Ecology and Environment in European Drama

245 Pages·2010·2.473 MB·English

by  Downing Cless

Ecology and Environment
in European Drama
Routledge Advances in
Theatre and Performance Studies
1. Theatre and Postcolonial Desires 10. Movement Training for the
Awam Amkpa Modern Actor
Mark Evans
2. Brecht and Critical Theory
Dialectics and Contemporary Aesthetics 11. The Politics of American Actor
Sean Carney Training
Edited by Ellen Margolis and Lissa
3. Science and the Stanislavsky Tyler Renaud
Tradition of Acting
Jonathan Pitches 12. Performing Embodiment in
Samuel Beckett’s Drama
4. Performance and Cognition Anna McMullan
Theatre Studies after the Cognitive Turn
Edited by Bruce McConachie and 13. The Provocation of the Senses in
F. Elizabeth Hart Contemporary Theatre
Stephen Di Benedetto
5. Theatre and Performance in
Digital Culture 14. Ecology and Environment in
From Simulation to Embeddedness European Drama
Matthew Causey Downing Cless
6. The Politics of New Media Theatre
Life®™
Gabriella Giannachi
7. Ritual and Event
Interdisciplinary Perspectives
Edited by Mark Franko
8. Memory, Allegory, and Testimony
in South American Theater
Upstaging Dictatorship
Ana Elena Puga
9. Crossing Cultural Borders
Through the Actor’s Work
Foreign Bodies of Knowledge
Cláudia Tatinge Nascimento
Ecology and Environment
in European Drama
Downing Cless
Tufts University
New York London
First published 2010
by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the UK
by Routledge
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Cless, Downing.
Ecology and environment in European drama / by Downing Cless.
p. cm.—(Routledge advances in theatre and performance studies ; 14)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. European drama—History and criticism. 2. Ecology in literature. 3. Nature in
literature. I. Title.
PN1650.E26C54 2010
809.2'936—dc22
2009045745
ISBN 0-203-85181-1 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN13: 978-0-415-80439-4 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-203-85181-4 (ebk)
For Alice

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
1 Introduction 1
2 Greek Tragedy 17
3 Aristophanes’ The Birds 30
4 From Menander to Moralities 54
5 Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus 69
6 Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest 91
7 From Renaissance to Romanticism 119
8 Ibsen and Chekhov 137
9 Giraudoux’s The Madwoman of Chaillot 154
10 Brecht, Beckett, and Beyond—A Conclusion 166
Notes 175
Bibliography 215
Index 229

Acknowledgments
Although most of my research and writing has occurred in recent years,
the roots of this book go back to my participation in the Tufts Environ-
mental Literacy Institute in 1988 and involvement in the creation of two
“eco-cabarets” with the Underground Railway Theater in the early 1990s.
Both of these experiences made me aware of how extensive and extreme the
crises were, so I became committed as an artist/scholar to what soon was
called eco-theatre. I am grateful to colleagues in TELI and URT who got
me started on this new focus in my career and life. The most far-reaching
acknowledgment is to my mother who guided me to an early appreciation
of nature, oddly enough enhanced by my mentors in dual graduate degrees
in sociology and theatre.
Over the last twenty years, I have received inspiration and ideas from
co-participants in panels and seminars at conferences—especially Theresa
J. May who has been at nearly all of them. Her enormous project, the
Earth Matters on Stage Festival and Symposium, has been so important
in substantiating an identity for ecologically related theatre. At the 2009
EMOS, I presented on my productions discussed in this book, and I ben-
efi ted greatly from insights shared by others in papers and performances,
especially Una Chaudhuri and Rachel Rosenthal. Parts of several chapters
have been revised after presentation at the American Society for Theatre
Research and the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment.
The fi fth chapter was published in an early version as “Ecologically Con-
juring Doctor Faustus” in the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism
XX, no. 2 (Spring 2006). For all the conversations and criticisms during
these years, I am very appreciative.
Valuing my ongoing support and colleagueship in the Department of
Drama and Dance at Tufts University, I also acknowledge specifi c aid
from the department’s and university’s research funds. Most of that went
toward student assistants who did bibliographic and biographical investi-
gation before I launched each chapter: Virginia Anderson, Clayton Drinko,
Megan Hammer, Stephen Kuehler, Michelle Kritselis, Jenna Kubly, Rachel
Mansfi eld, Catherine Morrow, Cara Pacifi co, Alissa Rubinstein, and Cath-
erine Vrtis. All were exceedingly helpful and worthy of thanks.