Adaptation and Environment

Abstract

This chapter engages with the process of greening the theatrical canon by taking on the example of a significant play within the Ibsen oeuvre and within naturalism more broadly, Rosmersholm. As this chapter contends, productions such as those that Rosmersholm received at the Duke of York’s Theatre in London in 2019, adapted by the playwright Duncan Macmillan and directed by Ian Rickson, can serve well as paradigms for how the greening of the canon can work in practice, and how, similarly, we might recalibrate our critical reading to allow environmental concerns to emerge as primary while, at the same time, recognizing these as profoundly intertwined with issues relating to community, justice, politics, and social progress.