Lara Stevens

Charting a history of theatrical resistance to environmental exploitation, this study places drama and theatrical performance staged in Australia within the context of international scholarship to address major concerns about changing ecological systems. Exploring the staging of calamities ranging from droughts and floods to forest fires and rising seas, it examines a strikingly diverse body of work that reflects the entanglement of socio-economic and natural forces leading to ecological damage and climate change. Weather phenomena become protagonists in plays by Jack Davis, Andrea James, Louis Nowra and Hannie Rayson, while mutant creatures manifest climate threats in Jill Orr's work, and performances by the Australian Indigenous Marrugeku and Bangarra Dance Theatre invite grief for immense losses. Featuring First Nations performance and the profound knowledge of biodiverse multispecies habitats it presents, this study challenges the ways in which socio-ecological disaster is called 'natural' and positioned outside human responsibility.

Performing Climates features 13 interconnected essays exploring theatre and performance’s relationship with more-than-human elements at a time of climate emergency. This book argues that Western performance – how we conceive of it, as well as how we train and educate people in and about it – needs to reorient its ways of making and thinking about itself to reconsider patterns of breakdown, decay and renewal happening on and off stage in a literal play of cells and particles. Performing Climates examines live performance as a uniquely compostable artform, formed by sonic vibrations and movements of air and matter, more-than-human elements, composition and decomposition. This book will appeal to undergraduate audiences, postgraduate scholars and performance studies colleagues, offering exciting possibilities for reconsidering theatre and performing in an age of crisis.

'Hypergamy: marriage into an equal or higher caste or social group' --Merriam Webster. Who are you dating? Have you considered hypergamy? Perhaps you should. There are real, consequential reasons behind women's long-held preferences for mates of high breeding, wealth, and ability. My well-researched book discusses the nature, history, and current-day implications of this preference and practice, and draws some very interesting conclusions. Do you have a list of qualifications for your ideal date? A thoughtful read of this book just might change that list. Making hypergamy a requirement in your dating search will serve not only to provide access to a better standard of living but to screen out unsuitable prospects. Only men who fit the bill will bother to apply. And you'll see a drastic improvement in your love life. Why? Because protective care is one of the greatest gifts a man can give -- and one of the greatest rewards of being a woman.

'Hypergamy: marriage into an equal or higher caste or social group' --Merriam Webster. Who are you dating? Have you considered hypergamy? Perhaps you should. There are real, consequential reasons behind women's long-held preferences for mates of high breeding, wealth, and ability. My well-researched book discusses the nature, history, and current-day implications of this preference and practice, and draws some very interesting conclusions. Do you have a list of qualifications for your ideal date? A thoughtful read of this book just might change that list. Making hypergamy a requirement in your dating search will serve not only to provide access to a better standard of living but to screen out unsuitable prospects. Only men who fit the bill will bother to apply. And you'll see a drastic improvement in your love life. Why? Because protective care is one of the greatest gifts a man can give -- and one of the greatest rewards of being a woman.

Examining the ways in which contemporary Western theatre protests against the ‘War on Terror’, this book analyses six twenty-first century plays that respond to the post-9/11 military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine. The plays are written by some of the most significant writers of this century and the last including Elfriede Jelinek, Caryl Churchill, Hélène Cixous and Tony Kushner. Anti-war Theatre After Brecht grapples with the problem of how to make theatre that protests the policies of democratically elected Western governments in a post-Marxist era. It shows how the Internet has become a key tool for disseminating anti-war play texts and how online social media forums are changing traditional dramatic aesthetics and broadening opportunities for spectator access, engagement and interaction with a work and the political alternatives it puts forward.