ABSTRACT
This chapter weaves analysis of Richard Powers’ novel Orfeo and Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream together with the story of Chicago’s Theater on the Lake, which once served as sanitarium for infants with Tuberculosis. The article brings the life of the bacterial realm, which had such a vivid history in Theater on the Lake, to bear on the reading of both texts, establishing a common creativity between text, material (bacterial) past, and the human need for story. The article engages Donna Haraway, Wendy Wheeler, Bruno Latour, Joni Adamson, Serenella Iovino, and Jesper Hoffmeyer in an exploration of emergence, play, and what it means to “see” naturecultures.
Key words: Biosemiotics, Ecocriticism, New Materialism, Shakespeare, Richard Powers, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Orfeo
