Performing or Permaforming?

In 2022, an entire issue of IXYPSILONZETT, the magazine of theatre for young audiences published by ASSITEJ Germany, was dedicated to the role of plants on stage. Nature, especially the forest, is a traditional topos in literature and drama for children: human heroes and heroines frequently interact with talking trees and animals, but even stones and storms can serve as friends and advisers in fairy tales, fables and myths. However, we usually experience them in stories and theatre in a humanised way. They bear human traits and thus often function as their mirrors or allegories. This is why IXYPSILONZETT posed the questions: “But how would a plant act ‘like itself’ if it were given the freedom to do so? How would this affect our notions of characters and suspense, of plots and dramaturgy?”

In order to get to the bottom of these questions, I met with two performers and an architect who take a resolutely different artistic approach to more-than-human partners in their work. I asked them how this has altered their understanding of the stage or performance and what challenges this approach poses.

Performer Linn Sanders combines activist activities with her artistic work. For her master’s project at Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), she founded a collective with a plant, Miracle Leaf, to create interspecies theatre, inventing the art form “permaformance” in the process. Following the design approach of permaculture, she has since endeavoured to understand all living beings and things involved in a given event by examining their reciprocal relationship through an artistic lens. Humans only play a very small role in this permaformance. (https://instinktut.org/)

Performance artist and lighting designer Stine Hertel and architect Hannes Schwertfeger from Bureau Baubotanik have co-founded the collaborative project “Theatre of the Long Now” in Stuttgart. (http://www.bureau-baubotanik.de/projekte/stuttgart-ii/theatre) Stine develops her performances and installations at the interface between visual and performing arts. She is particularly interested in the performativity of space and material and she often ponders how the dominance of human perspectives can be destabilised. Her colleague Hannes has been working in the field of botanical architecture for almost 20 years, which means he makes architecture with plants, mainly trees. That’s why he always has two clients in his projects: on the one hand, the people who want something from a building and on the other hand the plants, which have certain needs as well.

And this is what we discussed at our online meeting:

Julia: You all have non-human beings as partners in your work. Was there a conscious decision or motivation to start a project with plants as ensemble members?

Linn: I come from theatre, from “pretending”, and wanted to move towards a performance style that is about being. Not about acting. As authentic as possible. In theatre, children and animals have a kind of “naturalness bonus”—they draw the focus because they pose something truly real on stage. And I really wanted to learn that, so I tried to learn it from a plant.

Hannes: Our work in botanical architecture was transdisciplinary right from the start. We had three focal points: architectural theory, botany and construction. At the time of my studies, there was a very neoliberal mindset of “everything is available”—any material, any quantity. That bothered me. So my colleagues and I developed botanical architecture as a means for architects to engage in a dependent relationship with our environment. Because working with a plant has more far-reaching consequences than working with dead or artificial material: plants, for example, have a completely different life cycle. We wanted to see how we could conceive of an architectural order that takes the obvious problems of our time into account, such as the climate crisis or the material crisis.

Julia: What specific changes to the work process are necessary when coordinating with plants as colleagues for a performance or show?

Stine: At Theatre of the Long Now, the first thing is that we align our theatre season with the seasons of nature. A big summer break doesn’t make sense. There’s more of a winter break—when you can go to Theatre of the Long Now but there’s just not as much going on. We are influenced by the weather and many other things that are not subject to human design, but simply happen. In addition, the space requires specific maintenance work: we have to track how the assemblage develops, which players there are and how various plants interact. And then there’s the decision about how you want to exercise your power as a human actor in this theatre. It’s not just about plant protection, saying: plants grow here and we stand by in awe. It’s about rendering the conflict visible between the human will to design and what happens in the plant world. And allowing the brutality and reciprocal disturbance to unfold without masking it. Instead, we take a closer look at how we interact, how we disturb each other and how we end up destroying each other. What kind of dynamics—utterly disconnected from a human agenda—are coming from the other side, and what role can I play in their unfolding?

Julia: What experiences have you had working with plants, Linn?

Linn: Miracle Leaf and I permaformed for six months and we actually failed throughout. Because I was trying to bring a plant into our human-centred theatre system. By bringing in a plant, I automatically demand that it adapts. But my wish was to be able to act on equal footing. That failed immediately when I brought the plant onto my stage. I had already attempted to make accommodations: I performed outdoors, cutting out technology as much as possible. Yet I came to realise that simply by setting up this framework of stage and audience and by being the one to put this plant there, it was still created by me. My first attempt was to perform for both plants and people. But in order to do so, all of the plants had to be carried to and from the stage, which totally goes against the nature of a plant. So I increasingly began to seek out places where plants are already rooted. But it was a constant search, a constant process of “only ever being able to get close”.

Julia: You talk about equal footing, Linn. How do you counter the accusation of instrumentalization or projection when dealing with plants in theatre work?

Stine: It helps me to say that there are many different perspectives. We have ours; plants and animals do something completely different and we will never know what they want or what interests them. But accepting this difference was the easiest or most apt way for us to move forward with Theatre of the Long Now. The plants don’t make theatre for us either, but we view the growth of plants as a performative process. We decide to view these vacant lots as a stage—that is a dominant decision and it is a gesture of power to then invite people in to look at the plants. But then there are also those moments when something suddenly doesn’t work during a performance: it’s too hot outside, someone gets sunstroke and we suddenly reach our limits and have to deal with that.

Hannes: For me, equal footing means first of all getting people up to speed on this topic within society. The plants probably don’t care—they don’t even have feet. We examine human habits, how they deal with their natural environment.

Julia: How do you understand “performance” in such a constellation? Or to put it another way: what distinguishes a performance on your vacant lot from a guided tour through a botanical garden?

Stine: Actually, it’s just a question of framing. You could do a performance in a botanical garden that would be super similar to ours at Theatre of the Long Now. Maybe think of it like ready-mades—I look at what’s already there doing something that’s independent of us. And then I make a lot of decisions about how to frame it and what kind of spectatorship I invite people to engage in.

Hannes: The question is: what concepts do I want to plant in people’s heads? Our performance offers a completely different framework than a scientist’s would. We don’t look at the plants the way scientists do, no, we watch natural science unfold with our onsite plant actors. We would like to anchor an alternative approach to dealing with plants in everyday urban life. In this sense, we are perhaps more likely to functionalise the scientists or those who take part in our performances at Theatre of the Long Now.

Julia: What’s next for your work? What goals or wishes do you have?

Stine: Our ambition is to change what we view as art, its depiction and performativity. What styles of performativity can there be and what kind of positions do they take vis-à-vis society or the common view of humanity? Theatre is there to create confusion that can be used by society productively. That would be my wish. You don’t have to learn anything with us, but we offer a framework which allows this confusion to take shape and everyone can choose to use it for themselves or not.

Hannes: My wish is to develop clear ideas of what can be. In the case of Theatre of the Long Now, this idea is already there: it started in 2017 and will probably last until 2117. Personally, I want our work to have an impact on the way institutions are organised when it comes to how long-term project decisions are made.

Linn: As a human being, I use my permaformances to try and help plants gain their rights as living beings on this planet—so that they may find a place in a society which is currently not designed for them at all.
For me, creativity is the way forward in everything I do. Maybe that’s where the connection to young audiences comes in, because this approach has something very childlike about it for me. I can be creative in artistic processes, in activist or production processes—and the participants can decide for themselves: should they just laugh it off? Are they entertained? Do they take something away for themselves? Will they learn something from it? I find that delightful.