Open Access

Martin Riedelsheimer

• Combining ecological and ethical perspectives, this article first traces an argument concerning the co-dependency of ethics and ecology and then transfers it to the context of the stage in a reading of Joe White’s 2018 debut play Mayfly. While Emmanuel Levinas’s ethics is clearly humanist and hence almost by necessity anthropocentric, his existential philosophy opens up an avenue to engage with ecology by redirecting the moment of transcendence that in Levinas’s thought is key to any ethical encounter towards the milieu, or medium, in which such encounters take place. Its mediating role in ethical encounters makes the preservation of the milieu, which appears as the concretised environment, or stage, of the encounter, an ethical responsibility that is at the same time an ecological one. The practical implications of this theoretical discussion can be seen in Mayfly. Although “the environment” is not the centrepiece of the play’s action, the play and its production at the Orange TreeCombining ecological and ethical perspectives, this article first traces an argument concerning the co-dependency of ethics and ecology and then transfers it to the context of the stage in a reading of Joe White’s 2018 debut play Mayfly. While Emmanuel Levinas’s ethics is clearly humanist and hence almost by necessity anthropocentric, his existential philosophy opens up an avenue to engage with ecology by redirecting the moment of transcendence that in Levinas’s thought is key to any ethical encounter towards the milieu, or medium, in which such encounters take place. Its mediating role in ethical encounters makes the preservation of the milieu, which appears as the concretised environment, or stage, of the encounter, an ethical responsibility that is at the same time an ecological one. The practical implications of this theoretical discussion can be seen in Mayfly. Although “the environment” is not the centrepiece of the play’s action, the play and its production at the Orange Tree Theatre are full of moments that foreground the background against which interactions take place. In this way, the play’s milieu becomes a disruptive force that forms the basis for a new-found ethical togetherness among the characters and by implication ecological preservation becomes an ethical imperative.…