Ecological Performance and ‘Settler Creep’

Abstract

The penetration of climate change into our individual and collective consciousness(es) has been a slow process. Using Una Chaudhuri’s (1994) initial demand for a new era of ecological theatre (‘“There must be a lot of fish in that lake”: Toward an ecological theater’, Theater 25(1): 23–31) and Carl Lavery’s (2018) follow-up volume that asked ‘what can theatre do ecologically’ as a springboard (Performance and Ecology: What can theatre do? Abingdon and New York, NY: Routledge), Melanie Kloetzel’s contribution to this issue, ‘Ecological Performance and “Settler Creep”: Making space to resist invasion’ explores the intersection of performance research and the ecological and climate crises. Borrowing from Heather Davis-Fisch’s (2017) coining of ‘settler creep’ (in Laura Levin and Marlis Schweitzer (eds) Performance Studies in Canada, Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, pp. 67–89), Kloetzel argues that attempts to create an ‘ecological performance’ have floundered due to the inability to effectually address the modernity/coloniality narrative that undergirds the increasing devastation of the planet. Kloetzel starts by examining the hegemonic grip of this narrative with the support of Indigenous scholar Vanessa Andreotti (2021), after which she charts two speculative pathways through the theoretical stew of contemporary performance research (‘The task of education as we confront the potential for social and ecological collapse’, Ethics and Education 16(2): 143–58 and ‘Depth education and the possibility of GCE otherwise’, Globalisation, Societies and Education 19(4): 496–509). This charting reveals the slippery invasion of ‘settler creep’ into our efforts, hampering our ability both to reckon with and uproot modernity/coloniality’s ecocidal narratives and to find decolonial and ecologically-grounded counterhegemonic narratives. Yet, by examining tactics forwarded by geographers Sarah de Leeuw and Sarah Hunt (2018 ‘Unsettling decolonizing geographies’, Geography Compass 12(7): 1–14), as well as by touching on the embodied practices developed by Kloetzel and Phil Smith (2021 Covert: A handbook: 30 movement meditations for resisting invasion, Bridport: Triarchy Press), the artist digital residency program created by Vancouver-based Gesturing Toward Decolonial Futures collective, and TRAction’s turbulent journey to create the Climate Art Web, Kloetzel shows how efforts to make space for confronting modernity/coloniality’s hegemonic effects may offer a generative method to resist the creep.

Notes

1 While Theresa May’s newer volume also offers the grand claim that theatre has the ‘potential to assist in mending broken relations (with the land and others) and to inspire ecologically responsible action’ (2021: 2), its additional focus on the foundational aspect of storytelling, including a discussion of Manifest Destiny and its integration with the violence of settler colonialism, is valuable for unpacking the impact of narrative for justifying such violence.

2 Via this amended inroad, the authors – particularly Dee Heddon (2018) and Carl Lavery (2018b) – tout the value of failure, decentring and disappointment for an ecological theatre, noting the need to push humans outside conventional viewing modes to see humanity’s

3 Lisa Woynarski’s Ecodramaturgies: Theatre, performance and climate change (2020) provides a more focused reading of how inequalities, often associated with a myriad of intersectional oppressions, get intensified by climate change; this volume offers a welcome addition to the field as we consider how performative interventions can genuinely destabilize modernity’s narrative.

4 This muscle has not been trained, in part, because I – like too many White Eurocentric scholars – saw my research position as ‘universal’, that is, one that did not need ‘detailing’ before launching into analysis and conclusions. I am indebted to the work of Indigenous scholars Deborah McGregor and Jean-Paul Restoule, along with ally researcher Rochelle Johnston (2018), who, in examining Indigenous research, underscore a researcher’s accountability to what, who and how they research.

5 For more on this process of ‘politicized situating’ in a performing arts educational context, see Kloetzel (2023).

6 A number of Indigenous groups marry practice and policy, story and law. Again, while I do not want to romanticize or instrumentalize in any way, I will underscore that there are practices found around the world that do not detach the body and bodily practice from law or political enactment – in short, practices like the potlatch in which songs and dances enact obligations, relationships, rights and jurisprudence to land and all kin (human and more-than-human). For more information on this inseparability, see Anker (2021); also, it is key to consider the warning by Vanessa Watts (2016) that ripping Indigenous people away from places where practices have specific meaning has been crippling to the continuation and significance of such practices.