Youth theatre and the climate crisis in Australia: the role of ‘unmediatised liveness’ in performing recovery, resistance, and survival

ABSTRACT

This paper presents the provocation that ‘unmediatised liveness', or experiences not filtered through digital technology, is vital to performances that promote recovery, resistance, and survival among young people in response to the climate crisis. Our provocation draws from interviews conducted with youth theatre and performance practitioners in Australia whose work addresses the climate crisis holistically across disaster preparedness, first response, disaster recovery, and climate activism. We argue that while mediatised interactions remain a critical element of contemporary youth culture and performance, unmediatised co-presence, artistic collaboration, community action, and activism are crucial in the high-stakes context of Australia’s climate crisis.

KEYWORDS:

• Youth theatre
• youth performance
• climate activism
• ecocritical performance
• liveness
• creative recovery

Acknowledgements

The researchers would like to acknowledge the time and generosity of the research participants and partners, many of whom were directly affected by disaster and hardship during and directly prior to the project. This research was conducted with institutional ethical approval from the University of Melbourne's Human Research Ethics Committee (ID 22280).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 A full exploration of the findings is beyond the scope of this paper, however, some of these can be found in our final project report, which includes a model outlining the interacting elements described here (see Woodland, Hassall, and Kennedy-Borissow 2023).

Additional information

Funding

This project was funded by the Creativity and Wellbeing Hallmark Research Initiative of the University of Melbourne.