ABSTRACT
Unconsciously ecoconscious theatre has the power to provoke strong reactions in its spectators, all the while frugally containing its resource usage in a tight grip, no matter how much the emotional runaway warming system expands. The beauty of such productions is that each system drives the other. Far from being a worthy, pedestrian idea mired in good intentions, ‘performing responsibly’ (Kershaw) with the environment adds to the intensity of the experience for actors and audiences. In this book, bicycle-driven theatrical productions are pivotal to such theatrical ideas, but bicycles are not required to achieve the heights of ecotheatrical engineering in the imagination attained in productions, such as Stan’s Cafe’s Home of the Wriggler. They are a paradigm for the idea of intrinsic responsibility that appears in aspects of several other productions discussed in this book, particularly when separation from runaway resource-intensive processes in prevailing infrastructures and cultures is in force. Drawing some of the many interconnected threads together in this final chapter leads to an important conclusion. Never forgetting that everything, on stage and offstage, is ‘symptomatic of the biosphere’ is needed for intrinsically responsible modes of performance to become the norm, onstage and off it.
