Climate Anxiety in Cherrie Moraga's Heroes and Saints and Lucy Kirkwood’s The Children

This paper analyses the concepts of climate anxiety and ecological trauma as they are presented in Heroes and Saints and The Children, employing ecocriticism and environmental theatre. It contends that both works grapple with environmental collapse as a thematic issue but also as a dramatic motor that animates character, structure, and audience engagement. It draws on the theoretical insights of figures such as Lawrence Buell and Timothy Clark in the field of ecocriticism, as well as theatrical ecologists like Una Chaudhuri and Theresa J. May, in considering the ways in which the stage acts as a site for ecological reckoning. The objectives are to: study it through representations of ecological degradation and social injustice; profile how climate anxiety works in character psychology and narrative tension; and analyse how theatrical devices inspire environmental consciousness in the spectators. Some key research questions are: How does this drama of the environmental crisis play out as lived, personal experience? What kinds of theatrical devices submerge an audience in ecological awareness or disgust? How do anthropocentric or capitalist ideologies get challenged in the plays? Through a qualitative, comparative textual analysis, the study determines that both plays give voice to the marginalized, women, the elderly, farm workers, as eco-witnesses to systemic decay. Non-traditional scenic composition, synecdoche of nature and intense human dynamics evoke the urgency of environmental collapse. The overarching contention is that theatre is capable of cohering climate consciousness, and that dramatic performance can thus be viewed as a political and affective site through which to navigate the Anthropocene

Anthropocentrism · Consciousness · Drama · Ecocriticism · Ecological crisis · Ideology · Narrative · Politics · Cultural Studies and Interdisciplinary Research · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · Theatre and Performance Studies