Performance ecologies, biotic rights and retro-modernisation

Abstract

This article is based on a paper first presented at the Performance Studies international annual conference on Performing Rights at Queen Mary, University of London, 2006. It has been rewritten specially for this themed issue of RiDE in light of my research following publication of Theatre Ecology: Environments and Performance Events in 2007. Mainly in the format of a thought experiment, it argues that the current ecological crisis of global warming could be a systemic ‘insanity’ of planet Earth produced by a human compulsion to perform. It aims to demonstrate that finding cures for this affliction requires a radical revision of how Homo sapiens values human rights via complementary biotic rights inclusive of other organic species. As these rights are an aspect of ongoing global performance ecologies understood as integral to eco-systemic evolution, it becomes necessary for humans to invent refreshed ways of assessing how futures variously emerge through the natures of present and past. The article's thought experimental methods are adopted, in part, so that a few jocular analytical tropes can be treated as entirely serious. Hence it proposes that the concept ‘retro-modernisation’ should be recycled immediately and that one of the shortest of verbal paradoxes is adopted as a motto by all eco-warriors of the dramatic, theatrical and performing arts – but it is certainly not ‘Be spontaneous!’

Keywords:

• ecology
• performance
• compulsion
• paradox
• climate change
• sanity

Acknowledgements

My panel co-presenters at PSi Performing Human Rights, 2006 were Stephen Bottoms, Wally Soyinka Professor of Drama at the University of Leeds, UK, and Matthew Goulish, founder member of Goat Island Performance Group (1987–2007 last performance/continuing), Chicago, USA.

Notes

1. ‘Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter’. Grice quoting George W. Bush at his final G-8 Summit, Rusutsu, Japan.

2. The issue between Tony Blair and David King was terrorism versus global warming, prompted by the latter's views on climate change.

3. For example, Greenwash (and spin), a current example: multinational palm oil.

4. The inventors of the first paradox are anonymous; I coined the second in homage to those nameless ones, expecting in good time that I might join them.

5. Please visit the website of Spotlight Entertainments (http://www.spotlightentertainments.com/streettheatrestiltsxpanded.htm, accessed 18 September 2011). Select any one of the acts featured and compose or devise a scenario that would enable them to become strong (or stronger) antidotes to eco-insanity. Or invent an entirely different eco-stiltwalking performance for the same purpose.