Abstract
ABSTRACTHuman conflict is a raw material for theatre, and theatre is co-determinant with how conflict is known. Conflicts that are about nature, environments, elements and entities, ‘environmental conflicts’, are pervasive, intractable, characterised by uncertainty and the absence of lasting solutions. This essay proposes that the theatre imagination and praxis have the potential not to merely represent adversarial conflicts, but to show the qualities, processes and affects of conflicts. Too, ecocriticism can consider conflict as a dimension equivalent to ethics, politics and aesthetics. Henrik Ibsen’s 1882 play An Enemy of the People provides an exemplar, but one which confirms the prejudices associated with environmental conflict and which ossifies the theatre imagination. Postdramatic theatre has turned away from conflict. In contrast, Moira Fradinger’s interpretation of Sophocles’ Antigone offers a symptomatic and systemic reading informative for performance ecocriticism. Environmental conflict is a condition of life with new forms emerging that only theatre might express.
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