Staging Relational Ethics: Salmon Is Everything as Ritual Performance

Yıl 2025, Cilt: 35 Sayı: 2, 348 - 365, 18.12.2025

Nesrin Yavaş

https://doi.org/10.26650/LITERA2025-1688453

https://izlik.org/JA76BT26SF

Öz

This article examines Salmon Is Everything, a community-based play developed in response to the 2002 Klamath River fish kill, as an enactment of relational ethics through ritual performance. The study aimed to move beyond readings of the play as environmental protest or trauma narrative by analyzing how it functions as a ceremony that repairs and reconfigures relationships among Indigenous and settler communities, between humans and salmon, and across ecological and cultural divides. Methodologically, the research combined a close textual analysis of the script with testimonies from participants, audience surveys, and accounts of the collaborative creative process. Findings show that the play not only dramatized ecological crisis but also operated ceremonially: it cultivated intercultural empathy, produced spaces for mourning and reconciliation, and embodied Indigenous ethical protocols in both process and performance. Moreover, the project trained students and empowered Indigenous youth, contributing to long-term gains in intercultural collaboration. The conclusion argues that Salmon Is Everything demonstrates the potential of theatre to act as a form of ceremony that both embodies and generates relational ethics. By bridging artistic practice, activism, and environmental justice, the play offers a model of performance that transforms ecological devastation into a collective act of healing and ethical renewal.

Anahtar Kelimeler

Relational ethics , ritual performance , ecodrama , environmental justice , intercultural collaboration

Kaynakça

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