Bec(h)oming with Simon Whitehead: Practising a Logic of Sensation
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Carl Lavery
is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the University of Glasgow. He has published numerous books, articles, and chapters on theatre and ecology and is currently finishing a new monograph, The Idea of a Theatre Ecology, in which distinctions between theatre and ecology are blurred, if not dissolved, and where theatricality, not narrative, is the primary focus. The aim is to highlight the specificity of theatre’s contribution to environmental debates and to contest extant models and methods of eco-theatre.
Abstract
In this text and image essay, I introduce a new concept to the environmental humanities; one which seeks to trouble metaphysical notions of dwelling by combining the idea of home (the oikos in ecology) with a notion of permanent becoming. In this way, home loses its conservative and reactionary connotations with atavistic origins and identities and instead is opened up to nonhuman forces and powers. As I explain in the opening section, bec(h)oming is a matter of affect; it depends upon the capacity of bodies to move beyond themselves, to be impressed and transformed by the environments which they move through, to tap what the philosopher Gilbert Simondon might see as the “pre-individual” energy that runs through all organisms. Humans are no exception; they, too, are caught in the flux and flow. By focusing on bodies, the essay not only looks to depart from conventional narrative-based notions of ecocriticism and theatre ecology, it aims to provide a lexicon, a new idiom for thinking through corporeal ecologies that are attuned to sensations, the virtual play of a cosmic Earth. To do that, the text provides the first detailed account of the work and practices of influential UK movement artist Simon Whitehead, whose Locator workshop has proved pivotal for so many dancers, choreographers, and artists over the past few decades. Integral to the paper is a desire to experiment with alternative modes of writing, a style that would express the enthusiasms of bec(h)omings and give some sense of its somatic potential.
About the author
is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the University of Glasgow. He has published numerous books, articles, and chapters on theatre and ecology and is currently finishing a new monograph, The Idea of a Theatre Ecology, in which distinctions between theatre and ecology are blurred, if not dissolved, and where theatricality, not narrative, is the primary focus. The aim is to highlight the specificity of theatre’s contribution to environmental debates and to contest extant models and methods of eco-theatre.
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© 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Preliminary Note
- Co-Mutability, Nodes, and the Mesh: Critical Theatre Ecologies – An Introduction
- Writing in the Green: Imperatives towards an Eco-n-temporary Theatre Canon
- Bec(h)oming with Simon Whitehead: Practising a Logic of Sensation
- An Art Like Nature: Theatre Environment as Territory in Tim Spooner Performances
- Performing Resilience: Anchorage and Leverage in Live Action Role-Play Drama
- Encounters in the Chthulucene: Simon McBurney’s Theatre of Compost
- To Be Like Water: Material Dramaturgies in Posthumanist Performance
- “A Missile to the Future”: The Theatre Ecologies of Caryl Churchill’s Far Away on Spike Island
- Symptomatic Spaces: Adam Rapp and American Eco-Drama in the Anthropocene
- Kinship and Community in Climate-Change Theatre: Ecodramaturgy in Practice
- Eco-Drama, Multinational Corporations, and Climate Change in Nigeria
- Playing the Petrocene: Toxicity and Intoxication in Leigh Fondakowski’s Spill and Ella Hickson’s Oil
- An Ecology of Plants: The Post-Manufacturing Age in Philip Ridley’s Shivered and David Eldridge’s In Basildon
- Alienation, Abjection, and Disgust: Encountering the Capitalocene in Contemporary Eco-Drama
- Elaine Aston. Restaging Feminisms. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, viii + 132 pp., £44.99 (hardback), £44.99 (paperback), £35.99 (PDF/EPUB ebook).
- Maria Chatzichristodoulou, ed. Live Art in the UK: Contemporary Performances of Precarity. London: Methuen Drama, 2020, x + 212 pp., £65 (hardback), £19.79 (paperback), £15.83 (PDF ebook).
- Yana Meerzon, David Dean, and Daniel McNeil, ed. Migration and Stereotypes in Performance and Culture. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, xvi + 298 pp., €124.99 (hardback), €85.59 (PDF ebook).
- Mark Brown. Modernism and Scottish Theatre since 1969: A Revolution on Stage. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, xvii + 254 pp., € 80.24 (hardback), € 24.99 (softcover).
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Preliminary Note
- Co-Mutability, Nodes, and the Mesh: Critical Theatre Ecologies – An Introduction
- Writing in the Green: Imperatives towards an Eco-n-temporary Theatre Canon
- Bec(h)oming with Simon Whitehead: Practising a Logic of Sensation
- An Art Like Nature: Theatre Environment as Territory in Tim Spooner Performances
- Performing Resilience: Anchorage and Leverage in Live Action Role-Play Drama
- Encounters in the Chthulucene: Simon McBurney’s Theatre of Compost
- To Be Like Water: Material Dramaturgies in Posthumanist Performance
- “A Missile to the Future”: The Theatre Ecologies of Caryl Churchill’s Far Away on Spike Island
- Symptomatic Spaces: Adam Rapp and American Eco-Drama in the Anthropocene
- Kinship and Community in Climate-Change Theatre: Ecodramaturgy in Practice
- Eco-Drama, Multinational Corporations, and Climate Change in Nigeria
- Playing the Petrocene: Toxicity and Intoxication in Leigh Fondakowski’s Spill and Ella Hickson’s Oil
- An Ecology of Plants: The Post-Manufacturing Age in Philip Ridley’s Shivered and David Eldridge’s In Basildon
- Alienation, Abjection, and Disgust: Encountering the Capitalocene in Contemporary Eco-Drama
- Elaine Aston. Restaging Feminisms. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, viii + 132 pp., £44.99 (hardback), £44.99 (paperback), £35.99 (PDF/EPUB ebook).
- Maria Chatzichristodoulou, ed. Live Art in the UK: Contemporary Performances of Precarity. London: Methuen Drama, 2020, x + 212 pp., £65 (hardback), £19.79 (paperback), £15.83 (PDF ebook).
- Yana Meerzon, David Dean, and Daniel McNeil, ed. Migration and Stereotypes in Performance and Culture. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, xvi + 298 pp., €124.99 (hardback), €85.59 (PDF ebook).
- Mark Brown. Modernism and Scottish Theatre since 1969: A Revolution on Stage. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, xvii + 254 pp., € 80.24 (hardback), € 24.99 (softcover).
