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Posthumanism and Drama: From Shakespeare to Climate Change Plays

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Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism

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Abstract

While theatre as an art form is characterized by the inescapable presence of the human, it has also from its beginnings involved human interactions with machines and (stage) technology, staged artificial lives, interrogated the progression of science, diverse forms of identity, and the ethical and ontological relations between human and nonhuman world. This chapter focuses on these multiple connections between drama and critical posthumanism. It delineates four core areas in contemporary dramatic production and scholarship which intersect with and thrive on posthumanism, showing how each seeks to decenter the human and reflects the radical shifts of the Anthropocene: In global Shakespeare studies, posthumanism cuts across times, media, and spaces, and links productive new fields of inquiry, including ecocriticism, early modern literary studies, and adaptation studies. The next two sections narrow the focus to the thematic and the theatrical level, respectively. Posthuman subjectivities in dystopian settings, often infused with elements of the absurd, feature prominently in postmillennial science plays. Meanwhile immersive multimedia technologies continue to expand the realm of digital or cyberdrama and offer new forms of participation and interaction. Finally, climate change drama tackles the challenge of staging the agency of the nonhuman and of imagining futures, with and without the human.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of English II, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany

    Julia Hoydis

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  1. Julia Hoydis
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Correspondence to Julia Hoydis .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Germany

    Stefan Herbrechter

  2. Department of English, Faculty of Arts, University of Malta, Msida, Malta

    Ivan Callus

  3. Basel, Switzerland

    Manuela Rossini

  4. University of Malta, Msida, Malta

    Marija Grech

  5. University of Southampton, Winchester, UK

    Megen de Bruin-Molé

  6. Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Christopher John Müller

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Hoydis, J. (2022). Posthumanism and Drama: From Shakespeare to Climate Change Plays. In: Herbrechter, S., Callus, I., Rossini, M., Grech, M., de Bruin-Molé, M., John Müller, C. (eds) Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04958-3_38

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