Moderator: Kailin Wright
Location: Zoom Room A
Sea Country and Saltwater Dramaturgies in Australia
In this presentation, I turn to the remote town of Broome in north-western Australia to analyze a vital and growing body of Indigenous and intercultural performance in which local seascapes manifest as complex multispecies communities and enduring sites of eco-cultural belonging. Until very recently, performance-making in Australia has paid little attention to marine environments, despite the persistent popularity of beach culture in national self-fashioning and the rich tradition of sea-centred iconography in literature and visual arts since the early days of European settlement. Mainstream theatre has been particularly slow to approach seascapes as ecological sites rather than merely suggestive backdrops to human dramas. However, some breakthrough works have been staged in festivals and state theatres in the last decade, prompted by widening concerns about climate change and sea level rise. That shift constitutes just one part of an increasingly diverse repertoire of embodied arts that are finding ways to convey Australian shorelines’ material character and complexity as distinctive sites shaped by myriad human and non-human actors in the context of settler colonialism. My primary case examples are works by Marrugeku and Theatre Kimberley, each anchored in distinct ways to the Indigenous concept of ‘Sea Country,’ which I will explore in performative and ecological terms. Broadly, my paper aims to sketch the contours of an emergent practice of saltwater dramaturgy adapted to the pluricultural societies of Australia’s ‘top end’ while also connecting with urgent global debates about human stewardship of the earth’s ecosystems.
Helen Gilbert
Helen Gilbert is Professor of Theatre at Royal Holloway University of London and author or editor of several volumes in postcolonial theatre and performance studies, including, most recently, Marrugeku: Telling That Story (2021) and In the Balance: Indigeneity, Performance, Globalization (2017). Her research explores embodied arts and activism in marginalized societies in Australia, the Americas, South Africa and the Pacific, with a current focus on environmental issues, notably climate change and associated changes to ocean habitats. In 2015, she was awarded a Humboldt Prize for career achievements in international theatre and performance scholarship.
Attuning to the St. Lawrence Shoreline Through Multimedia Performance
Scholarship on immersion in simulated environments often emphasizes cognitive immersion or the suspension of disbelief in an illusionistic space that simulates reality, making the fact of mediation disappear in the experience. Grounded in post-dramatic multimedia performance, this paper will focus instead on immersive storytelling that activates the senses in a physiological experience. Rather than transporting the spectator into a fictional imaginary space, the post-dramatic multimedia performance aims to make participants aware of their presence in the here and now (Klich and Scheer, 128).1
This paper describes an immersive experience that integrates virtual reality (VR) play into a live participatory performance that takes place outdoors. This game is played in a park on the shores of the St. Lawrence River and, at key moments, inside VR environments that simulate that same park. The game aims to attune participants to the species in that waterfront ecosystem.
This paper asks: (how) can immersive and interactive games produce sensory, embodied knowledge and increase environmental awareness? It proposes that in current urbanized cultures, immersive storytelling can allow us to reimagine relationships between humans and other species and develop deeper connections with natural environments.
Natalie Doonan, Assistant Professor, Department of Communication, Université de Montréal
BIO: Natalie Doonan is an artist, writer and educator. Her research focuses on embodiment, food and place. Natalie’s work has been shown in exhibitions and festivals across Canada and internationally. Her writing has appeared in professional and peer-reviewed art and food culture publications. She is Assistant Professor in digital creation at l’Université de Montréal.