Examining the Agential Performativity of Water through Material Ecocriticism in J. M. Synge’s Riders to the Sea (1911), David Farr’s Water (2007), Sabrina Hahfouz’s A History of Water in the Middle East (2019), Eva O’Connor and Hildegard Ryan’s Afloat (2021)

Résumé

The current environmental crisis around water, has led to an urgency amidst theatre makers to find better methods that reimagine the relationship between humans and water in drama and performances. Theatre has actively engaged with the idea of water over centuries in unique ways. This paper aims to draw on material ecocriticism, as well as the theoretical dialogues of critics like Joanna Zylinska, and Karen Barad among others to examine how water is depicted and performed as a nonhuman form and to analyze how water is configured as a form of power and strife in J.M. Synge’s Riders to the Sea (1911), David Farr’s Water (2007); Sabrina Hahfouz’s A History of Water in the Middle East (2019); and Eva O’Connor and Hildegard Ryan’s Afloat (2021). Material ecocriticism lends itself well to studying the agentialism of water because of the natural element’s metamorphic behaviour. The analysis further highlights the traditional and the non-traditional representations of water on the theatre stage inviting audiences to consider the dramaturgical depictions of the agency of the nonhuman. The selected dramatic texts help trace the evolving depiction of the natural resource over the span of a hundred and ten years; thus, creating thought-provoking discussions that reopen pathways for research around the relationship between water and the human. The study argues that theatre and other earlier literary genres play a key role in portraying the reformation of the literal meaning and understanding of ecological elements such as water in the twenty-first century.