Abstract
The idea of the “Anthropocene” is rapidly gaining currency as an ecocritical lens through which to view theater and performance. But as a lens for critical analysis, the concept of the “Anthropocene” is problematic, primarily because it fails to differentiate among humans, many of whom are in conflict precisely because the benefits and costs of the “Age of Man” have been distributed unevenly. Neo-Marxist critics take such conflicts into fuller account in their argument that a better nomenclature and concept for our epoch is the “Capitalocene,” a term that captures the fact that our ecological crises have been precipitated not by humans in some undifferentiated and generalized way, but more specifically by the global spread of capitalism and its socio-economic-ecological injustices. These are also conflicts at the heart of many plays, both historical and recent. This essay offers an overview of a number of works that might productively be categorized as “Tragedies of the Capitalocene,” insofar as they dramatize stories that trace the dynamics of “Capitalocene” exploitation of both human and nonhuman resources. Plays considered include Cherríe Moraga’s Heroes and Saints (1992), Rahul Varma’s Bhopal (2001), Kia Corthron’s A Cool Dip in the Barren Saharan Crick (2010), Annabel Soutar’s Seeds (2012), Robert Schenkkan’s The Kentucky Cycle (1991), and Colleen Murphy’s The Breathing Hole (2017).
About the author
is Professor of Drama at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA, USA. Her research interests include performance and ecology, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century theatre history, feminist theatre, and performance and ethnography. She is author of Performance and Femininity in Eighteenth-Century German Woman’s Writing: The Impossible Act (2006), and co-editor, with Theresa J. May, of Readings in Performance and Ecology (2012). She is also co-translator, with Sara Figal, of a new edition of G. E. Lessing’s Hamburg Dramaturgy (2019; also available online at http://mcpress.media-commons.org/hamburg/), edited by Natalya Baldyga, which received the 2018 ATHE/ASTR Award for Excellence in Digital Scholarship. In addition, Arons has published articles in a number of journals and anthologies, including “Ecodramaturgy in/and Contemporary Women’s Plays” (co-authored with Theresa J. May, and published in Contemporary Women’s Playwriting, ed. Penny Farfan and Leslie Ferris, 2013) and “Beyond the Nature/Culture Divide: Challenges from Ecocriticism and Evolutionary Biology for Theatre Historiography” in Theatre Historiography: Critical Questions (ed. Henry Bial and Scott Magelssen, 2010). She writes regularly about theater and culture in her blog, The Pittsburgh Tatler (http://wendyarons.wordpress.com).
Works Cited
Primary Literature
Corthron, Kia. A Cool Dip in the Barren Saharan Crick. New York: Samuel French, 2010. Print.Search in Google Scholar
Moraga, Cherríe. Heroes and Saints. Contemporary Plays by Women of Color: An Anthology. Ed. Kathy A. Perkins and Roberta Uno. New York: Routledge, 1996. 230–261. Print.Search in Google Scholar
Murphy, Colleen. The Breathing Hole. 1 Jan. 2019. Unpublished draft typescript.Search in Google Scholar
Schenkkan, Robert. The Kentucky Cycle. New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1993. Print.Search in Google Scholar
Soutar, Annabel. Seeds. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2012. Print.Search in Google Scholar
Varma, Rahul. Bhopal. Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 2004. Print.Search in Google Scholar
Secondary Literature
Ahmadi, Mohebat. “Towards an Ecocritical Theatre: Staging the Anthropo(s)cene.” Diss. University of Melbourne, 2017. Print.Search in Google Scholar
Arons, Wendy. “Climate Change and the Capitalocene in Colleen Murphy’s The Breathing Hole.” Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Plays by Women: The Early Twenty-First Century. Ed. Penny Farfan and Lesley Ferris. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, forthcoming. Print.Search in Google Scholar
Arons, Wendy, and Theresa J. May. “Ecodramaturgy in/and Contemporary Women’s Plays.” Contemporary Women Playwrights. Ed. Penny Farfan and Lesley Ferris. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. 181–196. Print.10.1007/978-1-137-27080-1_12Search in Google Scholar
Aston, Elaine. “Caryl Churchill’s Dark Ecology.” Rethinking the Theatre of the Absurd. Ed. Carl Lavery and Clare Finburgh. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2015. 59–76. Print.10.5040/9781472511072.0006Search in Google Scholar
Chaudhuri, Una. “Anthropo-Scenes: Theater and Climate Change.” Journal of Contemporary Drama in English 3.1 (2015): 12–27. Web. <https://doi.org/10.1515/jcde-2015-0002>.Search in Google Scholar
Crist, Eileen. “On the Poverty of Our Nomenclature.” Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism. Ed. Jason W. Moore. Oakland: Kairos, 2016. 14–33. Print.Search in Google Scholar
Crutzen, Paul J. “Geology of Mankind.” Nature 415 (3 Jan. 2002): 23. Web. 20 May 2019.<https://doi.org/10.1038/415023a>.Search in Google Scholar
Davies, Jeremy. The Birth of the Anthropocene. Oakland: U of California P, 2016. Print.10.1525/9780520964334Search in Google Scholar
Demos, T. J. Against the Anthropocene: Visual Culture and Environment Today. Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2012. Print.Search in Google Scholar
Dunaway, Finis. “Commentary: The ‘Crying Indian’ Ad that Fooled the Environmental Movement.” Chicago Tribune, 21 Nov. 2017. Web. 20 May 2019. <https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-perspec-indian-crying-environment-ads-pollution-1123-20171113-story.html>.Search in Google Scholar
Gale, Maggie B. J. B. Priestley. London: Routledge, 2008. Print.10.4324/9780203932629Search in Google Scholar
Jacobson, Lynn. “Green Theatre: Confessions of an Eco-Reporter.” American Theatre 8.11 (1992): 16. Print.Search in Google Scholar
Journal of American Drama and Theatre (JADT): Special Issue on American Theatre and Performance in the Anthropocene Epoch. 29.2 (2017). Ed. Bruce McConachie. Print.Search in Google Scholar
“Judge Reduces $2-Billion Award in Monsanto Roundup Cancer Case to $87 Million.” Los Angeles Times, 26 July 2019. Web. 1 Sept. 2019. <https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-07-26/monsanto-roundup-cancer-lawsuit-award>.Search in Google Scholar
Klein, Naomi. “Let them Drown: The Violence of Othering in a Warming World.” London Review of Books, 2 June 2016. Web. 15 May 2019. <http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n11/naomi-klein/let-them-drown>.Search in Google Scholar
Lavery, Carl, and Clare Finburgh, eds. Rethinking the Theatre of the Absurd. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2015. Print.10.5040/9781472511072Search in Google Scholar
LeCain, Timothy James. “Against the Anthropocene: A Neo-Materialist Perspective.” International Journal for History, Culture, and Modernity 3.1 (2015): 1–28. Print.10.18352/22130624-00301001Search in Google Scholar
Lewis, Simon L., and Mark A. Maslin. “Defining the Anthropocene.” Nature 519 (12 March 2015): 171–180. Web. 20 May 2019. <https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14258>.Search in Google Scholar
Martin, Randall. “Shakespeare, Ecology, and the Environment.” Shakespeare and Beyond. Apr. 18 2017. Web. 26 Aug. 2019. <https://shakespeareandbeyond.folger.edu/2017/04/18/shakespeare-ecology-environmental-earth-day/>.Search in Google Scholar
Mirzoeff, Nicholas. “It’s Not the Anthropocene, It’s the White Supremacy Scene; or, The Geological Color Line.” After Extinction. Ed. Richard Grusin. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2018. 151–172. Print.Search in Google Scholar
Moore, Jason W. “Introduction.” Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism. Ed. Jason W. Moore. Oakland: Kairos, 2016. 1–13. Print.Search in Google Scholar
–-. “The Rise of Cheap Nature.” Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism. Ed. Jason W. Moore. Oakland: Kairos, 2016. 78–115. Print.Search in Google Scholar
Motta, Erick V. S., Kasie Raymann, and Nancy A. Moran. “Glyphosate Perturbs the Gut Microbiota of Honey Bees.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115.41 (Oct. 2018): 10305–10310. Web. 1 Sept. 2019. <https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1803880115>.Search in Google Scholar
Nordic Theatre Studies: Special Issue on Theatre and the Anthropocene. 32.1 (2020). Ed. Steve Wilmer and Karen Vedel. Print.10.7146/nts.v32i1.120400Search in Google Scholar
“Northwest Passage.” Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1 Aug. 2016. Web. 20 May 2019. <https://www.britannica.com/place/Northwest-Passage-trade-route>. Search in Google Scholar
Rizzo, Jessica. “Elegy for the Anthropocene.” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 40.1 (2018): 47–53. Web. <https://doi.org/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00395>.Search in Google Scholar
Shepherd-Barr, Kirsten. Theatre and Evolution from Ibsen to Beckett. New York: Columbia UP, 2015. Print.10.7312/columbia/9780231164702.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Souza, Nathan. “The Earth is Not ‘Ours’ to Save.” Interrogating the Anthropocene: Ecology, Aesthetics, Pedagogy, and the Future in Question. Ed. jan jagodzinski. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. 339–357. Print.Search in Google Scholar
Steffen, Will, et al. “The Anthropocene: From Global Change to Planetary Stewardship.” Ambio 40.7 (2011): 739–761. Web. 8 Sep. 2019. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/41417334>.10.1007/s13280-011-0185-xSearch in Google Scholar
Stoner, Alexander M., and Andony Melathopoulos. “Stuck in the Anthropocene: The Problem of History, Theory, and Practice in Jason W. Moore and John Bellamy Foster’s Eco-Marxism.” Interrogating the Anthropocene: Ecology, Aesthetics, Pedagogy, and the Future in Question. Ed. jan jagodzinski. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. 105–132. Print.Search in Google Scholar
© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
