Oleanna in the Anthropocene

Abstract

“Oleanna in the Anthropocene” follows a series of dream-like and personal interludes between “student” and “teacher” in an undisclosed time period, across four acts and an epilogue. As each act unfolds, the reader becomes a voyeur in the struggle for intimacy and power between the two characters. Working from the original Mamet play, Oleanna (1992), this play creates additional layerings of sexual, socio-political, and technological twists. While twenty-first-century “innovations” drive the plot, the dialogue and action reveal that despite our claims toward “progress” in this historical moment, colonial relationships in the quest for knowledge, desire, and power have changed very little in the last 100 years. The play serves as an illumination of these educational and interpersonal contradictions, situated in a fictional world of possibilities anticipated for the Anthropocene.