mayfly<\/em> at Orange Tree Theatre. Photo: Helen Murray<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

This becomes clear in the play\u2019s long concluding scene. Here, the swarming noise of the mayflies, together with the gurgling of the river, also forms the backdrop, or perhaps \u201cbackground murmur,\u201d against which all four characters come together for the first time. At the beginning of the scene, stage directions indicate that \u201c[w]e can hear the river in the distance\u2014the mayflies falling back into it<\/em>\u201d (White 58), which links back to the insects\u2019 birth in the first scene and so closes a circle, embodied in the mayflies\u2019 life cycle. It is only in this final scene that Harry finds out about Adam\u2019s suicide. After Cat asks him to take Adam\u2019s phone and call her on it to say \u201cBye, Mum\u201d (75\u201376), Harry himself reveals his own grief after his mother suddenly left him and his father without saying goodbye several years earlier. As he describes his loss and how he only gradually learned to live with it, the sound of insects again is audible (79, 81).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mayflies, like the river, thus form an integral part of the soundscape the play constructs: their swarming repeatedly intrudes upon the play\u2019s action in moments that foreground the background and highlight the surroundings in which the protagonists come together in the first place.[6]<\/sup><\/a> This serves as a reminder of the otherwise unacknowledged presence of the milieu<\/em>, of mediation itself, in which these exchanges unfold and which allows for the breaking up of totality in the characters\u2019 experience. When Harry suspects that the family see him as a replacement for their dead son, he is unnerved and wants to leave, not without revealing first that the entire episode has made it possible for him for the first time in a long time to remember his vanished mother\u2019s face. In a final wordless face-to-face encounter, Loops prevents him from doing so by touching him with what may be described in Levinas\u2019s terms as \u201ccaress,\u201d an ethical opening up of lovers directed at a pure futurity (Levinas, \u201cTime and the Other\u201d 51). As Loops and Harry kiss, Mayfly<\/em> fittingly ends by again foregrounding the milieu <\/em>and so highlighting its necessary presence as background scenery to the ethical encounters and disruption of totality the play presents: it concludes with the break of dawn and \u201cthe sound of new mayflies<\/em>\u201d (White 83).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, while, or perhaps because, the characters\u2019 surroundings are instrumental to disrupting their grief, there is also a sense pervading the play that this very milieu <\/em>is under threat and itself needs to be protected. On Clee Hill, Loops observes a \u201c[f]ucking mess everywhere, ennit. Plastic and shit\u201d (White 46) and worries the sheep might choke on the plastic. Although this is one of very few hints at environmental pollution in the play, it nevertheless highlights the fragility of the world the characters inhabit. This goes beyond nature and includes forms of human interaction: the pub where Harry works is closing down to be transformed into an art retreat, a sign of gentrification. As a meeting place with a central function not only for the play\u2019s action (it is where Harry first encounters Loops and Cat) but also beyond that, for its characters (Cat and Ben courted there, and Cat reveals that \u201c[e]very man, I ever loved, was here\u201d [36]), it is a site of mediation between them, a place where ethical encounters potentially take place. The effect of the pub\u2019s closure is that, as one reviewer puts it, the entire village seems to be \u201cgrieving for its own extinction\u201d (Jenner). This implies a need to preserve these sites of mediation and coming together, whether they are non-human nature or human-made gathering places: they are both vital to the ecologies that make up the mesh and the medium of ethics itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joe White\u2019s Mayfly<\/em> has thus found a productive way of engaging with ecology and ethics at the same time. Read from a Levinasian perspective, it productively shows the way ethics and the surroundings in which we move depend on each other. By repeatedly foregrounding the presence of the mayflies or the river in their physicality, through noises and stage presence, Mayfly<\/em> draws attention to the imperative of respecting and preserving this milieu<\/em>. In this way, the play moves downward toward what Boothroyd calls \u201cthe materiality of the sensate life of the existent\u201d (775). At the level of the play\u2019s action, it is the disruptive power of their environs that allows Loops and her parents to finally overcome the totality of their grief, and so it attains vital importance as an ethical force. At the same time, it becomes clear that these \u201clocalised ecologies\u201d are persistently under threat, and by implication, it is a matter of ethical urgency to preserve the existents that form the milieu<\/em>\u2014this is perhaps the central proposition of the play, even though it seems to be addressed only indirectly: Mayfly<\/em> is saturated with the presence of the natural, of a living environment, down to its very title, and yet it does not explicitly thematise it but lets it \u201csimmer\u201d below the surface. Only every now and then does awareness of this milieu <\/em>leap out and become solid for a bit before it re-enters the flow of the play. This is how Joe White\u2019s play \u201cpays ethical respect\u201d to the milieu <\/em>and makes it an integral part of the ethical encounters it stages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/a>Endnotes<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/sup><\/a> The connection drawn by Christian Diehm (\u201cGaia\u201d) to the Gaia hypothesis that sees the entire planet as one living body to which, Diehm argues, we owe responsibility seems particularly promising here and might be fruitfully further discussed in light of Bruno Latour\u2019s more recent work on Gaia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2]<\/sup><\/a> Although Levinas insists that only the human Other may have a face and that an ethical relation ensues from the encounter with the enigmatic face of the Other, there is a structural parallel here between the encountering of absolute alterity in the ethical relation and encountering the unthinkable alterity of the mesh, which really is a term used by Morton to abolish distinctions between different life forms, and even between life and non-life forms (\u201cThe Mesh\u201d 24), whilst maintaining their plurality. For an overview of the ethical encounter in Levinas, see Riedelsheimer (67\u201371).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[3]<\/sup><\/a> In Levinas\u2019s phenomenology, the existent is simply \u201cthat which exists,\u201d where existence \u201cis antecedent to the world\u201d (Existence and Existents<\/em> 17, 21) and hence outside any ontological categories of understanding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[4]<\/sup><\/a> \u201cNature\u201d is a fraught term that is often used almost synonymously with \u201contology,\u201d in phrases like \u201cthe nature of things.\u201d Such an understanding of nature is fundamentally at odds with Levinas\u2019s ethics. As it also obscures the role humans play in the construction of what is \u201cnatural\u201d Morton has argued for an \u201cecology without nature\u201d (Ecology Without Nature<\/em> and The Ecological Thought<\/em> 1\u201319). In view of Morton\u2019s arguments any use of the term \u201cnature\u201d here is provisional, a term to indicate the more-than-human world surrounding us and depending on us but one that is precariously set off against any natural ontology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[5]<\/sup><\/a> In thinking about nature as a milieu <\/em>in Levinas\u2019s sense, inevitably a foreground\/background problem ensues: once a focus is placed on the background, it ceases to be the background. In terms of representation, highlighting the milieu <\/em>without turning it into something different is then impossible. For a discussion of the foreground-background dilemma in terms of ecological thinking, see Morton (\u201cDeconstruction and\/as Ecology\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[6]<\/sup><\/a> The effect can be heard in the short trailer for the 2018 production at Orange Tree Theatre (youtu.be\/W0YefFHEJAU<\/a>). Although this trailer does not use footage from the actual theatre performance, the way in which \u201cnatural\u201d background noise by birds and insects is getting louder, and by the end of the trailer is clearly the most prominent feature of the trailer, exemplifies this foregrounding of the background soundscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

Angelaki, Vicky. Theatre and Environment. <\/em>Macmillan International, 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aragay, Mireia, and Enric Monforte, editors. Ethical Speculations in Contemporary British Theatre<\/em>. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aragay, Mireia, and Martin Middeke, editors. Of Precariousness: Vulnerabilities, Responsibilities, Communities in 21st-Century British Drama and Theatre<\/em>. De Gruyter, 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Atterton, Peter. \u201cFacing Animals.\u201d Facing Nature: Levinas and Environmental Thought<\/em>, edited by William Edelglass, James Hatley, and Christian Diehm, Duquesne UP, 2012, pp. 25\u201339.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—. \u201cLevinas\u2019s Humanism and Anthropocentrism.\u201d The Oxford Handbook of Levinas<\/em>, edited by Michael L. Morgan, Oxford UP, 2019, pp. 709\u201330.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Boothroyd, Dave. \u201cLevinas on Ecology and Nature.\u201d The Oxford Handbook of Levinas<\/em>, edited by Michael L. Morgan, Oxford UP, 2019, pp. 769\u201388.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Critchley, Simon. Introduction. The Cambridge Companion to Levinas<\/em>, edited by Simon Critchley and Robert Bernasconi, Cambridge UP, 2002, pp. 1\u201332.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Diehm, Christian. \u201cGaia and Il y a<\/em>: Reflections on the Face of the Earth.\u201d Symposium<\/em>, vol. 7, no. 2, 2003, pp. 173\u201383.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—. \u201cAlterity, Value, Autonomy: Levinas and Environmental Ethics.\u201d Facing Nature: Levinas and Environmental Thought<\/em>, edited by William Edelglass, James Hatley, and Christian Diehm, Duquesne UP, 2012, pp. 11\u201324.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Edelglass, William, James Hatley, and Christian Diehm. \u201cFacing Nature After Levinas.\u201d Facing Nature: Levinas and Environmental Thought<\/em>, edited by William Edelglass, James Hatley, and Christian Diehm, Duquesne UP, 2012, pp. 1\u201310.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gardner, Lyn. \u201cMayfly<\/em> Review\u2014a Heartbreakingly Funny Debut<\/a>.\u201d The Guardian<\/em>, 24 Apr. 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grehan, Helena. Performance, Ethics and Spectatorship in a Global Age.<\/em> Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenner, Simon. \u201cFringeReview UK 2018: Mayfly<\/em><\/a>.\u201d FringeReview<\/em>, 27 Apr. 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lavery, Carl, editor. Performance and Ecology: What Can Theatre Do<\/em>? Routledge, 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Levinas, Emmanuel. Ethics and Infinity: Conversations with Philippe Nemo<\/em>. Translated by Richard A. Cohen, Duquesne UP, 1985.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—. Existence and Existents<\/em>. Translated by Alphonso Lingis, Martinus Nijhoff, 1978.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—. \u201cTime and the Other.\u201d Translated by Richard A. Cohen. The Levinas Reader<\/em>, edited by Se\u00e1n Hand, Blackwell, 1989, pp. 37\u201358.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority<\/em>. Translated by Alphonso Lingis, Duquesne UP, 1969.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Latour, Bruno. Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime<\/em>. Translated by Catherine Porter, Polity, 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Martin, Betsan. \u201cTaking Responsibility Into All Matter: Engaging Levinas for the Climate of the 21st Century.\u201d Educational Philosophy and Theory<\/em>, vol. 48, no. 4, 2016, pp. 418\u201335.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

May, Theresa J. Earth Matters on Stage: Ecology and Environment in American Theatre<\/em>. Routledge, 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Middeke, Martin, and Martin Riedelsheimer, editors. Critical Theatre Ecologies<\/em>, special issue of JCDE<\/em>, vol. 10., no. 1, 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Morton, Timothy. \u201cEcology and\/as Deconstruction.\u201d The Oxford Handbook of Ecocriticism<\/em>, edited by Greg Garrard, Oxford UP, 2014, pp. 291\u2013304.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

—. The Ecological Thought<\/em>. Harvard UP, 2010.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—. \u201cThe Mesh.\u201d Environmental Criticism for the Twenty-First Century<\/em>, edited by Stephanie LeMenager, Teresa Shewry, and Ken Hiltner, Routledge, 2011, pp. 19\u2013<\/a>30.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Orange Tree Theatre. Mayfly Trailer<\/em>. YouTube.com<\/em>, 6 Apr. 2018, youtu.be\/W0YefFHEJAU<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Riedelsheimer, Martin. Fictions of Infinity: Levinasian Ethics in 21st-Century Novels.<\/em> De Gruyter, 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sallis, John. \u201cLevinas and the Elemental.\u201d Research in Phenomenology<\/em>, vol. 28, 1998, pp. 152\u201359.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

White, Joe. Mayfly<\/em>. Nick Hern Books, 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

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*<\/a>Martin Riedelsheimer<\/strong> (PhD) is a lecturer in English Literature at the University of Augsburg, Germany. He is the author of Fictions of Infinity: Levinasian Ethics in 21st-Century Novels<\/em> (de Gruyter, 2020) and has published on contemporary fiction, drama and theatre with a focus on (literary) ethics and, more recently, ecology. He is co-editor of a special issue of the Journal of Contemporary Drama in English<\/em> on \u201cCritical Theatre Ecologies\u201d (2022).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

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