“A Missile to the Future”: The Theatre Ecologies of Caryl Churchill’s Far Away on Spike Island

Abstract

Abstract This article considers how processes associated with reviving well-known plays can offer new theatrical approaches to the climate crisis. Such revivals can make visible ecological or environmental features that might have gone unnoticed in the past, but which can inspire agency and instil knowledge in the present. This idea is explored in relation to an Irish production of Caryl Churchill’s Far Away (2000), which was staged on an uninhabited island off the South Coast of Ireland in 2017 by Corcadorca Theatre Company. This production can be seen as offering a practical illustration of many of the theoretical ideas associated with theatre ecologies, especially for how Corcadorca blurred distinctions between audience and performers, indoors and outdoors, performance and spectatorship, past and present, and much more. This production should thus be seen as a case study that is worthy of analysis in its own right but which also allows for the identification of viable practices for the staging of theatrical revivals more generally.