ABSTRACT
This chapter asserts that to move the theatre in the direction of the activist change that our climate crisis requires, and to better speak to our future students, we need new tools. One of these should be a new theory of mimesis rooted in posthuman sensibilities that will reinvigorate our understanding of the nature and function of the stage, the composition and performance of plays, the work of the actor, director and designer, the body of dramatic literature and the study of theatre history. The chapter contributes to that task by touching on familiar theatrical notions of mimesis and blending them with contemporary counterparts from literary ecocriticism, philosophy and science. It proposes that mimesis is more appropriately described as an activity that is coproduced, in conjunction with nonhuman kin, and that its uses in a transformed theatrical milieu will lead to new understandings of performativity, storying and ethical representation. By allowing the nonhuman their due as active participants in our creative and scholarly production, we reinvigorate mimesis’s revolutionary potential and flood the stage with a host of collaborators from which to learn and with whom to interface.
