Attempts to convey the urgency of the climate crisis often rely on the figure of the child. From Greta Thunberg via school-striking students to the grandchildren invoked in the titles of bestselling books about global warming, appearances of children seem especially effective in protesting the loss of a habitable planet. The iconic child that needs saving (or becomes the planet’s saviour) is equally prominent in British plays about climate change. Drawing on queer critiques of the conceptual short circuit between the child and the future, this article identifies two waves of UK eco-theatre: the first wave endorses hetero-nuclear family bonds and future-oriented thinking; the second wave traces alternative relations to nonhuman, ageing, or ailing Others in the present. The first part of the article revisits critiques of reproductive futurism; the second examines the straight ecologies that characterise the first wave of eco-theatre, based on a detailed analysis of Duncan Macmillan’s play Lungs (Studio Theatre, Washington, DC/Sheffield Crucible, 2011). The final part considers climate-change plays that sever reproductive timelines, as exemplified by Caryl Churchill’s Escaped Alone , Lucy Kirkwood’s The Children , and Stef Smith’s Human Animals (all Royal Court, 2016).

中文翻译：

---

还有未来吗？英国气候变化剧院的直接生态学

传达气候危机紧迫性的尝试通常取决于孩子的身材。从格雷塔·图恩贝格（Greta Thunberg）到喜欢上学的学生，再到孙子孙女们在有关全球变暖的畅销书标题中被提及，孩子们的出现似乎在抗议地球上宜居者的丧失特别有效。在英国有关气候变化的戏剧中，需要储蓄（或成为地球的救星）的标志性孩子同样重要。借助对儿童与未来之间概念性短路的古怪批评，本文确定了英国生态戏剧的两波浪潮：第一波浪潮支持异核家庭纽带和面向未来的思维；第二波浪潮支持异性核家庭纽带和前瞻性思维。第二波浪潮追溯到当前与非人类，老龄化或患病其他人的替代关系。本文的第一部分回顾了对生殖未来主义的批评。第二部分基于对邓肯·麦克米伦（Duncan Macmillan）的戏剧《肺》的详细分析，考察了第一波生态剧院的直接生态特征（演播室剧院，华盛顿特区，谢菲尔德坩埚，2011年）。最后一部分考虑了气候变化剧情，这些剧情严重影响了生育时间表，例如凯莉·丘吉尔（Caryl Churchill）的《独自逃脱》（Escaped Alone），露西·柯克伍德（Lucy Kirkwood）的《儿童》（The Children）和史蒂夫·史密斯（Stef Smith）的《人类动物》（Stef Smith's Human Animals）（所有皇家法院，2016年）。