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 THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE DESIGN, 2016
VOL. 2, NOS. 1–2, 161–172
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23322551.2016.1179437

Ecomaterialism in scenography
Tanja Beer
Melbourne School of Design and Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, Australia

ABSTRACT
Contemporary ecological concerns bring with them an opportunity
for innovation; to rethink traditional practices and forge ecologically
inspired approaches that push intellectual and creative boundaries.
This article investigates contemporary notions of ecology and
materialism (‘ecomaterialism’), which abandon traditional
disciplinary divides and seek to unify the human self with the
broader system of ecological organisation. Using a practice-based
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research example (Strung), I examine the potential for

ecomaterialism to lead to new modes of practice in scenography,
where expanded ideas of material entanglement, across bodies,
ecosystems and built environments, are central to sustainability in
performance design.

Introduction
The ecological urgency of the last decade demands new approaches to scenography.
Today, the production of theatre design demands that we think carefully about waste
management, about energy efficiency and about the long-term impacts of our work.
Often, these considerations will be seen as constraints. Yet ecological considerations
also present opportunities for rejuvenation and innovation; opportunities to consider
how ideas of ecology, nature and culture can lead to new forms of creative expression
in spatial design. Considering the interconnections between humans and non-humans,
in particular, can have profound effects on the way scenographers approach their practice,
their choices of material and their creative processes.
This article investigates key conceptual thinking and theoretical ideas around contem-
porary notions of materialism, ecology and agency through the scenographer’s practice of
making. Re-examining relationships between material, biological and social constructs, I
explore how new modes of thought are abandoning traditional disciplinary boundaries
to unify the human self with the broader system of ecological organisation. Here, I draw
upon a selection of ‘ecomaterialist’ ontologies, including: Jane Bennett’s ‘vibrant matter’;
Karen Barad’s ‘intra-action’; and Stacy Alaimo’s ‘trans-corporeality’ to reveal new thinking
about post-human agency in scenography.
These theories are briefly examined using a practice-based research project (Strung),
conducted at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, London. The work is part
of This is Not Rubbish, a broader research investigation which explores the journey of a

CONTACT Tanja Beer beert@unimelb.edu.au

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23322551.2016.1179437
© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
 162 T. BEER

material rescued from landfill, and its capacity to create immersive performance spaces
and wearable artefacts. As a key investigation of This is Not Rubbish, Strung re-examines
the scenographer’s engagement with materials to produce new insights into the creative
potential of ecomaterialism in scenography.
This article is accompanied by a film of Strung, which can be accessed online via http://
www.tanjabeer.com/strung-this-is-not-rubbish.

Ecomaterialism: an overview
A number of recent theorists have interrogated environmental issues through notions of
‘vigorous materiality’ and ‘inhuman agency’, exploring the relational dynamics between
humans and non-humans (Barad 2007; Bennett 2010; Alaimo 2010; Abram 1997; Iovino
and Oppermann 2014). Emerging as discourse in ecocriticism and new materialisms,1 eco-
materialism (Cohena and Duckert 2013, 4) implies theories of materialism with explicit eco-
logical concerns, in which the subject-object binary of the material world is dissolved and
notions of agency are incorporated to generate awareness of ecological issues. Ecomateri-
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alism defies reductionist, dualistic modes of opposition and hierarchies (‘binary thinking’)
which posits humans as oppositional to non-humans in favour of connecting with more
complex, egalitarian and ecological modes of being.
At the heart of ecomaterialism is a framing of our inextricable interconnectedness with
the more-than-human world, including a widening of identity – of what it means to be
‘human’ – in an age of environmental fragility. From an ecomaterialist perspective, the
human and non-human are ‘inextricably entangled’ (Pickering 1995, 26) in ‘networks
that are simultaneously economic, political, cultural, scientific, and substantial’ (Alaimo
2010, 20). Hence, ecomaterialism begins with a broadening of identity and a blurring of
reductive dichotomies towards ecological ways of engaging with the world. For political
theorist Jane Bennett (2010, 10), it is by dissolving the subject-object binary of the material
world that we can ‘begin to experience the relationship between persons and other mate-
rialities more horizontally’ thereby improving our ‘ecological sensibility’. A key text of new
materialisms, Bennett’s Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (2010) redefines the
natural world outside the constraints of subject-object binaries. Instead, Bennett reima-
gines things as actants2 and assemblages3 which belong to the compound nature of
the human self (2010, 111). For Bennett, ‘vibrant materiality’ or ‘xenobiotic agents’
(foreign substances, chemicals and organisms) run ‘alongside and inside humans’ (viii).
It is in this context that Bennett explains how materiality can ‘horizontalize the relations
between humans, biota, and abiota’ (112).
Ecomaterialist notions of ‘entanglement’ are addressed in quantum physicist Karen
Barad’s concept of ‘intra-action’ which moves away from reductive thinking – which sep-
arates matter, agency, human, non-human, nature and culture – towards embracing the
complex intra-relationships between all things. Extending beyond ‘interaction’ (that
which occurs between distinct entities), Barad’s term, ‘intra-action’ refers to a fundamental
and co-creative entanglement between individual entities (2007, 128). For Barad, nothing
exists as a thing-in-itself but is ‘worlding in its materiality’ (181).
A key aspect of ecomaterialism is a shift ‘from a sense of place to a … more systemic
sense of planet’ (Heise 2008, 56). In Bodily Natures (2010, 9), Stacy Alaimo’s concept of
‘trans-corporeality’ uses this ‘planet focus’ to conceptualise ‘material interconnections of
 THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE DESIGN 163

human corporeality with the more-than-human world’.4 Focusing on invisible material

forces – or ‘flows of substances and forces between people, places, and economic/political
systems’ – trans-corporeality accounts ‘for the ways in which nature, the environment, and
the material world itself signify, act upon, or otherwise affect human bodies, knowledges,
and practices’ (7–9). Alaimo emphasises that a renewed appreciation of material can reveal
‘far-reaching and often unforeseen consequences [of a particular practice] for multiple
peoples, species, and ecologies’ (22). Alaimo’s work draws attention to the accountability
of ‘a materiality that is never merely an external, blank, or inert space but the active emer-
gent substance of ourselves and others’ (2012, 563–564).

Applying ecomaterialism to scenography

The application of ecomaterialism to scenography is overarchingly concerned with the
wider effects of scenographic production, to consider how it relates to the broader ecosys-
tem beyond the theatre. This means acknowledging that materiality and environments are
mutually dependent in making beings, things and places, and recognising humans as part
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of nature’s system, rather than a separate entity. A fundamental component of ‘ecosceno-

graphy’5 – a practice I define as the integration of ecological principles into all stages of
scenographic thinking and production (Beer 2015) – ecomaterialism entails integrating
an awareness that no decision stands on its own. Every choice is intertwined with
social, environmental, economic and political consequences that are far reaching and
capable of having long-term effects. However, these consequences need not be negative
and the choices that scenographers make can just as easily achieve positive social, political
and environmental outcomes that may inspire new modes of artistic practice and
engagement.
By asserting the agency of materials, ecomaterialism offers ‘new actants for the stage’
(Arons 2012, 571) which draw attention to the inextricable and coextensive relationship
between scenographers and materials. This means approaching scenography from a per-
spective where neither human nor material takes precedence, allowing both to inform
each other. Dancer-researcher Paula Kramer (2012, 91) explains how ecomaterialism can
allow for ‘an overall blossoming of all kinds of materials’ emphasising the ‘human body
in the natural environment … as vibrant matter among vibrant matter, as lively thing
among lively things’. Here, theatre materials take on a new ‘life’ where the focus of
these substances is in ‘their interaction rather than in their singular entities’ (McKinney
2015a, 135). It is by acknowledging ‘the capability of things themselves, human and
non-human alike’ that we can engage with a more expansive and ‘provocative frame of
ideas’ in scenography (McKinney 2015b, 90).6
Ecomaterialism’s focus of material entanglement – between bodies, substances and
environments – is also relevant to scenography. For example, Bennett’s thesis on
‘vibrant matter’ opens up opportunities for scenographers to explore the ‘textility’ and
‘vibrancy’ of their material encounters ‘toward a greater appreciation of the complex
entanglements of humans and nonhumans’ (2010, 112). Barad’s concept of matter as
‘intra-active-becoming’ (2003, 803) invites scenographers to contemplate the inseparabil-
ity of all things, including the consideration of a material’s emergent socio-political and
environmental impacts (in and beyond the production). Alaimo’s notion of matter as
self-organising, emergent and unpredictable draws attention to the potential
 164 T. BEER

consequences of scenographic material and substances in the making, presentation and

distribution of scenographic elements. This implies designers seeing themselves as part
of the environmental effects (both positive and negative) that they are creating.
Incorporating ecomaterialism in scenographic practice entails co-designing in partner-
ship with human and non-human collectives. This implies that scenographers should con-
sider multiple scales of interdependency to expand their thinking about materials in the
performance. For artist-researcher Minty Donald this is about ‘giving “voice” to the
more-than-human, acknowledging its liveliness and potential agency’ (2014a, 2). As she
contends, ‘this reframing gives due consideration to the performance of all stuff: human
and nonhuman; on molecular and cosmic scales; within timeframes measured in nanose-
conds and eons’ (2014b, 119). Connecting with the vibrancy of the more-than-human
world can aid in resisting ‘culturally conditioned understandings of human/environment
relations’ such that scenographers might ‘reimagine constructive and critical models of
human/environment interdependency … thus offering speculative, inspirational alterna-
tives … to dominant ecological narratives of disaster, human powerlessness, and blame’
(2014b, 119, 130). Here, Donald explicitly highlights that engaging with sustainability in
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scenography need not be framed around notions of reduction and limitation, but can
be much more about connecting to the living world in a way that is proactive, positive
and creatively inspiring.

Strung: exploring ecomaterialism in practice

If ideas of ecomaterialism eliminate subject-object dichotomies, how does this perception
change the way a scenographer engages with materials, processes and aesthetics in the
pursuit of a more ecologically engaged practice? In 2013, I set out to test this question
through a practice-based research project (Strung) at the Royal Central School of
Speech and Drama, London. Through the act of installation-making in the public realm,
the aim was to experience how a reclaimed material (salami netting, Figure 1) might
have agency, and how publicly witnessing this potential vibrancy could allow for a
renewed appreciation of the material, far beyond its original purpose or ultimate landfill
destination.
The relationship between human and non-human ‘actants’ was explored by placing the
ensemble7 of performers and scenographers as ‘co-creatives’ with a bag of netting
material suspended from a black box space. The performance began with the audience
seated at the circumference of a circular edifice of white string, dangling from the
ceiling and surrounding vertical pillars. Guitarist Harry Webber accompanied performer
Christina Kapadocha as she moved into the centre to begin her dance with the string.
Dressing herself in a string costume made from six tubes of reclaimed cotton-elastic
material, Kapadocha’s movements, instincts and responses to the string were watched
carefully. Once dressed, four ‘active scenographers’ (Ella Marie Fowler, Jacquie Holland,
Natalie Jackson and myself) entered the space and began connecting Kapadocha to the
suspended canopy, one piece of string at a time.
Strung became simultaneous making and performing, as we literally spun a web of
material between us. Anthropologist Tim Ingold (2010, 96) describes making as a ‘prac-
tice of weaving’ where practitioners create pathways or ‘lines of becoming’ within the
flow of the material. In Strung, this process was not only metaphorical but also literal –
 THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE DESIGN 165
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Figure 1. Reclaimed salami netting material. Photo: Tanja Beer.

Figure 2. Creating Strung. Artists: Christina Kapadocha (performer) and Natalie Jackson (scenographer).
Photo: Alex Murphy.
 166 T. BEER

we were following the string as ‘lines of flow’ (91) from one attachment point to
another, allowing it to become ‘an active participant in the world’s becoming’ (Barad
2003, 803). Part performance and part installation, the Strung ensemble worked in part-
nership with the material to improvise and sculpt the space in real time. Surrounded by
an assembly of audience participants (who eventually joined us in the making), each
ensemble member brought their own agencies into the realm, offering new statements
on the formation of space. We simultaneously became scenographers and performers,
improvising live, knotting strings together and exploring the infinite possibilities of the
growing web. As we worked, we allowed each string’s individual length, thickness
and elasticity to dictate how we moved and constructed the shape of the web. For
Ingold, it is the dancer that ‘thinks from the body’ while the artisan ‘thinks from
materials’, but in the case of Strung, our process was altogether bodily, spatial and
haptic (2012, 437).
In this space of human and material entanglement, Strung became a reciprocal flow of
more-than-human ‘agentic assemblages’ (Bennett 2010, 111) where each component
informed the other as active participant. The piece broke through traditional roles of
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designer, performer and audience member, and dissolved boundaries between installa-
tion and costume, site and material. Once each piece of string had been connected, the
participants departed to the periphery of the space leaving Kapadocha to emerge out
of the web, delicately releasing herself from the string, one costume piece at a time,
like a butterfly from a cocoon. As she departed the circle, her presence was left by the
shape of the web that filled the stage, beautifully intact with elongated pieces of her
costume debris left pendulous in the space.
For Kapadocha, Strung was experienced through an ‘embodied dialogue with the
“otherness” of the material as “second skin”’ (Beer, Kapadocha, and Holland 2014, 26).
As Kapadocha describes, ‘my embodied experience became a simultaneous transform-
ation of me within the material … of entanglement between the fibres of my own skin
and the fibres of the fabric’ (ibid.). This amalgamation of variable interfaces, interchanges
and transformation was embodied in my own intra-activity, where the experience was one
of ‘fluidity’ – of resisting ‘ideological forces of disconnection’ (Alaimo 2010, 142) in favour
of synthesising connections with the more-than-human world. This merging of material
‘worlding’ (Barad 2007, 181) was articulated in the final execution of the installation,
where the ensemble’s interaction with the material became a physical record of the con-
nection and agentic assemblages shared.
Strung demanded a greater commitment to material engagement from its ensemble
members. Embracing the material as a ‘creative partner’ required a greater level of percep-
tion – to become ‘more alert to the capacities and limitations’ of materiality (Bennett 2010,
111). Developing a heightened awareness of the netting’s capacities – tightly woven elas-
ticity, softness, strength and flexibility – opened avenues for scenographic exploration,
where any preconceived assumptions of the material were abandoned in favour of phys-
ically ‘surrendering’ to the variability of the netting, ‘its tensions and elasticities, lines of
flow and resistances’ (Ingold 2012, 433).
It is through this very process of co-creation, of letting go of predetermined aesthetics,
that I suggest the scenographer opens themselves to the ‘worlding’ of materiality in the
context of the more-than-human world (Barad 2007). In the final performances of
Strung, we witnessed the increasing fragility of the salami netting, snapping often when
 THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE DESIGN 167
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Figure 3. Performing Strung. Artist: Christina Kapadocha. Photo: Alex Murphy.

Figure 4. Performing Strung. Artist: Christina Kapadocha. Photo: Alex Murphy.

 168 T. BEER
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Figure 5. Final Strung installation. Artist: Christina Kapadocha. Photo: Alex Murphy.

pulled on too abruptly. The material was losing its strength and beauty, becoming more
dishevelled with each performance. Exploring the new reality of the netting, we found its
former elasticities and capacities (the very characteristics that had drawn me to the co-
creative possibilities of the netting in the first place) had slackened and transformed.
From an ecomaterialist perspective, the material was signalling that it was time to move
on and explore other potentialities.
Becoming alert to the material’s capacities and sensitivities calls for a renewed appreci-
ation, where its future potential – its vibrancy and co-creative capacities – are embraced
through a form of what I call ‘expansive listening’. ‘Expansive listening’ is evident in eco-
materialist ideas of perception that aim to ‘consult non-humans more closely, or to listen
and respond more carefully to their outbreaks, objections, testimonies, and propositions’
(Bennett 2010, 108). ‘Listening’ to the netting towards the end of Strung allowed me to
 THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE DESIGN 169
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Figure 6. Upcycling Strung into wearable artefacts. Photo: Alex Murphy. Model: Libby Murphy.

consider how it might evolve next – to further ‘extract’ and ‘release’ the potential of the
material and investigate its intra-active state of becoming beyond the performance
season (Barad 2003, 828).
Embedded with shared memory, value and meaning, we explored how the material’s
‘ongoing historicity’8 (Barad 2007, 151) could link with ideas of upcycling9 to revalue
the material. Our choice was a craft circle, established at the Royal Central School of
Speech and Drama, to knit the material into wearable art, and subsequently auction
these items for charity. From a $30 bag of salami netting material and donated
costume offcuts, we raised £340 for the Dorney Residents Association, a local housing
estate project that needed start-up funding to build a community garden.
 170 T. BEER

Strung proved that abandoning subject-object dualisms can promote new sensibilities
and practices, including the co-creative entanglement of scenographers and materials.
The work encompassed what McKinney (2015b, 91–92) describes as ‘a wider array of aes-
thetic experience as part of the effort to understand more fully the richness and complex-
ity of the ecology of the human and non-human material’. Strung also demonstrated that
scenographers can easily consider and embrace a material’s potential post-performance
life, rejuvenating the value and utility of a substance that would otherwise wither to a
societal and environmental burden.

Conclusion
Acknowledging all matter as active, transformative and vibrant demands a renewed sense
of respect for materials. Bennett (2010) contends that it is by reconsidering our relation-
ship with ‘things’ that we can gain a better awareness of sustainability. Building on this
statement, I propose that ecomaterialism is a path by which the performing arts can
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move towards an ecologically engaged practice in scenography. I invite scenographers

to reimagine their relationships with materials, and strive for work that integrates material,
cultural, social and ecological systems. By recognising materials as active participants in
the ‘world’s becoming’ (Barad 2003, 803), I believe the role of scenographer can no
longer be limited to that of space manipulator, but must be broadened to also encompass
mediation, facilitation and co-creation. In this context, the scenographer may become
more perceptive, gaining a heightened awareness of the connections and unsustainable
realities of the world, and thus allowing a more considered and valued relationship
between materials and humans to occur.

Notes
1. Alternatively called ‘new materialism’, ‘neo-materialism’ and ‘new materialist’, other terminol-
ogies within this discourse include ‘material ecocriticism’, ‘material feminisms’ (Hart 2009),
‘vital materialism’ (Bennett 2010) and ‘agential realism’ (Barad 2007).
2. Jane Bennett has adopted this concept from Bruno Latour (2004), who defines an actant as a
source of action (human or non-human) that can produce and influence effects. Bennett also
refers to this as ‘thing power’.
3. Bennett refers to assemblages as ad hoc groupings of diverse elements, with uneven topogra-
phies, not governed by a central force (2010, 22–24). Also see Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari
(1987).
4. ‘More-than-human’ is a term from David Abram (1997) that resists human and non-human
binaries.
5. For more information about ecoscenography, see www.ecoscenography.com. Ecomaterialism
is not exclusive to ecoscenography. Therefore, to prevent potential assumptions or binaries of
exclusivity, ecomaterialism is addressed in this article from the broader perspective of sceno-
graphy (rather than ecoscenography).
6. Joslin Mckinney’s paper ‘Scenographic Materialism, Affordance and Extended Cognition in Kris
Verdonck’s ACTOR #1’ (2015b) provides insight into the potential of adopting new materialist
ontologies in scenographic research.
7. The Strung ensemble included one physical theatre performer (Christina Kapadocha), one
musician (Harry Webber), four active scenographers (Ella Marie Fowler, Jacquie Holland,
Natalie Jackson and myself) and a selection of reclaimed salami netting material.
 THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE DESIGN 171

8. Barad uses this term to explain how materials are always emergent or on their way to becom-
ing something else.
9. Upcycling is the process by which the value of a discarded object or material is increased
through creative reuse (see, e.g., Sung and Cooper 2015).

Acknowledgements
I am grateful to all participants who were part of Strung in London, Cardiff and Melbourne: Christina
Kapadocha, Harry Webber, Ella Marie Fowler, Jacquie Holland, Natalie Jackson, Alex Murphy, Jennifer
Tran, Ryan Foote, Sabrina D’Angelo, Sam Hoffman, Elyssia Sasaki, Garrett Levine, Donyale Werle, Lisa
Woynarski, Sally Mackey, Peter Bingham, Susanne Page and David Lam. Strung was supported by the
Arts Centre Melbourne, University of Melbourne, 2013 Norman Macgeorge Scholarship (Melbourne),
World Stage Design (Cardiff) and the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (London). Heartfelt
thanks to my peers from the International Federation for Theatre Research (FIRT/IFTR) Scenography
Working Group who have supported my research both at the 2015 Prague Quadrennial and in the
development of this article. Special thanks to Lisa Woynarski, who introduced me to Stacy Alaimo
and ecomaterialism.
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Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor
Tanja Beer is a scenographer, research fellow and PhD candidate investigating ecological design for
performance at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Her PhD seeks to rethink traditional design
practices and reinterpret materials to embrace the possibilities of ‘ecoscenography’ – a movement
that integrates ecological principles into all stages of scenographic thinking and production. Tanja
has more than 15 years’ professional experience, including designs in London, Cardiff, Glasgow, Mel-
bourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Vienna and Tokyo. She has a Masters in Stage Design (Universität für Musik
und Darstellende Kunst Graz, Austria), a Graduate Diploma in Performance Making (Victorian College
of the Arts, Australia) and has taught subjects in Design Research, Ecoscenography and Climate
Change. In 2013, Tanja was ‘Activist-in-Residence’ at Julie’s Bicycle (London). Her ecoscenography
work was also selected for the British exhibition at the 2015 Prague Quadrennial.

Supplementary data and research materials

A film recording of Strung can be accessed online via http://www.tanjabeer.com/strung-
this-is-not-rubbish.

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