Hippoposthumous, a play with music from The Unnatural Disaster Theatre Company, brings an unusual protagonist and a wide environmental question into the open air. The production began as part of the Halifax Fringe Festival and has since developed into a touring work for parks, watersides, and other outdoor settings.
Written by Halifax playwright Logan Robins, the show follows a young hippopotamus living in Colombia’s Magdalena River. Through poetry, rhythm, music, and storytelling, the character considers what it means to be displaced, labelled invasive, and asked to find a place in a changing world.
The production uses the landscape as part of its theatrical language. Water, weather, trees, and the sounds around an audience become active elements in the experience rather than a backdrop.
A story shaped by water
The play’s starting point is the real history of African hippos introduced to Colombia decades ago. After the private collection that held them was dismantled, several animals remained in the country and established themselves in the Magdalena River basin. Their descendants became part of an ongoing conversation about ecology, responsibility, and how people respond when species move beyond the environments where they evolved.
For Robins, that story offered a way to approach environmental education through character and playfulness. Instead of presenting a lecture about invasive species, Hippoposthumous invites audiences to encounter the question through the eyes of one imaginative, uncertain animal.
The outdoors as a stage
Outdoor performance is central to the work. The production was conceived in relation to water, and its touring format allows each location to influence the encounter. An audience may gather near a pond, a river, or another public landscape as the performance folds local sounds and changing light into its rhythm.
That setting also shifts the distance between performer and audience. The show’s questions about belonging are not confined to a conventional theatre room; they unfold in places where people can notice the landscape around them while following the story.
A touring invitation
The company’s tour connects the Halifax-area production with audiences in communities across Nova Scotia and Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. The work is designed as an accessible meeting point for theatre, music, environmental ideas, and outdoor discovery.
For readers looking for a production that is playful without losing sight of its larger questions, Hippoposthumous offers a distinctive route into the conversation: begin with a hippo, follow the water, and consider how every living thing negotiates its place in the world.
