Atmospheric Theatre: Open-Air Performance and the Environment

2010年，英国卫生部空气污染物医学影响委员会（英语：Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants）表示，英国每年因暴露于空气污染而失去34万年的生命：相当于约29，000人死亡，如果考虑到二氧化氮的影响，则上升至40，000人。据估计，整个欧盟每年暴露于空气污染的经济成本超过2400亿欧元，而2010年全球疾病负担研究发现，空气污染导致全球700万人死亡。然而，尽管威胁的规模很大，皇家医师学院在2016年指出，“很少有人在日常生活中考虑[空气]污染风险”。如果英国广播公司的2017年我可以呼吸季节可以被认为是对皇家学院呼吁开展空气质量公众意识活动的部分，间接回应，那么传达空气污染的危险将需要持续关注我们如何构思和体验我们与周围空气的关系。我们对大气戏剧的研究将应对这一挑战，将人文主导的视角带到目前由STEM研究人员主导的领域。我们正处于一个文化时刻，各种学科和实践（包括文学研究和当代戏剧）已经确定了解决空气污染和气候变化问题的共同兴趣。我们的项目将有助于这一全球性的，多学科的对话，阐明如何理解露天剧场的历史和表演传统，可以提供深入了解参加露天生产的气氛体验，以及这种体验的潜力，以提高观众对他们的空中环境的认识。通过我们对“大气剧院”的关注，将大气理解的美学和科学维度结合起来，我们将展示英国圆形剧场表演传统的历史发展与新兴的早期现代空气污染意识之间的重叠如何使我们能够询问基于怀旧或历史的空气质量比较话语，突出了英国露天剧院戏剧表演和空气质量之间的这种感知关系的当今意义。我们认为，由于这种戏剧和环境遗产，当代露天戏剧特别适合介入当今关于大气污染的讨论。埃克塞特大学致力于通过环境与可持续发展研究所开发跨学科解决方案，以及医学人文学科的优势，使其成为本研究项目的理想基地，而我们对露天表演的大气意义的研究将大大受益于PI Preedy和CI O'Malley所拥有的互补专业知识。PI在早期现代戏剧文学分析方面的现有技能将支持该项目关注具有环保意识的露天剧院的历史起源，同时将受益于CI最近在生态戏剧学方面的工作以及她与当代露天剧院合作的经验。CI的初步民族志研究如何露天莎士比亚的今天的经验可以导致增加观众对自然环境的认识将进一步有助于我们对早期现代大气戏剧的当代遗产的理解。通过将这些方法与档案研究相结合，对露天剧院演出的戏剧进行文本分析，并根据与英国各地露天剧院的合作伙伴关系共同研究从业者方法，我们将共同开发一种全面的理解，即大气戏剧的环境意识模型如何提高当今对空气污染和气候变化的认识。

In 2010, the Department of Health's Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants suggested that 340,000 years of life are lost annually in the UK through exposure to air pollution: the equivalent of approximately 29,000 deaths, rising to 40,000 if the effects of nitrogen dioxide are taken into account. The economic cost of exposure to air pollution across the European Union is estimated to be more than 240 billion euros each year, while a 2010 Global Burden of Disease study found that air pollution was responsible for a total of 7 million deaths worldwide. Yet, despite the scale of the threat, the Royal College of Physicians noted in 2016 that 'few people consider [air] pollution risks in their everyday lives'. If the BBC's 2017 So I Can Breathe season might be considered a partial, indirect response to the Royal College's call for a public awareness campaign about air quality, communicating the dangers of air pollution will require sustained qualitative attention to how we conceive of and experience our relationship with the air around us. Our study of atmospheric theatre will respond to this challenge, bringing a Humanities-led perspective to a field currently dominated by STEM researchers.We are at a cultural moment in which various disciplines and practices (including literary studies and contemporary theatre) have identified a convergent interest in addressing the problems of air pollution and climate change. Our project will contribute to this global, multi-disciplinary conversation by illuminating how understanding the history and performance traditions of open-air theatre can provide insight into the atmospheric experience of attending an open-air production, and the potential for this experience to enhance an audience's awareness of their aerial environment. Uniting the aesthetic and scientific dimensions of atmospheric understanding through our focus on 'atmospheric theatre', we will demonstrate how the overlap between the historical development of an English amphitheatre performance tradition and an emergent early modern consciousness of air pollution can enable us to interrogate nostalgia-based or historically-comparative discourses of air quality, highlighting the present-day significance of this perceived relationship between dramatic performance and air quality for the UK's open-air theatres. We argue that, due to this theatrical and environmental legacy, contemporary open-air drama is especially well-suited to intervene in present-day discussions about atmospheric pollution.The University of Exeter's commitment to developing interdisciplinary solutions to environmental change through the Environment and Sustainability Institute, and strengths in medical humanities, make it an ideal base for this research project, while our investigation into the atmospheric significance of open-air performance will benefit significantly from the complementary expertise possessed by the PI Preedy and CI O'Malley. The PI's existing skills in the literary analysis of early modern drama will support the project's attention to the historical origins of an environmentally-aware open-air theatre, which will concurrently benefit from the CI's recent work in eco-dramaturgy and her experience of working in partnership with contemporary open-air theatres. The CI's preliminary ethnographic research into how the present-day experience of open-air Shakespeare can lead to increased audience awareness of the natural environment will further contribute to our understanding of the early modern atmospheric theatre's contemporary legacy. By uniting these methods with archival study, textual analyses of the plays performed by open-air theatres, and co-produced research into practitioner methods based on partnerships with open-air theatres across the UK, we will jointly develop a holistic understanding of how an environmentally-aware model of atmospheric theatre can improve present-day awareness about air pollution and climate change.