Confronting Environmental Melancholia: A Dramaturgical Examination of Environmental Protest through the Making of Verbatim Theatre

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This practice-based research challenges the inability of environmental protestors to sustain public support. I propose aninterdisciplinary dramaturgical framework (IDF) for developing verbatim theatre (VT), that uses psychogeography toanalyse the undergirding ethnography. This approach foregrounds the spatial politics influencing protestors and publicalike that are beyond the ambit of testimonial-dependent VT, which thereby limits sympathy. I demonstrate thismethodology through developing VT pieces about Extinction Rebellion (XR).Criticism of XR has, paradoxically, been correlated with increasing climate anxiety (Conner and Mann, 2021). Psychologistsidentify this 'interpretive denial', as symptomatic of trauma (Stanley, 2021). Movement theorists argue this denial isfurthered at protests, in which public spaces are constructed by neoliberal ideologies to occlude private interests, therebysafeguarding economic activity from subversion (Ruiz, 2017). This theorisation can be extended to theatre, widelyconsidered as 'public space' (Trueman, 2018).VT has therapeutic potential to create sympathy between audiences and performed subjects (Madsen, 2018). However VTpractitioner Stuart Fisher (2011) cites mimetic conceptions of trauma as incommunicable in language, to suggest VT'slimitation in using decontextualized testimonies. Combined with the repressive nature of neoliberal public space, thisresults in sympathy being further obstructed.Guy Debord's (1967) psychogeographic technique of détournément challenges neoliberal repression by exposing thehidden configuration of public spaces (Smith and Katz, 1993). By using détournément heuristically, an ethnography ofprotest can develop VT that is both contextualised and challenging; thereby engendering sympathy and shifting opinion.By undertaking ethnographic research at XR protests, and using an IDF to analyse this data, I will be able to develop VTperformances. These will then be staged for groups with heterodox opinions on the climate crisis, whose responses canthen be analysed. This research advances awareness of the climate crisis and furthers thinking in the fields of theatre andsocial movement study.