Encounters in the Chthulucene: Simon McBurney’s Theatre of Compost

Abstract Looking at Simon McBurney’s award-winning solo performance The Encounter (2015), this paper examines the play’s contribution to environmental humanities through an ecocritical study of its combined use state-of-the-art sound design and age-old art storytelling address link between ecological spiritual crises that we are facing. relates real story American photographer Loren McIntyre who lived with Mayoruna tribe for six weeks in 1969 after getting lost Amazon rainforest. Relying heavily on take us deep into jungle, show addresses our relation nature technology elicits empathy denounce dictates a globalised world ruled threatened by neoliberal neocolonial capitalistic ideologies. As brain – stage become forest, challenges notions distance separation from Other favour sense interconnectedness. Using Donna J. Haraway’s 2016 book Staying Trouble: Making Kin Chthulucene , article sheds light how invites recognise urgency defining what it means live together “response-ability damaged earth” (Haraway 2) intermedial, hybrid qualities play found not “post-human” but, contrary, “com-post” theatre piece (11).