The Place of Affect and Emotional Feeling in Theatre's Political Climates of Ecological Degradation

This chapter explores the significance of the place of natural ecologies in Stanislavsky’s preparation for Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People , and in the play’s revision by Melissa Reeves for twenty-first-century climate change theatre in Australia. It draws on Stanislavsky’s approach to emotional memory to show an alignment with scholarship illuminating the affect and emotions associated with place and its political contestation . It suggests that the phenomenological memory of a particular place is part of Stanislavsky’s preparation for performing the role of Stockman in Ibsen’s play, considered a lasting accomplishment and an influence on twentieth-century theatre, and that Reeve’s adaptation of An Enemy of the People sets out a familiar geographical place to evoke audience memories. This realist classic has received numerous productions globally because the narrative offers an ecological message that resonates with twenty-first-century realities of ecological degradation about the place of politics in theatre and the place of water in society.