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Authors
Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
The failure of existing efforts in tackling environmental and man-made catastrophes
reiterates the need for transformative understandings about eco-issues. However, the ecoproblem
is a massively and complexly distributed phenomenon, which needs to be localized
for the public’s consciousness before their perceptions about it and resilience against it can
be mobilized. As such, this dissertation studies how immersive theatre can be used as a
transformative strategy to raise eco-awareness. Reflecting on the theories and literatures in
the fields of ecocriticism, performance studies and immersive theatre, and the working
practices of current immersive performances, this study develops a relational model which
situates the bodies of spectators at the collapsing aesthetic, territorial and anthropocentric
boundaries in the eco-discourse. It argues that based on the affective and emancipating
natures of immersive theatre, the tactics of creating intimate encounters in the performance,
guiding spectators to perform reciprocal agencies, and allowing a capacity for weakness and
negative feelings may culminate to both enhance the immersive experience of the spectators
and open up a space for eco-awareness to emerge. These immersive tactics treat the bodies
of the spectators as aesthetic sites of sensory exchanges and empathetic imaginations, from
which personal connections and perceptual transformations may be enabled. Addressing
intercorporeality and intersubjectivity, an eco-conscious immersive theatre may then
collapse the boundaries between onlookers and stakeholders, human and non-human through
highlighting one’s immersiveness in both the theatre and the ecosphere. To exemplify the
above, Rimini Protokoll’s World Climate Change Conference (2014) and Riverbed
Theatre’s Hypnosis (2017) will be studied as the major cases of the dissertation. They will
be analyzed with the guidance of knowledge from the fields of ecocriticism and immersive
theatre, and concepts such as immersion, affect and emancipation
Description
Keywords
Immersive theatre Eco-awareness Intimacy Theatrical agency Weak theatre Intercorporeality Empathy Affect Emancipation