Of Deep Time and Slow Violence: Anthropo-Scenic Timespaces and the Chronotopes of Climate Theatre

Abstract

This article explores how contemporary climate theatre navigates the distorted scales of the Anthropocene and the climate crisis through its unique aesthetics – embodiment, spatiality, temporality, and reciprocity. Previous literature on climate theatre has largely discussed its anthropomorphism and anthropocentrism in relation to global warming. Building on ecodramaturgical frameworks, this article draws on ecocritical appropriations of Mikhail Bakhtin’s chronotope to investigate how theatrical time and space make the abstract nature of climate change tangible. The argument posits that chronotopes of climate theatre are crucial for understanding how contemporary theatre and performance tackle scalar derangement. By drawing on interdisciplinary approaches from environmental humanities, performance and theatre studies, and posthumanism, the study situates itself at the intersections of performance art, political theatre, aesthetic theatre, drama, and environmentalism, examining how different theatrical formats use theatrical ‘timespaces’ to address the spatio-temporal complexities of the Anthropocene. It discusses Ella Hickson’s Oil (2016); April De Angelis’s Extinct (2021); Extinction Rebellion’s “The Sea Is Rising and so Are We” (2019); and Chris Rapley and Duncan Macmillan’s 2071 (2014), showing how each uses theatrical chronotopes to transform deep time, slow violence, and the dispersed nature of climate change into the ‘hyper-present’ of the stage.

Keywords

• anthropocene
• april de angelis
• climate theatre
• chronotope
• duncan macmillan
• ecodramaturgies
• ella hickson
• extinction rebellion