More Future? Straight Ecologies in British Climate-Change Theatre

Abstract

Abstract Attempts to convey the urgency of the climate crisis often rely on the figure of the child. From Greta Thunberg via school-striking students to the grandchildren invoked in the titles of bestselling books about global warming, appearances of children seem especially effective in protesting the loss of a habitable planet. The iconic child that needs saving (or becomes the planet’s saviour) is equally prominent in British plays about climate change. Drawing on queer critiques of the conceptual short circuit between the child and the future, this article identifies two waves of UK eco-theatre: the first wave endorses hetero-nuclear family bonds and future-oriented thinking; the second wave traces alternative relations to nonhuman, ageing, or ailing Others in the present. The first part of the article revisits critiques of reproductive futurism; the second examines the straight ecologies that characterise the first wave of eco-theatre, based on a detailed analysis of Duncan Macmillan’s play Lungs (Studio Theatre, Washington, DC/Sheffield Crucible, 2011). The final part considers climate-change plays that sever reproductive timelines, as exemplified by Caryl Churchill’s Escaped Alone, Lucy Kirkwood’s The Children, and Stef Smith’s Human Animals (all Royal Court, 2016).