Guest seminar: Theatre and Environment: Crisis, Society, Representation

About the seminar

The presentation pursues, through performance studies and comparative analysis, a rigorous engagement with concerns emerging in the environmental arts and humanities in the recent and contemporary period. The main focus is placed in the European space and the relationship between environment and theatre. As the talk will argue, driven by an interdisciplinary discussion of key examples of performances, plays, playwrights and visual artists, the relationship between theatre and environment, or environment and theatre, is one of symbiosis and mutual embeddedness.

Examples that will be discussed in the presentation include the work of Olafur Eliasson; the performance lectures Ten Billion and 2071 (Royal Court Theatre and Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg); the performances of the plays Not the End of the World (Kein Weltuntergang) and Lungs (Atmen)  at the Schaubühne Berlin, as well as contemporary approaches to the work of Henrik Ibsen, in the context of the enduring legacies, impacts and innovations of the Modern Breakthrough within the Scandinavian, but also the international realm.

Short bio:

Vicky Angelaki is based in Comparative Literature, Mälardalen University (from January 2024). Earlier roles include: Mid Sweden University (Professor, English), University of Reading (Associate Professor, Film, Theatre and Television), University of Birmingham (Lecturer, Drama and Theatre Arts) and Birmingham City University (Lecturer, School of English). She completed her PhD at Royal Holloway, University of London in 2009. Major publications include the monographs Martin Crimp’s Power Plays: Intertextuality, Sexuality, Desire (Routledge, 2022); Theatre & Environment (Bloomsbury, 2019); Social and Political Theatre in 21st-Century Britain: Staging Crisis (Bloomsbury, 2017); The Plays of Martin Crimp: Making Theatre Strange (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) and the edited collection Contemporary British Theatre: Breaking New Ground (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013; 2016). She co- edits the series Adaptation in Theatre and Performance (Palgrave Macmillan, with Kara Reilly). Her most recently completed project is the monograph Environment and Fluidity in Contemporary Theatre: Staging Interspaces (Palgrave Macmillan, Open Access), proceeding from the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond Sabbatical project Föreställning av mellanrum: social flyktighet i samtidens teater.

How to attend the seminar

It is possible to attend the seminar from Dacke in Växjö and via Zoom. Contact us at ims@lnu.se if you want to participate via Zoom, or sign up for our external email list to receive automatic updates on our events (zoom link and additional information are sent out one week in advance).

Photo: 'Aurora - Connecting Senses’, Cristina Pop-Tiron & Signe Kjær Jensen