“Climate Activism as Ritual Drama” (Performance Studies Working Group)

Presented by the Performance Studies Working Group

 

About the talk: Can the disruptive direct actions of radical climate activist groups like Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil be seen as unrecognized forms of ritual?  This talk proposes that climate direct action is fueled by a ritual impetus—the desire to enact symbolic challenge to the dominant order, to participate in cultural transformation in an embodied, psychically energized fashion, and to be initiated into a new, conditionally obedient relationship with societal power.  Blockades, occupations, and other disruptive acts by climate activists are both mythopoetic and dramaturgical.  They are always marked by symbolic excess, throwing off surplus meanings beyond the “messaging” and “optics” intended by their organizers.

 

About the speaker: Daniel Larlham is a theatre-maker and performance researcher with an MFA in Acting from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and a PhD in Theatre from Columbia University. Daniel has held academic appointments at UC Berkeley’s Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, Yale University’s Theater Studies Program, and Saint Mary’s College of California’s Performing Arts Department. Daniel’s current research interests include performance, ecology, and environmental justice; activism as ritual; psycho-physical and transpersonal acting techniques; and drama and psychology.

 

Zoom link: https://yale.zoom.us/j/99647133038