Volume of essays on Southeast Asian performance and ecology

Editors Kirstin Pauka, Dennis Gupa, and Catherine Diamond are calling for contributions for a volume of essays on the contributions made by Southeast Asian live performances of theatre, dance, puppetry, and performance art to further a healthy engagement with nature.

Southeast Asian ecology and people’s relations to it are distinctly different from those in secular, modern, scientifically-driven post-Cartesian Europe and America. The editors wish to see how Southeast Asian contemporary performance deals with environmental challenges conceptually, aesthetically and pedagogically, and whether it offers a unique perspective to the global discussion.

Therefore, they invite papers in English from 5,000 to 7,000 words, and specially encourage scholars and artists from the Southeast Asian region to contribute. 

Possible topics include: 

• Performance as environmental advocacy, community activism, and protest
• Interrelationships between Indigenous views and modern performance
• The potential of ritual in new ecological performances
• How gender informs relations with nature and how nature informs the understanding of
• gender
• Performance as effective pedagogy for eliciting behavioural change toward the natural
• environment
• Intercultural collaborations between local, international, and cross-border artists
• Collaborations with foreign and local environmental NGOs
• Configurations of science and culture in ecological performance
• Digital performance and the natural world
• The Impact of climate change on performance

Open call details

Deadline: 15 October 2023