Introduction: A Danced Epistle to the Anthropocentric Narration

The Jungle Book (1894) is a nineteenth-century book of children’s fables written by Rudyard Kipling. While the story is often criticized for its colonial overtures,Footnote ¹ this wolf story, as an antithesis to the modern separation of nature and humanity, introduces a romantic view of nature where it is represented as a source of renewal and wholeness. The fiction imagines an amicable relation between humans and other-than-human beings through the myth of child-raising wolves. In the face of worsening climate crisis, the wolf tale in Akram Khan’s Jungle Book Reimagined (2022) takes a step further and expresses contemporary fears of human extinction and environmental deterioration. Jungle Book Reimagined, a dance production that premiered at Curve Theatre in Leicester in 2022, has since been performed at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater, Sadler’s Wells Theatre, Théâtre du Châtelet, and multiple other theatres worldwide, and was also presented as a five-minute film at the Edinburgh International Culture Summit in 2022. The emancipatory life in the Anthropocene that the colonial fantasy envisages is adapted in Khan’s ecological makeover as a new mode of theatre situated within the broader narrative of the Anthropocene. Khan takes an ecocritical turn and reimagines Mowgli’s journey in a way that engages with Anthropocene thinking, imagining how the apocalyptic vision of the future of humanity would be different if we were more of a listener to the nonhuman world.

In this article, I offer an ecocritical interpretation of Khan’s Jungle Book Reimagined. I demonstrate Khan’s production as a pertinent theatrical engagement with the shifting relation between the human and the nonhuman, suggesting new forms of storytelling and aesthetic experience within the context of the Anthropocene. Central to this exploration is the production’s strategic use of digital imagery, which, rather than simply crafting a blockbuster cinematic experience, helps to envision a time–space that transcends the limits of human imagination and conventional theatre to invite ecological perspectives.Footnote ² Additionally, I examine how technology in theatre is employed to represent aesthetically a time–space or concept of the Chthulucene, a time–place of thick, ongoing presence in which we learn to navigate life and death with care and accountability amid a wounded planet, embracing entangled inheritances and possible futures without erasing the past.Footnote ³ Furthermore, I explore into the concept of climate change on Khan’s stage. Jungle Book Reimagined presents climate change not merely as a backdrop but as a dynamic, agential force that shapes the stage. It is conceptualized as an actant, arising from an intra-active process that intertwines and coalesces the human and nonhuman corporeal realms. This phenomenon does not exist merely as an external force but as an integral, evolving component within the shared materiality of both human and nonhuman existence. Lastly, the article concludes by positioning the performance within the current discourse on extinction, highlighting the connection between ecocide and genocide, and encouraging a rethinking of what it means to be human in an era of environmental change.

While the ecocritical turn in theatre seems timely and important in the context of ever more palpable global ecological crisis, Western dramas and performances that reconsider theatre in the Anthropocene context have been scarce.Footnote ⁴ According to Julie Hudson, despite the dramatic potential of the changes observed in the Earth’s climate system, creative process about climate change and its implications on humankind have been much delayed in playhouses.Footnote ⁵ The reluctance of theatre people to foreground ecological issues on page and stage primarily stems from the aesthetic challenges they offer.Footnote ⁶ Specifically, the spatial and temporal aspects of both the cause and effect of environmental hazards exceed the conventional Western dramaturgy, which stands firmly on the humanistic conception of humans and the anthropocentric perspective on human–nonhuman relationship. Thus, playwrights find it difficult to contain the stories of environmental threats that are beyond the human scope of time and space,Footnote ⁷ and environmental issues are potentially deemed too abstract and incomprehensible to be treated dramaturgically.Footnote ⁸

Moreover, in relation to the scalar shifts, the challenge of agency features as an obstacle to representing anthropogenic climate issues in theatre.Footnote ⁹ The emergence of material ecocriticism based on new materialism around 2012 has revised the concept of agency in response to the Anthropocene, emphasizing the agentic capacities of nonhuman beings by focusing on an open-ended, horizontal interaction between humans and the material world.Footnote ¹⁰ In delineating the essence of material ecocriticism, two pivotal notions emerge: first, the conception of matter as possessing both generative power and agency; second, the recognition that the activities and arrangements of matter are imbued with narrative significance, rendering them susceptible to critical examination aimed at unveiling their stories and the intricate interplay between materiality and discourse.Footnote ¹¹ This perspective prompts ecocriticism not only to explore how the agency of nonhuman entities is depicted in texts, but also to delve into the manner in which these agentic forces narrativize their material existence through interactions with other forces. This material trend in ecocriticism affects the theatre as well, urging writers and performers to imagine ways in which the agentic force of nonhumans is represented, as well as how the story of their materiality in interaction with other forces is narrated through their own voice.Footnote ¹²

In other words, the concept of the Anthropocene in theatre is not merely considered geologically, as proposed by Paul Crutzen and Eugene F. Stoermer,Footnote ¹³ but epistemologically and ontologically. It is a new mode of understanding humanity and its biosphere, and hence the theatre that engages with Anthropocene thinking requires a new mode of narrative that frames humans in the Anthropocene context. Moreover, since climate change is “the aggregate result of countless dispersed behaviours and practices,”Footnote ¹⁴ considering humanity within anthropogenic climate change entails “a non-anthropocentric approach that presents a new version of humankind in entanglements with other humans and nonhumans.”Footnote ¹⁵ This new genre of humanity living in the Anthropocene, where the effects of human demand on natural capital inadvertently permeate all living organisms, calls forth a paradigm shift in the arts. It demands a radical revision of the shared conception of human subjectivity and the human–nonhuman relationship. What is essential to this rethinking is a shift of focus from the anthropocentric perspective that underlies Western theatre to an inclusive perspective that sheds light on the mutual interaction between humans and nonhumans.Footnote ¹⁶

Fortunately, in the wake of articulation of these concerns, Western theatre has witnessed a notable surge in creative works aimed at addressing the challenges posed by climate change and what Bilodeau notes has been termed a “crisis of imagination.”Footnote ¹⁷ In response to the perceived constraints of traditional dramatic structures and aesthetics, theatre practitioners have embarked on a transformative journey, seeking new frameworks for worldview, narrative, and dramatic form that better reflect the ecological urgencies of our time. This emergent paradigm of ecological theatre, predicated upon a fundamental reimagining of the concept of human agency and matter, diverges from the conventions of modern drama, which predominantly privileged human-centric narratives.

A significant work emerging from the English stage, Khan’s Jungle Book Reimagined, has garnered international acclaim, yet it has received limited scholarly attention. In this article, I provide a critical analysis of Khan’s reworking of Kipling’s fables, exploring how the production illustrates the theatre’s potential to navigate the representational complexities of the contemporary environmental crisis. Additionally, I examine how the work engages with the intellectual challenge of reconceptualizing the human in the face of ecological upheaval. Specifically, I examine how Jungle Book Reimagined, as an ecocritically oriented work, reconsiders the conventional assumptions made about relations between humans and the nonhuman world, and participates in new modes of storytelling in the Anthropocene context, exploring the theatrical and dramaturgical strategies that shed light on the entanglements between Anthropocene events and the material world. Through the collaboration of human actors and nonhuman characters, Jungle Book Reimagined expands not only the sense of collective imagination but also that of intimacy and responsibility essential to dealing with anthropogenic planetary destruction.

Hence, my concern with climate change in this article is far from participating in the ongoing argument as to whether climate change science is right or wrong. Rather than seeking certainty amid the ongoing flux of scientific insights into environmental degradation, my essay embraces the requisite uncertainty and embarks on an exploration of Jungle Book Reimagined within the framework of the climate fiction genre onstage. Through this analysis, I delve into how the production signifies a transition from human-centered historical narratives to narratives centered on ecological dynamics and the agency of the nonhuman environment. I uncover the presence of ecodramaturgical attributes within the theatrical piece. These elements serve as both intrinsic components and deliberate critical tools, illuminating ecological concerns and dramatizing human–nonhuman interplay. Hence, my ecocritical interpretation of Jungle Book Reimagined implies that the performance addresses Western theatre’s narrowly humanist bias. By portraying a world characterized by intricate material interconnections, where the narratives of human and nonhuman entities intertwine, the production contributes to the evolution of ecocritical theatre. This evolution aims to reorient theatre’s focus from a human-centered perspective to one centered on the Anthropocene epoch within the burgeoning field of ecocritical theatre, influenced by the tenets of new materialism. Ultimately I argue that Jungle Book Reimagined exemplifies ecocritical theatre by addressing the ecological concerns inherent in the Anthropocene and engaging in novel forms of storytelling that respond to the imperatives of our time.

Creating a Sense of Placelessness with Technology

Khan’s Jungle Book Reimagined is inspired by a sense of urgency arising from humankind’s taken-for-granted attitude toward nature. It is a “drama of bad ideas”Footnote ¹⁸ that radically reimagines modern drama by inverting its method of center-staging human thoughts to foreground nonhuman experiences of man-made ecological mistakes. Keeping pace with contemporary Anthropocenic sensibilities, the production reimagines Mowgli (now a girl) as a climate refugee whose family disintegrates while trying to escape from their homeland, ravaged by human-induced environmental calamity. The inclusion of digitized scenes of environmental decay and desperation, projected onto a translucent screen that frames the expansive performance space and stretches out to the auditorium, offers the audience a blockbuster cinematic experience.

What also contributes to this cinematic experience is the production’s treatment of climate change, which resembles that of ecologically charged catastrophe films, or “cli-fi” as Dan Bloom coined in 2007/8,Footnote ¹⁹ grown abundant since 2005 when Bill McKibben and Robert Macfarlane deplored the lack of artistic responses to climate change.Footnote ²⁰ Many of these stories set humankind in desolate, postcatastrophic landscapes, embracing the central premise of the term Anthropocene: that human-induced environmental degradation has rendered life on Earth difficult and even impossible.Footnote ²¹ In tandem with the increase of movies that fictionalize climate issues, dominated by the apocalyptic genre,Footnote ²² came an increase in the critical literature of both film studies and ecocriticism. Academic interpretations of ecocinema have contextualized them in the lineage of the fear-based Apocalypse myth, implying that these cli-fi films inherently identify short-sighted, anthropocentric activities as the major driver of environmental destruction, speeding human extinction and altering the ecosystem. In a similar vein, literature frequently employs the notion of a transformed planetary condition as a central imaginative force, thereby enriching both literary history and environmental discourse. This approach not only broadens our understanding of the human experience in the face of environmental upheaval, but also investigates potential pathways for humanity to adapt to the emerging epoch it confronts.Footnote ²³

Also over the past two decades, end-of-the-world depictions of human-induced alterations of the natural world flurried onstage as well.Footnote ²⁴ For example, in London, The Contingency Plan (2009), Earthquakes in London (2010), and Greenland (2011) performed global warming in the form of apocalyptic event. The Contingency Plan presented the issue of glacial melting through a glaciologist’s struggle to warn the government of the seriousness of rising sea levels that is predicted to flood the coastal areas; Earthquakes in London staged the story of three sisters whose miserable lives forced them to admit their climate scientist father’s pessimist outlook on global ecological catastrophe; and Greenland centered around different perspectives on the computer model designed by a scientist who researches the alterations in atmospheric conditions and its impact on the planet. These plays represent how contemporary theatre, while staging global warming with a human perspective, takes climate change seriously and is alarmed by intimations of future ecological catastrophe.Footnote ²⁵

In a similar vein, Khan’s contemporary uptake of the wolf myth imbues the mythos with Anthropocene thinking, and situates Mowgli in the context of apocalyptic Anthropocene events. The intention is plainly announced from the onset, with the story set in a deserted, dystopic city that has been ruthlessly reclaimed by nature. Through the animated digital projections, the audience first meets Mowgli on a makeshift raft, fighting her way out of her hometown that is invaded by waters due to rising sea levels. Mowgli’s struggle on violent waves for narrow escape is unsuccessful, as she slips from the raft and falls into a sea polluted by man-made garbage.

Prominent within the production is the strategic deployment of imagery, which effectively captures contemporary concerns regarding our ecological condition across time and space. The simple, painterly images present the environmental disaster as extending beyond Mowgli’s surroundings to encompass the entire globe. Iconic landmarks from some of the most bustling, vibrant cities worldwide are depicted as dilapidated and submerged, highlighting the widespread impact of the disaster. Additionally, by situating the narrative in the near future, the story depicts the environmental catastrophe as not merely fleeting but progressively deteriorating.

The projected image that brings together renowned landmarks, including the Eiffel Tower and the Burj Khalifa, resonates with the global scale of ecological disaster. This all-embracing landscape indicates the necessity of a nuanced, ecocritical understanding of environmental issues that extends beyond immediate contexts to encompass the far-reaching spatial and temporal dissemination of anthropogenic environmental alterations. The exposition locates the plot not within the confines of the human tale but rather as a component of a deep-time narrative of our planet, chronicling the profound transformations that Earth has experienced. In other words, the scene breaks the theatre’s “fifth wall”Footnote ²⁶ of anthropocentrism, stretching the dramatic frame not only across national and social boundaries but also beyond the temporality of human history.

Placed in the deep time of Earth, Mowgli is detached from her specific local origin, creating a “deterritorialized”Footnote ²⁷ sense of place. The concept of deterritorialization suggests that the increasing interconnectedness of societies worldwide engenders the emergence of cultural forms that transcend localized boundaries, finding expression at larger scales. On Khan’s stage, it is through the protagonist’s climate refugee status—Mowgli has fled India and ended up stranded on an abandoned street in London—that the performance delineates a cosmopolitan framework of communal interconnectedness, weaving a complex tapestry of biological and cultural exchanges against the backdrop of global risk. Her displacement to London, now undistinguishable from other cities similarly destroyed by the ineluctable flood, elucidates the interdependent relationship between cultural and ecological systems undergoing reconfiguration across diverse scales and within broader global networks. Such expanded environmental imagination facilitates the performance piece’s movement toward a deterritorialized perspective, wherein traditional notions of place and belonging are challenged and redefined.

Yet we are reminded of Mowgli’s identity as an Indian throughout the performance—not only in Khan’s inventive fusion of Indian traditional kathak and contemporary dance techniques but also in the digitized, flashback animations that imbue Mowgli and her mother, from whom she has become separated, with personality. Inconsistently, Mowgli remembers her mother in visual flashbacks that represent the girl’s struggle to connect with her family, or with a particular place, in times of derangement. Although her identity is anchored in her memories of India, her encounters with the perils of a world teetering on the brink of extinction pose a significant threat to her connection with her homeland. The intimate locality of India undergoes reconfiguration and displacement, intertwining the familial separation with the expansive narrative of mass extinction unfolding across the environmental landscape. Also, performed in the third decade of the twenty-first century, when some people are enjoying the fruits of ongoing civilization and development while others suffer from climate change, the performance juxtaposes the contemporary world with its highly possible future. Hence, in this theatrical presentation, we witness an embodiment of what Una Chaudhuri delineates as “a new kind of placement [or “placelessness” at its extreme], not in any one circumscribed and clearly defined place but in the crossroads, pathways, and junctions between places.”Footnote ²⁸ It embodies the potentiality of “polytopianism”: not an absence or obliteration of place, but rather a confluence of multiple layers, each distinct spatial order stacked upon one another.Footnote ²⁹

The production’s reliance on digital technologies to create this sense of placelessness, which cannot be described by traditional attributes of space and time, helps effectively convey an idea of “eco-cosmopolitanism”:Footnote ³⁰ it highlights the critical need for ecocritical perspectives capable of addressing environmental issues not only at the local level but also in relation to the broader spatial and temporal ramifications of anthropogenic environmental transformations. Khan’s drama begins in the midst of environmental hazard, casting the audience into the imminent threshold of human extinction. Structured upon a late point of attack, this apocalyptic opening, with the aid of digital technology, effectively immerses the audience in the very moment of the crisis.

The entangled iconic landmarks across the globe are found in flood, making it difficult to confidently identify the setting of the plot; after a few moments, not only Mowgli but also animals from diverse origins are brought to life onstage, forming an entangled environment, situated somewhere at the junctions between places (Figs. 1, 2). In this city-jungle—where creatures vie for survival, and trust or distrust colors interactions between wildlife and humanity—the two coexist, their lives intertwined yet their languages, cultures, and perspectives distinct and separate. Thus, far from merely creating a blockbuster cinematic experience, digital technologies in Khan’s performance create a time–space that is beyond the scope of human imagination or conventional theatre.

Figure 1.

As part of the opening scene, the YeastCulture’s animation provides context for Mowgli’s separation from her family. Screenshot from “Jungle Book Reimagined | Akram Khan Company | Family Trailer,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kHfBal3GV0.

Figure 2.

A city-jungle is brought to life through animated animal figures and onstage characters portrayed by human actors imitating animals. Screenshot from “Jungle Book Reimagined | Akram Khan Company | Family Trailer,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kHfBal3GV0.

Vibrant, Storied Matters and the Chthulucene

Khan’s embrace of the apocalyptic genre in theatre stands out for its dramaturgical significance, especially considering the aesthetic hurdles playwrights encounter when portraying climate issues. As examined above, on Khan’s stage, the aesthetic challenge of depicting climate change that exceeds human comprehension in terms of space and time is surmounted by focusing on creating a condition of placelessness. This sense of placelessness also finds heightened expression through the nonhuman characters, who articulate their own lived realities, thereby expanding the realms of existence beyond human dominion. These animal characters elucidate the state of placelessness by intricately linking audiences (the realm of humans) with multiple spaces (the realm of animals) and alternative storylines (the experiences of animals). In essence, what we observe in Khan’s production is an ecological assemblage where the narratives of human and nonhuman actors coalesce. Khan’s production is thus an updated form of ecological theatre or an ecocritical theatre that distorts the modern theatrical tradition.

Specifically, what sets Jungle Book Reimagined apart from other climate-crisis performances is its inclusion, alongside human struggle, of nonhuman voices that unveil how human cruelty played a role in shaping their character and physical traits. Many ecologically themed stage productions relate the human-centered experience of climate disaster, and retain theatre’s anthropocentric bias; as The Contingency Plan, Earthquakes in London, and Greenland show, climate issues on the contemporary stage are presented predominantly in human terms, particularly through the lens of scientists and their concerns over the palpable biosphere crisis seriously threatening the human species.Footnote ³¹ Such dramatization of climate change accentuates human suffering and fear, portraying humans as victims of current environmental changes. However, in Khan’s creation, climate crisis is depicted as affecting the lives of both humans and nonhumans; it is a drama that portrays a materially interconnected world, a world where the lives of all beings are closely intertwined, and hence the (hi)story of human and nonhuman actants surfaces through both.

In Kipling’s initial narrative, a prevailing assurance emerges regarding humanity’s dominion and ascendancy over the natural domain. However, Khan perceives within the foundational essence of The Jungle Book a poignant recognition of the profound menace inherent in human interactions with nature, vividly illustrating the repercussions of such hubris. To shed light on the experiences of nonhuman characters suffering from anthropogenic destructions, the show throws Mowgli into the hands of wildlife. While the animals’ success in claiming the streets of an abandoned city as their own could be seen as their survival of the man-made catastrophe, the damage caused by humankind’s destructive practices seen in their mental and physical suffering implies otherwise. Rather, the animals, shackled by arrogant humans, have been brutally forced to leave their habitats, coerced into living with the wounded Earth as climate refugees destined to wander indefinitely, just like Mowgli.

Within the performance, the agency of nonhuman entities is theatrically rendered through a deliberate juxtaposition: while Mowgli maintains a silent presence, the animals’ vivid essence is brought to life through recorded human voices. This artistic choice not only underscores the significance of nonhuman elements but also serves as a nuanced exploration of the boundaries between human and nonhuman expressions within the theatrical space. The recorded voice-overs of dialogue between the animals reveal their past, and their stories invoke the ethical concerns regarding the use of animals for entertainment and experimentation, as well as the illegal possession of wildlife. What is felt in the dialogue is a sense of resentment against what humans have done to the natural world, quite clearly detectable in the voices of monkeys escaped from science labs and elephants and giraffes escaped from zoos and circuses. Baloo—originally depicted by Kipling as “the sleepy brown bear” and later reimagined in the 2016 adaptation as a sloth bear—exudes charm and endearment, but soon he shares his history as a former circus performer trained to amuse humans. Bagheera, traditionally depicted as a black panther, is reinterpreted as an albino panther, a victim of animal trafficking practices in the pursuit of human ego. Kaa, a sly rock python, is haunted by traumas from confinement in a glass-enclosed observation tank within a zoo. Woven into their covert critique of human arrogance and the exaggerated importance humans assign to their own freedoms is a more explicit condemnation of humanity by the Bandar-log (lit.: “money people” in Hindi). The solo dance of a monkey in the second act powerfully portrays the inherent cruelty in human practices that prioritize human needs, evoking the electric shocks administered by scientists who mistreated the animals in lab experiments.

Along with the digital projections of an apocalyptic city-jungle, these nonhuman voices contribute to Khan’s portrayal of a “kakosmos” world: an intricate, “entangled pluriverse”Footnote ³² where humans, nonhumans, agentic objects, materials, and forces coalesce—and yet, amid this convergence, the harmony between microcosm and macrocosm is utterly fractured. While the conceptual framework of eco-cosmopolitanism enriches our environmental imagination, Jeffrey Cohen contends that our comprehension of the world as a cohesive entity falls short in capturing the space we inhabit, which “is as multiple as it is disorderly.”Footnote ³³ Thus, Cohen urges environmental criticism to extend its focus beyond localized concerns and embrace the cosmic perspective inherent in eco-cosmopolitanism, albeit not in the conventional sense of an orderly and aesthetically pleasing whole. Khan’s artistic vision highlights the discontinuous and heterogenic nature of our cosmos, portraying a world where the narratives of both humans and nonhumans intertwine to form “a horrible and disgusting mess” rather than a unified and harmonious sphere.Footnote ³⁴ The fragmented and conflicting nature is evident not just in the uncommunicative dynamic between Mowgli and the animals, nor in the adversarial relationship between the hunter and the wildlife, but also within the animal community itself, where various perspectives on their interactions with humans and other animals exist. Far from embodying the idea of a pregiven and closed globe, Khan’s kakosmos, where the boundaries (that once distinguished) between civilization and nature are opaque, embodies the idea that our world is a network of “loops,”Footnote ³⁵ or that our “[common world is constructed upon] utterly heterogeneous parts that will never make a whole, but at best a fragile, revisable, and diverse composite material.”Footnote ³⁶

The stories of the Earthbound are not unfamiliar, as we are well aware of such human mistreatment and exploitation of animals in the real world. Yet, their stories do not directly relate to the cause of climate change: rather, they illuminate the myriad ways in which human actions have inflicted harm upon the natural environment, contextualizing humanity’s exploitative behaviors responsible for climate change within a broader framework of antienvironmental practices rooted in human arrogance. In doing so, they emphasize the crucial need for adopting an ecocritical perspective when grappling with the challenges of the Anthropocene era. Through the foregrounding of empirically validated narratives depicting anthropogenic devastation, Khan’s theatrical work resonates with the scientifically substantiated reality of human-induced climate change and underscores the imperative to counteract it. This deliberate framing intensifies the potency of the drama’s cautionary message concerning the deleterious processes unfolding in the material world, while also conveying the ubiquity of the detrimental forces driving them.

Ecocritically, the drama’s framing is noteworthy for its attention to scale in representing climate concerns through theatre and performance. Timothy Clark’s seminal Ecocriticism on the Edge stands as a pioneering force in the realm of ecocritical discourse, urging a reconfiguration of perspectives to accommodate the vast dimensions of the Anthropocene era.Footnote ³⁷ At the heart of Clark’s thesis lies the concept of “derangements of scale,”Footnote ³⁸ which addresses the challenge of reconciling vast temporal and spatial planetary dimensions with human perception. In Clark’s view, the conventional tools of cartography falter when confronted with the complexities of climate change, rendering its vast and multifaceted scales both bewildering and elusive. This recognition, extending beyond phenomenology or localized systems of thought, underscores the interconnectedness of various scales, blurring the boundaries between cause and effect, human agency and natural processes, and historical narratives and ecological realities. Despite the discrepancy between global ecological changes and theatrical representation’s immediacy, Clark suggests that exploring derangements of scale offers a fertile ground for theatrical inquiry.

According to this view, theatre can engage with the intricate interplay of scales and enrich its expressive potential by shifting focus from human protagonists to peripheral elements. In Khan’s reinterpretation of The Jungle Book, the spectrum of agencies at play encompasses a rich tapestry of divergent perspectives. This includes, most apparently, the viewpoints of various nonhuman animals, who have traditionally been shoved to the periphery. These varied perspectives converge to confront the pressing issue of climate change, ultimately reshaping the contours and potency of ecological discourse toward what can be seen as derangements of scale.Footnote ³⁹ While traditional dramatic conventions tend to foreground human characters within specific sociohistorical contexts, a deranged scalar perspective disrupts this anthropocentric paradigm by refocusing toward the periphery. This “zooming out”Footnote ⁴⁰ from the microcosm of human experience allows for a more nuanced engagement with the intricate interplay of scales, opening up new avenues for theatrical inquiry and expression.

Seen in this light, Khan harnesses technology to embody aesthetically a time–space, the “Chthulucene,” where both humans and the Earthbound learn “to stay with the trouble of living and dying in response-ability on a damaged earth.”Footnote ⁴¹ This time–space provides a way to engage with the looped cosmos, which is cocreated by human and nonhuman characters.Footnote ⁴² Besides the use of voice-overs, the animal world onstage is brought to life through the digitized animations of YeastCulture (Fig. 3),Footnote ⁴³ which connect the stage, video, and the screen into one integrated audience experience. A collage of projected imagery, orchestrated through the collaborative efforts of a distinguished ensemble of artists, is entrusted with the pivotal responsibility of inaugurating the theatrical journey with a dynamic portrayal of the world’s descent into turmoil, Mowgli’s poignant estrangement from her kin, and the animal raid into the city. These expansive visuals are seamlessly facilitated by a discreetly embedded, invisible screen that occupies the entire aperture of the stage and parts of the ceiling. The digital images converge to embody the notion of a perpetually unfolding, entangled world where the “tentacular” narratives of multispecies—evoking Donna Haraway’s image of far-reaching, interconnected, and nonhierarchical modes of being—are interwoven to cocreate a multidimensional time–space.Footnote ⁴⁴

Figure 3.

A behind-the-scenes glimpse of an opening scene segment that engages the audience with pressing contemporary ecological concerns. “The Making of Jungle Book reimagined | Akram Khan Company | Act III—The Animation Film,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcbw6e-aiAw.

Climate Change as an Intra-active Process

The animals’ incursion into the cityscape, contextualized within the ramifications of climate change, symbolizes an expression of nature’s intrinsic agency, rupturing the established confines of the human domain itself. It highlights “the agentic capacities” of the nonhuman world,Footnote ⁴⁵ challenging conventional notions that limit agency solely to humans based on philosophical constructs of free will and intentionality. The animals, along with the rising sea levels and floods, represent nonhuman “actant[s]” that can make meaning and have an effect, troubling the subject–object binary and shifting the focus from human subjectivity to the material agency or the “force of things.”Footnote ⁴⁶ They represent the threatening nonhuman forces that are mobilized in the context of ecological degradation, emerging beyond our understanding; the more poisonous their natural habitats become by human activities, the more entangled they become with the modern world and more unpredictable and violent. By giving nature center stage, on the one hand, this theatrical rendition deftly illuminates the formidable influence of ecological dynamics, serving as a poignant reminder that Earth, through nonhuman creatures, wields its own agential power, thereby transcending the confines delineated by human constructs; on the other, it alludes to the political aim of vital materialism, which “is not the perfect equality of actants, but a polity with more channels of communication between members.”Footnote ⁴⁷

Seen in this light, climate change on Khan’s stage figures as a kind of actant emerging from “intra-action,”Footnote ⁴⁸ or horizontal alliances among the diverse array of entities within the performance piece’s ecosystem, spanning species, nations, and natural forces. As an intra-active process, climate change is not merely an interaction between autonomous, preexisting entities but a material phenomenon that emerges through a heterogeneous “swarm of vitalities at play.”Footnote ⁴⁹ Through the rising sea levels and a global flood as well as the animals’ city raid, climate change is represented as matter, thing, or nonhuman actant that exchanges vitalities with other actants (the animals, water, forest, humans, iconic structures, etc.) that stir or are stirred by global warming practices. This exchange is, as reflected in the refugee status of humans and nonhumans, a dark one. As such, the agentic materiality of the performance’s dark environment adopts an ontological stance toward the political dynamics inherent in our ecological landscape. Its core focus lies in the displacement of human-centric perspectives, fostering symbiotic relationships among a diverse array of actors spanning species, nationalities, and natural phenomena. Through this lens, the work of Khan’s ecocritical theatre not only scrutinizes the representation of nonhuman agency within narratives but also delves into the manner in which these dynamic forces articulate their own materiality through interaction with one another.

Moreover, the scale of the victims of climate change, which include both human and nonhuman entities, configures climate change as a temporal and local manifestation of uncertain and uncontrollable “hyperobjects.”Footnote ⁵⁰ In Hyperobjects, Timothy Morton offers an insightful investigation into the realm of autonomous nonhuman entities, distinguished by their intrinsic uncertainty, uncontrollability, and vast dimensions. These hyperobjects encompass diverse phenomena such as the biosphere, the solar system, and global warming, as well as enduring human-made products like plastic bags and capitalism.Footnote ⁵¹ They transcend our limited perceptual grasp, exhibiting a vast distribution across time and space relative to human existence and therefore necessitating our comprehension of them through temporal and localized manifestations. In Jungle Book Reimagined, we are immersed in the convergence of climate change, a grand-scale phenomenon, with the individual realm of humans and nonhumans. While it does not adhere to a linear narrative chronicling the ongoing climatic shifts, the performance could be interpreted as embodying a localized and temporal expression of the immense phenomenon of global warming. The stage, portraying the interplay between human actions and the global repercussions of their consequences through the personal experiences of entities, thus could be said to be envisioning a widespread and expansive manifestation of hyperobject through a deranged and multiperspectival interpretation of scale. Consequently, within the performance’s framework of the Anthropocene—characterized by the dispersed impacts of global ecological shifts across temporal and physical dimensions, alongside the flow of matter and energy—humans are perceived as being displaced yet deeply enmeshed within a dynamic web of agencies.

The dynamic presence of climate change serves as an illuminating exploration of the concept of climate change as a material phenomenon generated by the agentic interplay between humans (civilization) and nonhumans (animals and climate) on a “trans-corporeal” scale.Footnote ⁵² According to Stacy Alaimo, “[t]rans-corporeality” means that “all creatures, as embodied beings, are intermeshed with the dynamic, material world, which crosses through them, transforms them, and is transformed by them.”Footnote ⁵³ In his theatrical narrative, Khan focuses on materially expressing nature’s vicious force through a story of “material interrelatedness of all beings, including the human.”Footnote ⁵⁴ A poignant dynamic emerges wherein humanity’s exploitation of nature precipitates profound ecological distress, vividly depicted through the animals’ historical struggles; conversely, nature’s entanglement with such actions manifests in the animals’ bold urban incursion and the ominous encroachment of rising sea levels—a stark portrayal of nature’s formidable agency exerted upon humanity. The aftermath of devastation vividly illustrates the profound interconnection between humanity and the material world, echoing Alaimo’s assertion that our environment “is never merely an external place but always the very substance of ourselves and others.”Footnote ⁵⁵ Within this framework, climate change emerges not as an abstract concept, but as a tangible manifestation embedded within a vast global ecological network, where the hostile environment becomes an intrinsic component of both human and nonhuman corporeal realities. In other words, Khan offers an idea of climate change as a transcorporeal entanglement that is transformed by and transforms all beings, including human, in its material interrelatedness.

Consequently, Khan’s performance prompts an exploration of climate change’s connection to spatiotemporal dislocation, wherein the demarcations between the human and nonhuman domains are dissolved. Khan immerses audiences in a world where the ramifications of climate change unfold under a shroud of uncertainty. By illustrating the confusing origins of this environmental crisis, the indefinite trajectory of its devastation, and the looming question of its cessation, Jungle Book Reimagined vividly depicts a vast web of corporeal exchanges that disrupts conventional understandings of time and space, thereby challenging our normative constructs surrounding these concepts. Its embodiment of transcorporeality suggests the globe as an invisible, uncertain, transcorporeal space of risk riddled with “unpredictable and unwanted actions of human bodies, nonhuman creatures, ecological systems, chemical agents, and other actors”;Footnote ⁵⁶ it suggests the stretch of global history as “particular moments of confusion”Footnote ⁵⁷ wherein both individuals and communities find themselves grappling not only with their own corporeal existence but also with the myriad unexpected and hazardous material forces, substances, and landscapes that define the contemporary ecological risk.

A Shared Fate of Metamorphosis: Reconceptualizing the Human

Accordingly, the performance could be positioned within the contemporary discourse of extinction. Within the theatrical performance, the portrayal of localized and personal instances of loss resonates with a larger thematic exploration of loss. On a personal scale, Mowgli’s loss of home and family parallels animals’ loss of their own habitat and pack; on a global scale, the dialectic between the peril of biodiversity depletion and the unfolding mechanisms of modernization and industrialization is evident in the conversations between animal characters. In this way, Jungle Book Reimagined adeptly juxtaposes intimate and individual instances of loss against a broader canvas of extinction, thereby illuminating the interconnectedness between personal narratives and the overarching framework of extinction. Such juxtaposition positions the drama within the scientific discourse about the world entering a new age of “the sixth extinction”: Elizabeth Kolbert contends that humanity’s extensive and profound impact on the planet has catalyzed the onset of the sixth mass extinction event, fundamentally reshaping the trajectory and diversity of life on Earth.Footnote ⁵⁸ This event is not a singular phenomenon, but “experienced, resisted, measured, enunciated, performed, and narrated in a variety of ways to which we must attend.”Footnote ⁵⁹ Such ecodramaturgical inquiry is palpable in the fabric of Khan’s drama, which is themed upon humanity’s precarious relationship with the natural world as portrayed in the protagonist’s interactions with the environment. The dramatic arc accentuates the lamentable consequences of human intervention, as evidenced by the poignant portrayal of both humans and nonhumans hovering on the precipice of annihilation. By performing how the ecological deterioration cannot be attributed to natural forces, Jungle Book Reimagined confronts the unsettling reality of human-induced extinction, a manifestation of our species’ formidable yet often destructive agency.

The simultaneous unfolding of these disparate narratives of demise and mourning recontextualizes extinction as a locus of ecological and cultural interchange, affording a platform to delve into the interplay between the local and the global within the theatrical narrative. This portrayal effectively decenters the human presence, highlighting the collective agency and influence of the broader environmental network. Within the world of Jungle Book Reimagined, humans no longer engage solely in unidirectional subject–object dynamics; instead, they are perceived as participants in a dynamic and reciprocal exchange process, which occurs among a diverse array of nonhuman entities, ranging from nonhuman organisms, matters, landscapes, to other unknown actants. This reciprocality is traced in the story of loss, where the afflictions suffered by specific animals serve as allegorical reflections of the broader disappearance of nature. In doing so, the narrative elucidates the inexorable link between ecocide and genocide, reminding us that our existence and demise are intertwined with the fate of other species, transcending borders and nationalities.

Moreover, at a time when mass extinction has been “depersonalized by data and rates of loss over time,”Footnote ⁶⁰ the parallel between personal examples of human loss and specific examples of animal exploitation by anthropogenic activities not only challenges the distinctiveness of the human but also makes the impacts of our ecological footprint more palpable to the audience. Scholars propose that while the prevailing discourse revolves around global extinction, it is through the vitality of specific life forms that the sense of impending loss becomes most palpable.Footnote ⁶¹ This scholarly perspective underscores the thematic essence of the play, which delves into the multifaceted narratives surrounding specific extinction phenomena, intricately woven with material, political, cultural, and ecological complexities that challenge simplistic notions of inevitability. The play’s nuanced examination of this complexity and contingency significantly enhances our ecological awareness, emphasizing the tangible materiality of extinction within a cosmopolitan context, while also fostering an imaginative exploration of global ecological interconnectedness. Rooted in the tangible realities of microlocal extinction events, the play simultaneously traverses the vast expanse of the global environment, inviting audiences on a profound journey through the intricate web of ecological phenomena.

Hence, what we experience in Khan’s adaptation of Kipling’s The Jungle Book is “our common geostory.”Footnote ⁶² Living within the Anthropocene necessitates a reevaluation of causal relationships, as the complexity of climate change, coupled with the agency of diverse forms of energy and matter, surpasses the aims and intentions of the humans responsible for it. Rania Ghosn and El Hadi Jazairy advocate for an environmental imagination through “geostories,” which integrate various forms and scales of knowledge to address technological externalities and a range of socioecological issues, proposing an alternative to the human-centered perspective that currently shapes our understanding of the environmental crisis.Footnote ⁶³ Bruno Latour underscores the significance of crafting a collective geostory, a narrative that necessitates reconfiguring traditional concepts of agency to encompass the dynamic interplay between living beings and nonliving forces. Within the epoch of the Anthropocene, all actors are bound by a shared fate of metamorphosis, destabilizing age-old divisions between subjectivity and objectivity.Footnote ⁶⁴ Latour proposes a departure from attempts to reconcile nature and society, advocating instead for the equitable distribution of agency across a broad spectrum of entities. Considering the intricate and ever-evolving dynamics of ecological systems, it becomes imperative to adopt fresh modes of imagination and narrative to navigate the complexities of the Anthropocene era. Theatre, renowned for its ability to blur boundaries, capture dynamic interactions, and articulate the decentralized diffusion of agencies across different scales, emerges as an invaluable tool for grappling with these conceptual challenges. By examining theatre’s representation of the global ecological crisis through multiple scales and perspectives, Khan’s performance sheds light on the profound interconnectedness between human bodies and nonhuman forces, disrupting the human-centric bias inherent in conventional theatrical narratives.