BEING PREY
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Use this space to tell your visitors about your project in a little more detail. You can talk about the aims, objectives, and concepts involved in the project. Then, tell your visitors in one or two sentences about the way you achieved those goals.
Hero meets a hungry crocodile while minding her own business in the Kakadu National Park. Unfortunately for Hero, the crocodile is not too interested in the Very Important Ecological Research that she is conducting and decides that this human would make a very tasty meal. The only problem is, Hero gets away. Based on the true story of ecofeminist and philosopher Val Plumwood.
Or at least that what I wrote several months ago when I pitched this show to BATS. Since then this project has evolved (as devised projects do) into something perhaps beyond summary. This project is my ode to my education — both in physical theatre and university environments studies. In many ways, Being Prey is my 'graduating' work. Most of my theatre education has been through independent intensive courses, and this project is the culmination of the training I have received (so far!) from incredible teachers in Lecoq, clown, bouffon and improvisational theatre forms.
I have asked myself continually along the way; how do I make this very extreme experience something human? How do I connect the academic language of Plumwood's philosophical work 'Being Prey' to the language of theatre? Can I tell this story in actions rather than words?
Engaging in this project has been an incredible experience, even before production. The conversations it has stimulated for myself and for those that have engaged with me about it have been truly touching. I have no doubt that Being Prey is going to continue growing and maturing as it already has in unimaginable ways in the five years since I originally conceived the idea in a stuffy lecture theatre in Melbourne.
The project is inspired by the true story of Val Plumwood – badass Australian philosopher and ecofeminist who in 1985 was attacked by a crocodile while canoeing by herself down a river and then lived to tell the tale. She was death rolled three times — all while conscious — and experienced a croc’s teeth clamping her leg and groin. Miraculously, she survived by gripping the reeds on the bank and hauling herself out of the water and then crawling through the swamp for hours until she was eventually rescued.
However, let us not remember Val by her encounter with a crocodile. Let us remember her for work as a philosopher, activist, and all-round legend. People have been eaten by animals forever, but it was Val's ability to so eloquently put her near-death experience into words that inspired me to make this work. I encourage you to follow the below link to read the original 'Being Prey' article.
I have for a long time been obsessed with the relationship that humans have with the food chain. Dominate it or ignore it, we rarely consider ourselves as part of it. In my view, the only way we are going to be able to escape complete ecological disaster is if we begin to understand ourselves as part of the ecosystem around us — and part of doing so is by recognising that we too are food.
This show was born long before Covid-19 emerged, but the vulnerability I felt as the pandemic raged reminded me of the importance of this show. The pandemic has forced us to recognise the fallibility of our bodies and the structures that we believe keep us safe from the ‘wild’, and that no amount of technology and innovation will prevent us from eventually becoming food for some creature or another.
While in Aotearoa we are incredibly lucky to have escaped the worst of it, it is still critical to reflect on the pandemic as not just a ‘disaster’, but a reaction to the artificial barrier we have created between humans and the environment.