Elements, chairs, and monsters: Indigenist co-created performance in the climate crisis

This thesis is a practical and theoretical investigation into the ethical, methodological, and ecological components of the co-creation of local, climate crisis-related performances. The narratives are created with communities of different cultures, including Indigenous, Global South, and Global North partners. Central to the study is the articulation of an indigenist value set, comprising permission, respect, reciprocity, interconnectedness, and gratitude. The set is developed in dialogue with Indigenous co-creators and applied in diverse cultural and environmental contexts as a methodology of storytelling with
the goal of navigating the complexity of the climate crisis. The term ‘indigenist’ in this contexts designates any practice, including by non-Indigenous scholars or practitioners, that supports the Indigenous struggle and advocates for its core principles, including environmental protection, Indigenous and human rights, and a closer relationship between the human and the more-than-human.

Structured around two shorter pilot projects and three main practice cases consisting of community based theatre shows, a digital artefact, and a workshop showcase, the research articulates a tripartite praxis of ethics and participation, storytelling, and movement practices. It builds on a relational ethics of co-creation and applies the indigenist value-based methodology to these overlapping domains. Thus, the thesis creates a pathway of employing performance as a vessel of ethical translation of the tenets of Indigenous cosmovision into Western-style theatre practice. This is done to investigate storytelling advocating a relational and co-constitutive approach to the relationship between the human and the more-than-human. The praxis is integrated through the theoretical lenses of James Thompson’s and Dwight Conquergood’s theories of ethics, Andreas Weber’s reflections on animism, Ronald L. Grimes’ theory of ritual, Karen Barad’s agential realism, and Gregory Bateson’s systems theory.

Transnational and local movement practices are employed in a selection of the practice cases, and the thesis argues that these practices can be used ecosomatically to explore the relationship between the community and its environment. Agential realist thinking works in syncretism with an animist approach to account for the realities of a contemporary materialistic context, while a systems theory approach can
integrate performance practices as a functional memory of the system, coding and storing the interactions that lead to increasing integration of systems and the expression of a secular sacred.

The thesis shows how ethics steeped in relationality and embedded in local performance practices through an indigenist approach to storytelling can celebrate, strengthen, or reimagine the relationship between communities and their environments. This provides a scaffolding for an ecologically beneficial understanding of the more-than-human. The complexity of the ‘monster’ of the climate crisis and its local sociopolitical implications are thus navigated through a culturally sensitive and context-adaptable methodology. The research contributes to discussions in community-based theatre, ecological performance, and Indigenous – non-Indigenous research ethics, while emphasising the urgent need of such approaches within the global climate crisis.