Performing Sustainability: The Power of Theatre in Environmental Communication
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Date
2025
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
African Journal of Climate Change and Resource Sustainability
Abstract
This article interrogates the intersections of performance theory and sustainability communication by foregrounding theatre as a critical modality for re-imagining ecological futures. While dominant environmental discourses frequently privilege technocratic or informational paradigms, this study argues that theatre mobilises affect, embodiment, and collective spectatorship to destabilise anthropocentric narratives and cultivate ecological consciousness. Grounded in performance theory, ecocriticism, and sustainability studies, the paper conceptualises theatre as both an epistemic practice and an experience that disrupts linear models of knowledge transfer. Instead, it provides dialogic spaces where audiences encounter environmental crises as lived, affective, and relational phenomena. Drawing on theoretical frameworks such as performativity, liminality, and eco-aesthetics, the paper situates theatre as a transformative communicative practice that reconfigures human–nature relations and expands the discursive repertoire of environmental sustainability. Rather than functioning as a supplementary cultural form, theatre emerges here as a generative site of environmental meaning-making, capable of reshaping imaginaries, contesting hegemonic narratives of development, and advancing sustainability transitions. The argument contributes to ongoing debates in performance, environmental sciences, development, and sustainability by demonstrating how theatrical praxis extends beyond representation to enact ecological agency and social transformation.
Description
Keywords
Performance Theory, Theatre, Sustainability Communication, Ecocriticism, Eco-Aesthetics, Performativity, Environmental Sciences.
Citation
Muhumuza, M., Jjemba, E. L. & Mbabazi, P. B. (2025). Performing Sustainability: The Power of Theatre in Environmental Communication. African Journal of Climate Change and Resource Sustainability, 4(2), 349-364. https://doi.org/10.37284/ajccrs.4.2.4107