UNRULY: screening & discussion
Event details
Join us for a screening of the theatre play UNRULY, hosted by Dr Johan Enqvist. The play, which draws from research conducted by the Unruly Natures research project, follows events unfolding in the fictional town of Skemer Baai, South Africa, after the matriarch of the local baboon troop mysteriously vanishes.
Tensions run high as baboon politics divides a community seeking answers, but the play also invites the audience to empathise with and interrogate the complexities from multiple perspectives - while exploring the Peninsula’s history and shared ecologies prone to wildfires, seas surges and messy human/animal relations.
UNRULY has been carefully devised to inspire dialogue across varying conflicting viewpoints, interrogating the question: “How should we, as humans, act towards a nature that doesn’t always behave the way we expect it to?”
Following the 90 minute show, attendees will have the opportunity to share their reflections and engage in discussions about how we might learn to live well together in a rapidly changing world.
Choose from one of two showings on 26 February with the option to join us in LCAB (Berrick Saul second floor) for a bring your own lunch meet and greet with Johan.
- ENV/005: 10:00 - 12:30
- LMB/002: 15:30 - 18:00
Dr Johan Enqvist
Dr Johan Enqvist is a researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Centre and a senior research officer at the African Climate & Development Initiative at University of Cape Town. Johan studies people’s relationship with the rest of nature, focusing on how values, perceptions and actions enable stewardship of urban social-ecological systems. For many city dwellers, notions of “nature” are increasingly associated with something either highly controlled, far away, or under threat. However, urban sprawl and global environmental change increasingly remind people that nature can also interrupt their lives in direct and unpredictable ways.
Johan’s research explores how people respond to this and how it shapes their relationships both with each other and with their environments.
His ongoing Unruly Natures project studies the highly polarised human-baboon relationships in Cape Town, South Africa. The project is designed in dialogue with local communities and uses mixed qualitative and quantitative methods to systematically examine subjective experiences, unpack underlying values, and provide more robust knowledge about how to build more sustainable management practices. The project speaks to fundamental questions of biosphere stewardship and the role of care, especially in the Anthropocene where uncertainty makes discussions about what world we want increasingly contested and value-based.
UNRULY is produced by Empatheatre and directed by Neil Coppen who wrote the script in collaboration with Andrew Buckland and Dr Dylan McGarry. Lighting design is by Tina le Roux and set and costume by Dylan McGarry. Original Score is Braam DuToit and Chantal Willie-Petersen.
The Unruly Natures project is led by Dr Johan Enqvist in collaboration with Kinga Psiuk and Dr Luke Metelerkamp. It is funded by Formas, a Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development, through Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University.