“Poiesis in ecotheatre” – Aishwarya Kumar

Instytut B61, positioned at the intersection of science and contemporary art, brings together artists, scientists, and designers to create theatre that performs the theatre of astronomy. In 2017 they performed Evolution of Stars, a set of 13 audio-visual and interactive theatre performances that divulged the life of a star. Written and directed by an astrophysicist Janek Świerkowski who is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Science Communication, this experience worked through social and human-centered metaphors to present the various phases of a star. Each performance is a mix of assemblages that involved the audience interacting with hanging washing machines, sandpits, candy floss machines, human characters, blasting chickens, the other audience members that walked through the various rooms and more. Working through these assemblages, the human actors were but one of the agents of the performance. Quoting Alan Read in his article Introduction: performance and ecology – what theatre can do?, Carl Lavery (2016) considers this form(s) of theatre to be a part of an expanded field of “…performance that eschews characters, stories, and dialogue…” and “…partakes of many different forms, some of which may include site-based performance, devised work, immersive installations, direct interventions, open-ended scores, durational pieces, and large scale community events” (Lavery 2016, 230).

Such a form of contemporary theatre doesn’t elude ecocriticism. In fact, it keeps it at the core of its intention or productive poiesis[1]. Following both Tuckwell’s understanding of creative poiesis that recursively affects productive poiesis, and Serres’s understanding of “…flows, systems and networks” (Serres in Lavery 2016, 231), this piece becomes what it is through the presence of and entanglement of human and non-human actors. Additionally, the shared space by the installation-performers and the audience disrupts the threshold that defines a boundary for the viewer. This automatically includes them as actors within the assemblage and produces a “…theatre that highlights its own incapacity to signify, its own failure to act” (Lavery 2016, 232). The finality of the piece is indeterminate in its many possible interactions.

Although the piece has some elements of traditional theatre: a start and an end, a point of entry and exit to the site, a somewhat linear narrative that is predetermined, the manner in which the possibilities and potentiality of interaction within this space are kept open to contingent responses by the audience. The environmental conditions allow space for deviations to occur and thus the renditions that emerge with each show are minute yet innumerable. Karen Christopher and Sophie Grodin call this process of creativity “…as a ‘climate of attention’ in which performance makers are required to open themselves to each other as well as to the ‘more than human materials’ they are working with. In this exposure to alterity, the artists displace themselves from the centre of creativity, and exist in a patient, often painful dialogue with the world around them, learning how to accept weakness as a first step towards existing within a larger ecosystem” (Lavery 2016, 233). Such examples then create impact through their very open-endedness and present some characteristics of eco-performance.

Notes

[1] Read: Jason Tuckwell’s notion of productive poiesis which constitutes and initial intentionality.

References

• Lavery, Carl. 2016. “Introduction: performance and ecology – what can theatre do?”, Green Letters, 20:3, 229-236.
• Tuckwell, Jason. 2019.“Agency and techné in Creative Practice.” Lecture, Transmission in Motion Utrecht University, Utrecht, November 13.