Knowledge-recovery after Ecological Crisis: Theatre Traditions, Oral Cultures and Landscape
CoastARTS Ireland
CoastARTS Ireland is developing a practice-based research project that uses Irish- and English-language archival materials and community stories to create new performance-based approaches to ecology and heritage.
The project involves workshops with community participants in the coastal areas of the west of Ireland to map their experiences and observations of their own places and to bring this vernacular knowledge into dialogue with mythic, scientific and artistic accounts of the region’s history. Archival sources for our work include folklore collections from the 1920s and 1930s as well as the papers of the cartographer and writer Tim Robinson, and the collections of Druid Theatre and the Galway City Museum.
Our creative research specifically investigates tactile, sonic and interactive possibilities for re-imagining coastal crises in the context of ongoing environmental and social change. We envisage the outcome of this work as a ‘patchwork’ performance of Galway Bay and its coastal and sea-based human and non-human communities, together with an installation room featuring various elements of the performance.
Research team
- Patrick Lonergan, Professor of Theatre, University of Galway (Lead)
- Máiréad Ni Chroínín, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Galway
- Dara McGee, Áras Éanna, Ireland
- Adam Stoneman, Galway City Museum, Ireland
- John Crumlish, Galway International Arts Festival, Ireland
Updates from the subproject
Podcasts
Changing our Minds and Hearts through Arts-based Activism
The art of theater dates back to ancient times. We play out stories in order to express and explore our viewpoints, our feelings, our fears, and how we understand the world and perceive its beauty. Performance and theater engage us on a visceral, emotional level, opening us up to the immediacy of the experience while speaking directly to our emotional selves.
Podcasts
A Greener Future for Theatre: a conversation with Sinéad Wallace and Mike O’Halloran
We speak with lighting designer and lecturer Sinéad Wallace and technical officer and lecturer Mike O’Halloran, about their personal interest in green theatre practices, the importance of ‘talking about’ sustainability with colleagues and students, and the possible futures of theatre and performance in an era of ecological crisis.
Podcasts
Meeting People Where They’re At: a conversation with Luke Casserly
We speak with Luke Casserly, a multidisciplinary performance maker, about the link between his own upbringing in the rural midlands of Ireland and the work he now makes, the importance of listening to many different voices and perspectives when creating work with and in communities, and his gentle, subversive interventions in response to the climate crisis.
Podcasts
Weaving Communities of Care: a conversation with Meave Stone
We speak with director and writer Maeve Stone about her inspirations, the ways in which she approaches working with communities, the artforms she draws on, and how the process of making the work can shape and change communities’ responses to climate change.
Podcasts
Hope in a Time of Ecological Crisis: a conversation with Carys Coburn
We speak with acclaimed Irish playwright, Carys Coburn about writing ecological plays, the broader ethos of their work as an artist, and their vision for the ways in which art can respond to environmental disaster in surprising, illuminating and ultimately hopeful ways.