Gabriel Levine publishes on performing objects, politics, and ecology

Gabriel Levine, Associate Dean of the School of Humanities and Creativity, has two new publications out this spring: an article in the leading humanities theory journal Critical Inquiry on ecology and object-theatre, and a chapter in the collection Power Moves: Dance, Culture, Politics, on the Indigenous-led Talking Treaties Project.

In “Dump Puppetry: Ecology, Play and Object-Performance” (Critical Inquiry 51:2, 2025), Levine examines the emergence of the genre of tabletop object-theatre in the U.S. and Europe in the 1970s and 1980s, focusing on the work of Stuart Sherman, Paul Zaloom, and Théâtre de Cuisine. Engaging with theories of more-than-human performance, ecological philosophy, and Discard Studies, Levine argues that the capacity of these artists to play with the castoff materials of a “dumped reality” offers valuable lessons for our own moment of ecological crisis and informational overwhelm.

Levine’s “Histories Inside Our Bodies: The Talking Treaties Project’s Movements and Materials” (in Power Moves: Dance, Culture, Politics, ed. Seika Boye and MJ Thompson, Playwrights Canada Press, 2025) grows out of a years-long engagement with Kanien’kehá:ka artist Ange Loft and her collaborators in the community-engaged work of Jumblies Theatre + Arts. Drawing on interviews, documents, and participant observation, Levine explores the Talking Treaties Spectacle (Fort York, 2017 and 2018) as a new iteration of traditions of Indigenous treaty-making. The Spectacle brings non-Indigenous and Indigenous spectators into the treaty relationship, using group movement and performing objects to remind us of our relational responsibilities and embodied histories.

The two essays grow out of a SSHRC-funded research project on ecology and more-than-human performance. Levine plans to adapt this writing into chapters of a forthcoming book, tentatively titled What is a Performing Object?