Climate Emergency

Playwright Jaisey Bates urges us to include Native communities and artists in the work to combat climate change and in the work we put on stage.

Playwright Paula Cizmar discusses the process of making her eco-play The Chisera (AKA Lost Borders)

Kimi Eisele writes about a new engagement piece presented by Borderlands Theater in partnership with Saguaro National Park.

Sara Katzoff writes about Kickwheel Ensemble Theater’s creation of Passage, a physical theatre comedy. 

Chantal Bilodeau on writing ourselves out of the pyramid and why she is breaking up with Aristotle.

Playwright Elaine Ávila shares her process and inspiration for writing her play Kitimat, which is based on a true story about the Kitimat community. 

Director and educator Theresa May writes about the potential of theatre about climate change to affect hearts and minds.

Playwright Abhishek Majumdar describes the creation of his play Dweepa, inspired by eco-philosophy.

Nelson Gray discusses the inspiration for his opera Here Oceans Roar and advocates more art centered on climate change.

Eco-theatre scholar and pioneer Una Chaudhuri considers how theatre is inventing new strategies for performance offered or necessitated by climate change.

Ira Gamerman reports on Australian playwright David Finnigan's new play Kill Climate Deniers that has been funded through an arts grant from the Australian government and called out as a waste of government arts spending although it hasn’t premeried yet.

Jeff Chang on Detroit-based Complex Movements’ Beware of the Dandelions, a narrative, concert, visual installation, architectural piece, and convening space to distribute revolutionary ideas and activate creative ecosystems and economies of change. 

Katie Naka discusses the Go Green pop-up experience in Harlem and advocates experimenting with urban green spaces as venues.

Kendra Fanconi addresses climate change in her work not as an abstract concept, but as a real and immediate concern that is deeply rooted in a sense of place: the forests of British Columbia.

Librettist Ian Burton discusses his process and inspiration for creating the text for Giorgio Battistelli’s opera CO2.

Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Alison Carey writes about the upcoming Green Room, an online space for theatre artists to come together around climate change action.

Ian Garrett, Director of the Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts, asks will we be party to the Sustainable Theatre Practice Treaty?

Caridad Svich on writing about the inescapable reality of climate change.

Playwright Sharmon Hilfinger discusses how she developed Artic Requiem: The Story of Kivalina with composer Joan McMillen.

New Orleans-based artist Nick Slie writes about creating Cry You One, an interdisciplinary, site-responsive project addressing the ongoing effects of climate change on the Gulf Coast.