Enacting Nature

Birgit Däwes is Professor and Chair of American Studies at the University of Vienna. She specializes in Native North American literatures and cultures. Next to a monograph study on Native North American Theater in a Global Age (2007) and the recent collection, Indigenous North American Drama. A Multivocal History (2013), she has also published a study on fiction as a mode of cultural memory: Ground Zero Fiction. History, Memory, and Representation in the American 9/11 Novel (2011).
Marc Maufort is Professor of English, American and postcolonial literatures at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB, Belgium). He has written and (co)-edited several books on O'Neill as well as on postcolonial and multi-ethnic drama, including Transgressive Itineraries. Postcolonial Hybridizations of Dramatic Realism (2003), and Labyrinth of Hybridities. Avatars of O'Neillian Realism in Multi-ethnic American Drama (1972-2003) (2010).

In the ecological challenges of the twenty-first century, interculturally sensitive understandings of nature, place, and environment are essential for the development of a planetary community.
Acknowledging that the future of humankind is global, this volume explores the multi-faceted semantics of ecology in contemporary Indigenous theater and performance.
Focusing on works by such eminent Indigenous artists as Tomson Highway, Drew Hayden Taylor, Marie Clements, Yvette Nolan, Kevin Loring, Wesley Enoch, Hone Kouka, Briar Grace-Smith, and Witi Ihimaera, the volume brings together a spectrum of ecological perspectives from Europe, North America, and Oceania.
By tracing the multiple Indigenous configurations of the relationships between humans and their environment, the essays collected in Enacting Nature offer contributions to the fields of comparative Indigenous Studies, performance studies, and ecocriticism alike.

This volume explores the multi-faceted semantics of ecology in contemporary Indigenous theater and performance. It focuses on the ways in which Indigenous playwrights from North America and Oceania depict the human link with Nature in today's global age.

Contents: Birgit Däwes/Marc Maufort: A Chorus of Ecological Voices. Enacting Nature in Contemporary Indigenous Performance - Birgit Däwes: Stages of Resilience. Heteroholistic Environments in Plays by Marie Clements and Yvette Nolan - Ric Knowles: Mounds, Earthworks, Side Show Freaks and Circus Injuns - Jaye T. Darby: «Civilization» and its Transgressions on the Old Shawnee Trail. Lynn Riggs's Out of Dust - Maryann Henck: «alterNature» in Drew Hayden Taylor's The Berlin Blues. Construction and De(con)struction of Contested Spaces - Yvette Nolan: The Collapse of Worlds in Laura Shamas's Chasing Honey - Nicholle Dragone: Eric Gansworth. Dramatizing the Ecology of Haudenosaunee Creation - Ginny Ratsoy: Voicing Nature in the British Columbia Interior. A Place «Back in the Midst of Time» in Kevin Loring's Where the Blood Mixes - Maryrose Casey: Serving the Living Land. Place and Belonging in Australian Aboriginal Drama - Rachael Swain: Dance, History and Country. An Uneasy Ecology in Australia - Diana Looser: « Je te parle d'harmonie entre les plantes ». Ecologies of New Caledonian Nationhood in Pierre Gope's La Parenthèse - Lisa Warrington/David O'Donnell: Unfolding the Cloth. Patterns of Landscape and Identity in The Conch's Masi - Hilary Halba: Cleansing the Tapu. Nature, Landscape and Transformation in Three Works by Maori Playwrights - Marc Maufort: Performing the Spirit of the Earth. Multi-faceted Aesthetics of Ecology in Contemporary Indigenous Drama.