Re-creating the homeplace: more-than-human constellations and the political consequences of storytelling in central Appalachian community-based theatre

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper details ethnographic observation of the development and performance of a community-based theatre production in eastern Kentucky, titled The Homecoming. Participating in community-based theatre provides community members an opportunity to collaboratively, creatively tell the story of their place. In Central Appalachia, where the artform has over four decades of history, community-based plays regularly push back on damaging stereotypes and actively encourage open dialogue. Productions both highlight and demonstrate community members’ agency to imagine – and bring about – possible futures for what eastern Kentuckians call their ‘homeplace’. I mobilize literature from feminist geography, more-than-human geography, and Appalachian studies to frame an analysis of my ethnographic findings. I contend that the ‘homeplace’ emerges in the interplay between humans and the material world. Coal, pharmaceutical opioids, and organic vegetables populate and shape political identities, opinions, and dialogues, as political contention is navigated through narratives. I offer ‘constellations’ as a theoretical framing to help us think through these more-than-human politics, emphasizing human storytelling as one of many forces that shape those politics. I argue that the collaborative, reflexive process of storytelling utilized by community-based theatre has political and material consequence, changing how participants perceive and interact with themselves, each other, and their shared homeplace.