The initiative for this Special Issue of Critical Stages / Scènes critiques arises from our shared and sustained interest in the interdisciplinary, and, indeed, transdisciplinary Environmental Humanities that we have always perceived as a particularly compelling and dynamic site within which to formulate and locate our work. It is difficult to conceptualise how this might not be the case for socially-engaged scholarship and active citizenship, as the world is experiencing a climate crisis of extraordinary, and, indeed, dramatic – in all possible senses of the word – scale and iteration.

Vicky Angelaki and Elizabeth Sakellaridou, Editors for The IATC journal/Revue de l’AICT – December/Décembre 2022: Issue No 26

The latest edition of Critical Stages / Scènes critiques explores the intersection of ecology and theatre. Within this edition, you’ll find contributions from CSPA Staff and many friends of the CSPA!

Table of Contents of this Edition

Editorial Note: Transforming (Im)Possibilities to Realities / Note éditoriale : Transformer les (im)possibilités en réalités
Savas Patsalidis, Editor-in-Chief

Special Topic

On Theatre and Ecology at Critical Junctions

Guest Editors: Vicky Angelaki and Elizabeth Sakellaridou (Greece)

• On Theatre and Ecology at Critical Junctions: Editors’ Introduction – Vicky Angelaki and Elizabeth Sakellaridou
• Theatre, Ecology and the Secret Life of Naturalism – Andrew Burton
• Hanging in Τhere—Theatre Under the Sal Trees – Asha Kuthari Chaudhuri
• Human Achievements and Transgressions of the Natural Order in Greek Drama: The Literary Ancient Roots of a Real Current Crisis – Kaiti (Aikaterini) Diamantakou
• The Kinnari Ecological Theatre Project in Southeast Asia – Catherine Diamond
• Reassessing the Roles and Values of Art Documentation in the Context of Environmental Practice – Gabriella Giannachi
• Gary Owen’s Iphigenia in Splott: The Anthropocene as Tragedy – Stef Kerrigan
• Doppelgangster’s Everybody Loses: A Dramaturgy for Extinction – Tobias Manderson-Galvin, Tom Payne
• Bodies of Corn, Maguey and Water: Performing Latin American Environmentalisms – Ana Martínez
• Ecodramaturgy and the Genesis of the EMOS Ecodrama Festival – Theresa May
• Rasa as an Ecologically Sustainable Aesthetic Theory – Erin B. Mee
• “Mundane” Performance: Theatre Outdoors and Earthly Pleasures – Evelyn O’Malley, Cathy Turner, Giselle Garcia
• Ecology and the Ethical Milieu: A Levinasian Ecological Reading of Joe White’s Mayfly – Martin Riedelsheimer
• Global Networked Ecoscenography: Creating Sustainable Worlds for Theatre Through International Collaboration – Tessa Rixon, Ian Garrett, Tanja Beer
• My Green Shakespeares – Maggie Rose
• Sink or Swim: Performing the Iniquities of the Climate Crisis – Lara Stevens
• Gender, Ecology, and Theatre of Catastrophe: The Apocalyptic Vision and the Deconstruction of Western Modernity in Satoshi Miyagi’s Demon Lake – Tomoka Tsukamoto, Ted Motohashi

Essays

Editor: Yana Meerzon (Canada)

• Performing Solidarity: 50 Years of Jana Natya Manch – Aparna Mahiyaria
• Marginalisation, pollution et migration dans la pièce À la périphérie de Sedef Ecer : défis et perspectives du questionnement écologique – Christina A. Oikonomopoulou
• “I Keep Thinking My Way to Ness”: Emplacement(s) on the Anglian Coast – Milo Harries
• Rapture: A Study in Pathos and Scenography – Anna Cordingley
• Looking into the Ecological Footprints of Michail Marmarinos’s Trackers by Sophocles – Vicky Manteli
• Wait Until Dark: Α Study on the Theme of Fear in Theatre – Tyrone Grima
• The Seven Principles of Leave No Trace Dramaturgy – Katalin Trencsényi
• Resituating the Writer’s Workshop: Collective Strategies for Playwriting Pedagogy – Karen Morash
• 2021 Space Olympics: Towards a Science Fiction Dramaturgy – Sanja Vodovnik
• Walking Towards a Post-theatrical Experience: Online Mediation and Digital Immediacy in Pandemic Performance – Octavian Saiu

National Reports

Editor: Savas Patsalidis (Greece)

• Digital Theatre Experiments in Latvia: The Case of Audio Productions – Ieva Rodiņa

Interviews

Editor: Savas Patsalidis (Greece)

• Climate Crisis Theatre by Youth for Adults: Interview with Kristina Watt Villegas – Matthew Venner
• Theatre Regenerates itself Constantly, and Even More so in Periods of Crises: Interview with Barbara Regondi – Savas Patsalidis
• “My job is to help create a process so that we can deliver the product as a team”:  Interview with Ken Cerniglia – Steve Capra
• Showing Without Going: Interview with Ant Hampton – Maria Ristani

Performance Reviews

Editor: Matti Linnavuori (Finland)

• Canada’s Shaw Festival Has Become a Showcase for African-American Playwrights – Martin Morrow
• The Horseman Rides On – Patricia Keeney
• Symbolic Animals as Characters at Uzo-iyi Festival, Umuoji – Ngozi Udengwu and Ikechukwu Erojikwe
• Erinnerung Redux : Méandre mémoriel du port et critique post-coloniale – John Yves Pinder
• BITEF Provokes Issues on Ecology, Jobs, Women – Yun-Cheol Kim
• Intimacy as Offering – Tina Perić
• Alcestis’s Drying Rack, or How to Live your Myth in Greece – George Sampatakakis
• Choral Democracy in Persians Re-read – Antonia Tsamouris
• Ariane and Bluebeard: West Edge Opera’s Puzzle in a Dream – Lissa Tyler Renaud
• A Greek Intermedial Hamlet Tortured by Memory – Gilda Tentorio
• Comment se mettre dans la peau d’un Juif quand on est Arabe à Jérusalem ? – Selim Lander
• FAME, un premier opus propice aux discussions – Caroline Châtelet
• Hedda’s Hell – Andrew Friedman
• No Experiments: Virgin Lab Fest Loses Steam – Katrina Stuart Santiago
• Pilsen Remembers: A Mix of Dreams and Politics – Matti Linnavuori
• Code Blue: The Politics of Melancholia – Paraskevi Tektonidou
• Tartuffe as a Debate About Family and Society Today – Kamelia Nikolova

Book Reviews

Editor: Don Rubin (Canada)

• Rehearsing Shakespeare: Ways of Approaching Shakespeare in Practice for Actors, Directors and Trainers – Don Rubin
• Phèdre, D’Euripide à Racine, de Sénèque à Sarah Kane – Alba Simina Stanciu
• A History of Romanian Theatre from Communism to Capitalism: Children of a Restless Time – Jozefina Komporaly
• Antonin Artaud : Écrits sur le théâtre – Selim Lander

Plays

Editor: Critical Stages/Scènes critiques

• CRIME AlwaysArmUkraine – Ester Bol
• On the Rightlessness for Compassion or How to Redeem an Unredeemable Guilt – Yana Meerzon
• Town Hall – Caridad Svich

Focus: Ukraine

Editor: Critical Stages/Scènes critiques

• Living in the War: the Ukrainian Theatre Since the Russian Invasion – Hanna Veselovska
• Invading Ukraine, Declaring War Against Russian Culture – Marina Davydova

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CSPA Related Contributions

Global Networked Ecoscneography: Creating Sustainable Worlds for Theatre Though International Collaboration.

• CSPA Director Ian Garrett is co-author with collaborators Tessa Rixon and Tanja Beer

Global Networked Ecoscenography: Creating Sustainable Worlds for Theatre Through International Collaboration

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“Mundane” Performance: Theatre Outdoors and Earthly Pleasures

• Rising CSPA Quarterly Editor Evelyn O’Malley is co-author with collaborators Cathy turner and Giselle Garcia on

“Mundane” Performance: Theatre Outdoors and Earthly Pleasures

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Ecodramaturgy and the Genesis of the EMOS Ecodrama Festival

• Friend of the CSPA, Theresa J. May

Ecodramaturgy and the Genesis of the EMOS Ecodrama Festival

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Town Hall

• Friend of the CSPA and Co-founder of the Climate Change Theatre Action Caridad Svich

Town Hall

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About the Editors

*Vicky Angelaki is Professor in English Literature at Mid Sweden University (Department of Humanities and Social Sciences). She was previously based in the United Kingdom, where she held full-time, permanent roles at Birmingham City University; University of Birmingham; University of Reading. Major publications include the monographs Martin Crimp’s Power Plays: Intertextuality, Sexuality, Desire (2022); Theatre & Environment (2019); Social and Political Theatre in 21st-Century Britain: Staging Crisis (2017); The Plays of Martin Crimp: Making Theatre Strange (2012) and the edited collection Contemporary British Theatre: Breaking New Ground (2013; 2016). She co-edits the series Adaptation in Theatre and Performance (Palgrave Macmillan, with Kara Reilly). She is currently completing the research project Performing Interspaces: Social Fluidities in Contemporary Theatre, funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (Sweden). The project will result in an Open Access monograph, contracted with Palgrave Macmillan/Springer. 

**Elizabeth Sakellaridou is Professor Emerita of Theatre Studies at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. She has taught and lectured widely on contemporary theatre in various academic institutions in Greece, elsewhere in Europe, and in the USA. She has published on contemporary British and European theatre, classical and modern Greek theatre, performance theory, cultural and gender studies, and, more recently, the hybrid space of performance phenomenology. Her publications include Pinter’s Female Portraits; Contemporary Women’s Theatre (in Greek); Theatre, Aesthetics, Politics (in Greek); and numerous articles and chapters published in international journals and collected volumes respectively. She is also a critic, dramaturg and translator of dramatic works from English into Greek and vice versa.