Queer Ecology / Contemporary Plays

“Queer ecology” is a mode of ecocriticism that challenges conventional binary thinking about humans and nature by observing that “Nature,” because it does not draw firm, bright boundaries between humans and nonhumans, is essentially queer. Drawing on queer theory, ecology, evolution, and the philosophy of “vibrant materialism,” queer ecology argues for an ethics and politics that equalizes the status of the “others” that have historically occupied the right-hand side of the human/nonhuman divide and imagines nonhuman beings as “people” in a radically democratic sense. This essay teases out the implications and challenges of queer ecology for modern theatre and performance through a close reading of three plays: Wallace Shawn’s Grasses of a Thousand Colors (2009), Mark Rigney’s Bears (2012), and Eric Coble’s My Barking Dog (2011).