The deliberative ecology of Kyoto

english

2026

volume 14, issue 1

deliberative dramaturgy   environmental plays   Kyoto

Slovenski gledališki inštitut (SLOGI)
(Obvezni izvod spletne publikacije)

The contribution focuses on the play Kyoto by Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson, which premiered in 2024 at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, in a co-production by Good Chance and the Royal Shakespeare Company and transferred to the West End in 2025. In contrast to its environmentally conscious predecessors in contemporary British drama, in which the subject of climate change is predominantly treated from a bottom-up perspective, the play Kyoto dramatises the ten-year negotiation process of the so-called Kyoto Protocol of 1997, which took place at the highest global decision-making level: the United Nations Climate Change Conferences. Although Murphy and Robertson’s exposure of the conflicting interests of global players in environmental politics could be attributed to the entire recent “turn” in British political drama that “lays emphasis on argumentation and reflection rather than quick action” (Redling), immediate critical responses to Kyoto propelled the play into a genuine “thriller”. The interest of this paper is to examine the play’s “strategies of representation” – particularly its attitude to language – and to discuss the links it establishes between drama, debate and public opinion. These links are, namely, characteristic of a perennial dramaturgical matrix that has found in Kyoto one of its most darkly humorous specimens, attuned to the “deliberative ecology” that is both the singular promise for saving the planet and the crucial obstacle to doing so.

31.08.2026