Leisure in a dangerous time: a visual theatre arts-based research project

Critical leisure research considers key economic and political contexts, including neoliberal consumer capitalism and environmental crises. This approach can be valuably supplemented visual research methods to enhance access, empathy and affective recognition of the environmental impacts of consumer culture. Drawing on theoretical work in critical leisure studies and new materialism, this paper describes a process of recursive stages of academic research and visual theatre production, leading to the development of participatory workshops around environmental activism. Following previous publication of related academic research, a short theatre production engaged with questions about borders between leisure, art, science and environment, asking how environmental context determines activities of leisure, work, play, art and survival. As life on a post-apocalyptic beach fosters creative adaptation audiences and producers found a deepened awareness of, and constructive imaginaries around, issues of climate and environmental challenges that consider the roles of leisure in a dangerous time.