Abstract
Since antiquity, theatres as an art form have been considered human-centric, especially in Western cultures. However, this anthropocentric thought and praxis have been challenged in recent years from those more-than-human perspectives that provide more agency to nature, animals, and dead spirits. This research criticises the foundational premise of the current more-than-human philosophy trend as it is primarily an outcome of one strand of Western scholarship and its performative ends. In so doing, the research firmly roots itself in Japanese philosophy and Japanese traditional performances (especially nō and bunraku), which are, from inception, more-than-human par excellence. This research project stands at the intersection of traditional Japanese theatre, more-than-human dramaturgy, Japanese philosophy, and critical analyses of Japanese and/or Japanese-influenced contemporary performances. Although interdisciplinarity is part and parcel of the research, the primary focus is on the last of the four components, that is, contemporary performance. The study's main objective is to develop a compendium of more-than-human dramaturgical vocabularies sustained mainly by non-Western philosophies and Japanese theatre histories. Methodologically, the analyses of traditional Japanese theatre and contemporary performances will be conducted through theoretical readings and empirical and embodied fieldwork research. As many theatres and performances presented in Belgium and wider Europe are crucially lacking in-depth knowledge of non-Western nonhuman perspectives, the research outcomes obtained from this project will contribute to shifting the theoretical mapping of the nonhuman philosophies and introducing a different history of the more-than-human dramaturgies.
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