"Performing Ice skillfully curates a compelling series of conversations that offer rich insights into manifold relationships between ice and performance across time, space, and disciplines. ... Performing Ice makes original and valuable contributions to humanities-related polar research and to global theatre and performance studies, presenting fresh arguments and an inspiring array of entry points for future study." (Diana Looser, Theatre Journal, Vol. 74 (2), June, 2022)
1. Chapter 1: Performing Ice: Histories, Theories, Contexts; Elizabeth Leane (University of Tasmania, Australia), Carolyn Philpott (University of Tasmania, Australia). and Matt Delbridge (Deakin University, Australia).- 2. Chapter 2: Staging the Construction of Place in Two Antarctic Plays; Hanne Nielsen (University of Tasmania, Australia).- 3. Chapter 3: Figures in a Landscape; Douglas Quin (Syracuse University, USA).- 4. Chapter 4: Mixing Ice: DJ Spooky’s Musical Portraits of the Arctic and Antarctic; Carolyn Philpott.- 5. Chapter 5: One Year Performance 1921-22, or Two Men in a Boat; Mike Pearson (University of Aberystwyth, UK).- 6. Chapter 6: The Eco-Cruelty of the Great Finnish Famine of 1695-97: Artaud’s Anarchic Ethics at the Climax of the Little Ice Age; Riku Roihankorpi (University of Tampere, Finland).- 7. Chapter 7: Immersion: The Aquatic Ice Body; Tace Kelly (Monash University, Australia) and Kit Wise (RMIT University, Australia).- 8. Chapter 8: Performing Sovereignty over an Ice Continent; Elizabeth Leane (University of Tasmania, Australia) and Julia Jabour (University of Tasmania, Australia).- 9. Chapter 9: The Gigaton Ice Theatre: Performing Ecoactivism in Antarctica; Leslie Roberts (California College of the Arts, USA).- 10. Chapter 10: Hiking beyond Roads and Internet: Weather, Landscapes and Performance North of the Arctic Circle; Willmar Sauter (University of Stockholm, Sweden).
Carolyn Philpott is Senior Lecturer in Musicology and Associate Head – Research at the University of Tasmania’s School of Creative Arts and Media, Australia, as well as Adjunct Senior Researcher at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, Australia. She has published widely on music and place in journals and books in the fields of musicology and Antarctic studies.
Elizabeth Leane is Professor of English (School of Humanities) and Associate Dean – Research (College of Arts, Law, and Education) at the University of Tasmania, Australia. Her books include Antarctica in Fiction (2012), South Pole: Nature andCulture (2016), and the co-edited collection Anthropocene Antarctica (2019).
Matt Delbridge is Professor of Performance Studies and Head of School, Communication and Creative Arts, at Deakin University, Australia, and an Adjunct Professor in the School of Creative Media, City University Hong Kong, Hong Kong. He is the author of Motion Capture in Performance (2015).
In the Anthropocene, icy environments have taken on a new centrality and emotional valency. This book examines the diverse ways in which ice and humans have performed with and alongside each other over the last few centuries, so as to better understand our entangled futures. Icescapes – glaciers, bergs, floes, ice shelves – are places of paradox. Solid and weighty, they are nonetheless always on the move, unstable, untrustworthy, liable to collapse, overturn, or melt. Icescapes have featured – indeed, starred – in conventional theatrical performances since at least the eighteenth century. More recently, the performing arts – site-specific or otherwise – have provoked a different set of considerations of human interactions with these non-human objects, particularly as concerns over anthropogenic warming have mounted. The performances analysed in the book range from the theatrical to the everyday, from the historical to the contemporary, from low-latitude events in interior spaces to embodied encounters with the frozen environment.