Ecological consciousness and humanonhuman relationship in Edward Albee’s Seascape

摘要

This paper investigates the ecological issues manifested in Edward Albee’s play Seascape (1975), in which he presents a direct contact of humans and nonhumans. The main discussion consists of three parts. The first part investigates how critics conventionally apply an anthropocentric analytic approach to dramatic studies and hence ignore the ecological concern implicit in the play. Instead, Seascape should be elaborated both as a challenge to and a destabilization of the patriarchal, dualistic, and hierarchal mode of perception in Western thought system. In addition, it calls for a reexploration of humanonhumanatural environment relationships in term of interconnectedness and mutual dependence. While it advocates embodied communication as an appropriate means of realizing humanonhuman interconnection, the play corresponds to ecocritics’ claim that theatre can be an immediate, communal and material medium for provoking ecological consciousnesses.