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Paper short abstract

This presentation on Weathered Theatre (WT)—a mixed ability, mixed-media intercultural theatre installation in Kerala, India (April 2026) on weather and plants—will focus on how such performative logics enhance “entangled modes of being” of the (non)human.

Paper long abstract

This presentation on Weathered Theatre (WT)—a mixed ability, mixed-media intercultural theatre installation in Kerala, India (April 2026)—will focus on how such performative logics enhance “entangled modes of being” of the (non)human. With blind, Deaf, hard-of-hearing, and non-disabled participants, we will activate “wild weather experiments” across performativities that include portable crip sensory boxes, paper kinetic sculptures, “wearing the land” costumes, and film. WT unfolds through the interactions of Weather Chasers, Weather Spirits, and Plant Scripters. The latter figures, to which we will pay particular attention, are inspired by Jagadish Chandra Bose’s cresographs, instruments that measure the minute movements of plants as “scripts” or “autobiographies.” Kerala’s local plant histories have also played a key role in the development of global plant taxonomies through the Hortus Malabaricus, a 17th century compendium on plants by Hendrik van Rheede, which later influenced Linnaeus’s construction of his plant taxonomies. These performative and ethnographic investigations will result in a critique of static taxonomies of plant life as well as accessible cross-sensory performance design, instruments, and structures that artistically disseminate local earth data and that increase our methodological toolkit for new modes of inquiry, collaboration, and dissemination.