Charting a history of theatrical resistance to environmental exploitation, this study places drama and theatrical performance staged in Australia within the context of international scholarship to address changing ecological systems. Exploring the staging of disasters ranging from droughts and floods to forest fires and rising seas, it examines a strikingly diverse body of work that reflects the entanglement of socio-economic and environmental forces leading to ecological damage and climate change. Weather phenomena become protagonists in plays by Jack Davis, Andrea James, Louis Nowra and Hannie Rayson, while mutant creatures manifest climate threats in Jill Orr's work, and performances by the Australian Indigenous Marrugeku and Bangarra Dance Theatre invite grief for immense losses. Featuring First Nations performance and its profound knowledge of biodiverse multispecies habitats, this study challenges the ways in which socio-ecological disaster is called 'natural' and positioned outside human responsibility.
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Contextualising Australian theatre within international scholarship, this study addresses major concerns about changing ecological systems.
Introduction;
1. From ecology to ecocriticism;
2. Drought escalates;
3.
Endangered lands;
4. Flood damage;
5. Contaminating atmospheres;
6. Water
restrictions;
7. Melting ice, rising seas;
8. Facing mass extinction;
9.
Staging hot weather and fire;
10. Forms of future disaster;
11. Dramaturgies
of dissent; References; Index.
Peta Tait is Emeritus Professor at La Trobe University, a playwright and Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. Her twelve authored and edited books include the authored Forms of Emotion: Human to Nonhuman in Drama, Theatre and Contemporary Performance (2022). Denise Varney is Professor of Theatre Studies at the University of Melbourne and Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. Her most recent book is Patrick White's Theatre: Australian Modernism on Stage 19602018 (2021). Lara Stevens is Lecturer in English at Charles Sturt University. She is co-author with Eddie Paterson of Performing Climates (2025), co-editor with Peta Tait and Denise Varney of Feminist Ecologies: Changing Environments in the Anthropocene (2018), and author of Anti-War Theatre after Brecht (2016).
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