Performative Landscapes As Conceptual Ecological Environments

Provided by the author(s) and NUI Galway in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite the published version when available. Title Re-place: performative landscapes as conceptual ecological environments Author(s) FitzGerald, Lisa Publication Date 2016-09-27 Item record http://hdl.handle.net/10379/6049 Downloaded 2021-09-26T08:24:41Z Some rights reserved. For more information, please see the item record link above. Re-Place: Performative Landscapes as Conceptual Ecological Environments. Author Lisa FitzGerald, M. Res. A dissertation submitted to English Department, School of Humanities College of Arts, Social Sciences, and Celtic Studies National University of Ireland, Galway In Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2016 Supervisor Professor Patrick Lonergan Table of Contents 1) Abstract iv 2) Acknowledgements v 3) List of Illustrations vi 4) Chapter One 1.1 Thesis Introduction 1 Conceptual Ecological Environments 1 1.2 Methodology 6 Culture 9 Nature 10 1.3 Literature Review 14 Ecocriticism 16 Ecocriticism and Space and Place in Irish Studies 37 1.4 Conclusion 60 5) Chapter Two Conceptualizing the West 2.1 Introduction 63 2.2 Riders to the Sea 65 2.3 The Well of Saints 73 2.4 Druid/Synge 86 2.5 Conclusion 96 i 6) Chapter Three Beckett’s Fragmented Environments 3.1 Introduction 99 3.2 All That Fall 100 3.3 Urban Sustainability and Not I 114 3.4 Pan Pan’s Staging of Beckett’s Radio Plays 127 3.5 Conclusion 135 7) Chapter Four Conceptualizing the North 4.1 Introduction 137 4.2 Translations 142 Mapping 145 Hedge Schools 151 4.3 Exile and the North in Making History 156 4.4 Ouroboros/Making History 161 4.5 Conclusion 167 ii 8) Chapter Five Digital Environments 5.1 Introduction 172 5.2 Druid Archive as Conceptual Environment 180 5.3 The Ongoing Performativity of Digital Documentation 184 5.4 Material Networks: Contesting Ephemerality 192 5.5 Conclusion 198 9) Overall Conclusions 6.1 Introduction 200 6.2 Reflecting on Transformations: Careers. Disciplines and Methods 207 6.3 Recommendations for Future Research 209 10) Works Cited 212 iii Abstract This dissertation aims to integrate Irish theatre history into a wider discourse of the environmental humanities. Combining material ecocritical thinking and theories of space and place, this thesis contends firstly, that grouping the selected theatrical, radiophonic, and digital landscapes under the umbrella term conceptual ecological environments will offer a way to examine disparate landscapes thematically. Secondly, that this thematic amalgamation, with its emphasis on inclusivity, bridges the division of nature and culture. That is, it can challenge (at least on a textual and performative level) the human/nonhuman dynamic that has facilitated the collapse of nature in the face of anthropocentrism. I intend to read the performances (and the corresponding digital documentation) as a material response to the environment it depicts, examining, as Serenella Iovino writes, “matter as a text, as a site of narrativity” (“Stories” 451). In examining the environmental rather than the cultural in these plays, this thesis challenges the polarization of both. iv Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor, Professor Patrick Lonergan, whose support and advice has been invaluable over the course of this research project. It has been a privilege to have you oversee, critique, and offer stimulating and productive analysis. My growth and development as a scholar, over the last four years, is a testament to your mentorship. This research would not have been possible without the financial support of the Digital Arts and Humanities (DAH) PhD program. The opportunity that I have benefited from, to study, travel, liaise with scholars, and present my ongoing research is thanks to the generosity of this funding body. Special thanks to Dr Trish McGuire and Dr Justin Tonra for reading over initial drafts and giving me invaluable feedback. My gratitude goes to Dr Bernie McCarthy and Dr Emma Bidwell of West Cork College for their help with the proof-reading of this material. I would like to thank the staff at the Moore Institute for Research in the Humanities and Social Studies, in particular, Martha Shaughnessy and Kate Thornhill for their help and support. Finally, I am grateful for the endless support and resolute goodwill of my family through many years in university. Special appreciation goes to my parents, Matthias, David, Maria, Emma, Breda, the wee baby Séamus, and – in the non-anthropocentric spirit of this study – extended to my lovely dog Molly. I am indebted to you all. v List of Illustrations Fig 1: Opening scene from Riders to the Sea. DruidSynge: The Plays of John Millington Synge. Screen Dir. Rónán Fox. Wildfire Films/Druid, 2007. DVD. Fig 2: Beginning of Act 2, The Playboy of the Western World. Still from Wildfire/Druid documentary, 2007. Fig 3: Set for Pan Pan’s All That Fall. Photographer: Ros Kavanagh, 2011. Fig 4: Set for Pan Pan’s Embers. Photographer: Ros Kavanagh, 2013. Fig 5: Castle Hill, Dungannon. Outdoor scene looking over the Sperrin Mountains. Ouroboros Archive. vi Chapter 1 1.1 Introduction This dissertation aims to integrate Irish theatre history into a wider discourse of the environmental humanities. Combining material ecocritical thinking and theories of space and place, this thesis contends firstly, that grouping the selected theatrical, radiophonic, and digital landscapes1 under the umbrella term conceptual ecological environments will offer a way to examine disparate performative spaces thematically. Secondly, that this thematic amalgamation, with its emphasis on inclusivity, bridges the division of nature and culture. That is, it can challenge (at least on a textual and performative level) the human/nonhuman dynamic that has facilitated the collapse of nature in the face of anthropocentrism2. I intend to read the performances (and the corresponding digital documentation) as a material response to the environment it depicts, examining, as Serenella Iovino writes, “matter as a text, as a site of narrativity” (“Stories” 451). In examining the environmental rather than the cultural in these plays, this thesis challenges the polarization of both. Conceptual Ecological Environments Before continuing I would like to define conceptual ecological environments as it is the central idea around which I build the study. Ecology is the holistic 1 For the purposes of this dissertation, I define landscape as place framed by human culture. This definition of landscape is not without controversy and I realise that there is a nature outside of the cultural realm. For the purposes of this study, I am focusing on nature as conceived and performed by mankind rather than the natural world that exists outside of that remit. 2 One of the reasons that digital materiality is included in this dissertation is that it challenges anthropocentric narratives, as Rosi Braidotti has argued, “contemporary technologically mediated bodies…marks a shift from anthropocentrism, in favour of a new emphasis on the mutual interdependence of material, biocultural, and symbolic forces in the making of social and political practices” (“The Politics” 203-4). My dissertation emphasizes (in line with Bradiotti’s point about interdependence) a more biocentric reading of performative texts. 1 understanding of the interconnectedness between all entities.3 The analyses in this thesis are ecologically driven: that is, they aspire to capture the human and nonhuman aspects of the plays and performances. The term, ecology, comes from the Greek oikos (meaning house) and logos (meaning study). I have used the term ecological environments as it reflects this breaking down of boundaries. Hubert Zapf has argued that “the sense of a shared and complex world is the fundamental impulse of ecological thought” (55). I intend to embrace this dictum of thinking ecologically (and the materialist implications of a shared and complex world) and read the following performances as material rather than cultural projects. That includes all the material generated in its production, from the authors’ first description of landscape, to the medium of transmission, to the environments that new types of digital documentation create.4 The term ecological is important as a tool for all-inclusivity. Timothy Morton writes that to think ecologically is to have a “radical openness” to an immeasurably diverse collection of factors (Ecological 15). These are the parameters of the term, ecological, in this research. In accepting the immeasurability of the myriad actors in creativity, I acknowledge that the scope would be too large to capture all participants but, nevertheless, I hope to capture the spirit of total inclusivity. I will be using the term, conceptual ecological environment, because there are two types of environment being studied in this thesis: the aestheticized environments in the plays (such as Ballybeg), and the total environment of that play’s production (such as the radiophonic aspect of All That Fall). Embracing inclusivity of all material as part of the play’s environment means that the 3 It is worth noting that Greg Garrard has critiqued the discourse around “pastoral ecology” writing that the “metaphor of Nature as a harmonious and stable machine remained at the heart of the new science of ecology as it emerged in the early twentieth century, and shaped the rhetoric of later environmental movements even as scientific ecologists became increasingly sceptical of the ‘balance of nature’” (Ecocriticism 56). 4 This thesis seeks to establish an environmental narrative of materiality – whilst not suggesting that these playwrights deliberately sought to create this type of narrative. 2 human aspect is just a constitutional element of the play’s production. Conceptual art is so named because its ideas take precedence over its aesthetic concerns. Conceptual environments work the same way in that the idea that the landscape generates is more important (for the purposes of this research) than the landscape itself.

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