Ecology and Climate in Theatre and Australian Performance

Charting a history of theatrical resistance to environmental exploitation, this study places drama and theatrical performance staged in Australia within the context of international scholarship to address major concerns about changing ecological systems. Exploring the staging of calamities ranging from droughts and floods to forest fires and rising seas, it examines a strikingly diverse body of work that reflects the entanglement of socio-economic and natural forces leading to ecological damage and climate change. Weather phenomena become protagonists in plays by Jack Davis, Andrea James, Louis Nowra and Hannie Rayson, while mutant creatures manifest climate threats in Jill Orr's work, and performances by the Australian Indigenous Marrugeku and Bangarra Dance Theatre invite grief for immense losses. Featuring First Nations performance and the profound knowledge of biodiverse multispecies habitats it presents, this study challenges the ways in which socio-ecological disaster is called 'natural' and positioned outside human responsibility.

List of contents

Introduction; 1. From ecology to ecocriticism; 2. Drought escalates; 3. Endangered lands; 4. Flood damage; 5. Contaminating atmospheres; 6. Water restrictions; 7. Melting ice, rising seas; 8. Facing mass extinction; 9. Staging hot weather and fire; 10. Forms of future disaster; 11. Dramaturgies of dissent; References; Index.

About the author

Peta Tait is Emeritus Professor at La Trobe University, a playwright and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. Her twelve authored and edited books include the recently authored Forms of Emotion: Human to Nonhuman (2022).Denise Varney is Professor of Theatre Studies at the University of Melbourne and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. Her most recent book is Patrick White's Theatre: Australian Modernism on Stage 1960–2018 (2021).Lara Stevens is Lecturer in English at Charles Sturt University. She is co-author with Eddie Paterson of Performing Climates (2025), co-editor with Peta Tait and Denise Varney of Feminist Ecologies: Changing Environments in the Anthropocene (2018), and author of Anti-War Theatre After Brecht (2016).

Product details

• Authors: Stevens Lara, Peta Tait, Peta (La Trobe University Tait, Varney Denise
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 31.03.2026
• EAN: 9781009618267
• ISBN: 978-1-0-0961826-7
• No. of pages: 280
• Series: Cambridge Studies in Modern Theatre
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Art > Theatre, ballet; Fiction: special features, Australia, DRAMA / General, Theatre Studies, Environmentalist thought & ideology, Later 20th century c 1950 to c 1999, Literary studies: from c 1900 -, Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000, Literary studies: plays & playwrights, Environmentalist thought and ideology, Early 21st century c 2000 to c 2050, Plays, Playscripts, Literary studies: plays and playwrights, Literary studies: from c 2000, Narrative theme: Environmental issues / the natural world, Modern and contemporary plays / drama