PMA Ph.D. Alum Kelly Richmond ‘24 has written a new publication called ““Forever Unliving and Yet Never Dead”: The Queerly Ecological Hauntings of Nathalie Claude’s The Salon Automaton.” The essay appears in the September 2025 issue of the journal Modern Drama, published by the University of Toronto Press. Richmond is Assistant Professor in Michigan State University’s Residential College in the Arts and Humanities.
Richmond took some time to speak with us about the piece:
“I first encountered Nathalie Claude’s The Salon Automaton in 2015 in a Québecois theatre class I took during my undergraduate studies at McGill University in Montréal,” said Richmond. “The play is like nothing else I’ve read or watched since, depicting a conversation between one living actress and three uncannily humanoid robots. The affective effect of the piece is magical. Haunting. I returned to thinking about this play during my graduate studies at PMA, when I was captivated by the question of what “queer ecology” onstage might look like.
“The Salon Automaton is a fascinating piece because it’s so deeply referential to the history of automata performance, which extends back to elitist entertainment in the early European Enlightenment. The play also feels more relevant than ever now, as Claude’s Automatons are in many ways similar to the current Large Language Model technology. However, what’s so delicious about the play is the way it pushes back on the way stories about automata and AI (think Blade Runner) have been used to justify the myth of human exceptionalism (ie. that humans have a right to use and destroy non-human nature for our short-term benefit, pleasure, and comfort). I think anyone questioning what the role of the ‘human’ should be in our moment of planetary crisis could benefit from some queer ecological ghosts.
“This piece emerged as part of my dissertation at PMA, where I worked and reworked it in conversation with the spectacular Sara Warner, Ellen Gainor, Beth Milles, and Arnika Fuhrmann. I also had the incredible opportunity to stage the scenes I place under close analysis in the paper during Haunted Natures, Hidden Environments, the immersive-environmental performance I directed for PMA in 2022. Writing is never a solo act, and I am so grateful to all my collaborators on both the dissertation and HNHE project for bringing this piece to undead life with me.”
Access the essay here through University of Toronto Press.
Read more about Kelly Richmond.
