ECOSCENA. Ecological Drammaturgies.
The representation of environmental themes in the performing arts: a semiotic analysis
The general objective of the project is to address the theme of ecological transition, and more broadly the environmental issue, and the impact of its narration from an original and underexplored perspective: that of theatre and the performing arts.
The proposed research is based on a survey of the main Italian and European environmentally-themed works produced in the last decade, and on an analysis of the linguistic and semiotic features (Elam 1988; De Marinis 1978, 1985, 2003) that make some of these works more or less capable of overcoming the impasse of the "un-narratability" of a crisis that, as many scholars and intellectuals have pointed out, is also a crisis of imagination.
In his introduction to the Italian edition of a play by American writer Miranda Rose Hall titled A Play for the Living in a Time of Extinction, Telmo Pievani asks why scientific concerns about climate change fail to mobilize us. In other words, why don’t we feel called to action, even though we know that the impact of climate change could be fatal for our planet and for all humankind? Because we lack imagination, the philosopher suggests — and it is no coincidence that the environmental crisis has yet to give rise to a fully formed novel.
The same question is posed in very similar terms in a famous essay titled We Are the Weather, in which author Jonathan Safran Foer argues that telling the story of climate collapse without slipping into science fiction is one of the most complex challenges for an artist, because it is a crisis that is too vast and too slow to be distilled into a “good story” — and a good story is essential to transform something we know into something we believe in and are moved to act upon.
The research involves the collection and analysis, using semiotic methodologies, of various forms of dramaturgical writing starting from performative texts (both published and unpublished), the gathering of interviews and testimonies from playwrights, directors, and audience members, and the systematization — and dissemination — of the scattered reflections developed internationally on the relationship between the arts and current political-social-environmental issues.