Essence & Critique: Journal of Literature & Drama Studies, Volume 5, Issue 2 brings together contributions that engage with ecocriticism, theatre and performance studies, trauma theory, ethics, modernist literature, and decolonial perspectives, demonstrating the journal’s commitment to interdisciplinary critical inquiry.
The issue opens with Baturalp Ali Yavuz’s “An Examination of Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild Duck in the Context of Ecodramaturgy,” which reconsiders Ibsen’s canonical play through the theoretical framework of ecodramaturgy. Drawing upon ecocriticism, posthumanist thought, and object-oriented ontology, the study conceptualizes the wild duck as a hyperobject and interprets the attic space as an anthropocentric and Capitalocentric reconstruction of nature. By examining anthropomorphism, speciesism, and ecological narrative, the article demonstrates the interpretive possibilities ecodramaturgy offers for reading canonical dramatic texts.
In “Malleability of Hagher’s Plays to Styles in Performance,” Hameed Olutoba Lawal and Gbenga Emmanuel Adeboye investigate the adaptability of Iyorwuese Hagher’s dramaturgy through selected productions of Mulkin Mata, Aishatu, and Anti-People. Grounded in Patrice Pavis’s theory of mise en scène, the study highlights how narration, role reversal, audience participation, satire, episodic structure, and flashback techniques expand directorial choices, enhance pedagogical value, and increase the plays’ potential for screen adaptation.
Fabiano Lodi’s “Training as an Apparatus: Revisions on the Modern Directing under the Concept of Directing Training through Composition Practice” revisits the notion of directing by exploring the relationship between training and authorship in contemporary theatre. Drawing on Agamben’s concept of the apparatus, Danto’s reflections on the end of art, and the Composition practices associated with the SITI Company and Anne Bogart, the article argues that Composition provides a productive framework for rethinking directing within postmodern theatre through decentralized artistic processes and the dilution of traditional hierarchies.
Yasemin Baysal’s “Before the Wound: Anticipatory Trauma and Affective Materiality in Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts” offers an innovative reading of Woolf’s final novel through the intersection of affect studies, materiality, and trauma theory. The study proposes that objects and spaces such as gramophones, mirrors, barns, and the village pageant function not merely as symbols but as affective agents that generate anticipatory trauma, revealing how Woolf imagines catastrophe as a material and atmospheric condition preceding its historical realization.
Cansu Utku’s “Eco-Collapse in Everyday Spaces: Caryl Churchill’s Escaped Alone and Lucy Kirkwood’s The Children” comparatively examines two contemporary British plays that stage environmental catastrophe within domestic settings. Employing spatial, ecological, and trauma-based approaches, the article demonstrates how gardens, kitchens, cottages, and everyday rituals become sites where ecological anxiety, memory, and psychological distress converge, transforming intimate spaces into landscapes of environmental unease.
In “The Excremental as Ethical?: Violence in J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians,” Sinjan Goswami explores the relationship between trauma, contamination, and ethical witnessing in the context of apartheid violence. Through concepts such as empathic unsettlement, counterfocalization, and transmissibility, the study argues that Coetzee’s representation of excrementality and bodily contamination opens a space for imagining ethical encounters with radical alterity without appropriating the suffering of the other.
The issue concludes with Pedro Panhoca da Silva and Camila Lourenço Panhoca’s review essay, “A Review of the Comic Book Maramunhã – na terra do Wanará.” Situating the comic within discussions of Brazilian colonization and decolonial thought, the review underscores its critical and pedagogical potential as a medium for promoting Indigenous cultures, questioning dominant historical narratives, and encouraging alternative understandings of colonial violence.
Taken together, the contributions in this issue illuminate the diverse ways in which literary and dramatic texts engage with ecological crises, traumatic histories, ethical responsibility, theatrical practice, and decolonial interventions. By bringing established theoretical paradigms into dialogue with emerging critical perspectives, Volume 5, Issue 2 seeks to contribute to ongoing scholarly conversations while fostering new approaches to reading, staging, and reimagining cultural narratives.
