Island Shakespeare Festival’s Sustainability in Action

Tucked into the far northwest corner of the continental United States, nestled into the waters of Puget Sound, lies the forty-mile-long island of Tscha-kole-chy, colonially known as Whidbey Island, Washington. Pacific Ocean winds rush through majestic Deception Pass, rocking towering fir trees. Killer whales splash past the oyster-strewn shoreline (some sporting a dead salmon as a hat, potentially this season’s orca fashion trend). This fantastical place is also the real home of an outdoor theatre, Island Shakespeare Festival (ISF). ISF’s grounds sit on the back field of an old elementary school, next to a community garden. The back “wall” of the outdoor theatre is a forest’s tree line, and a bright orange and white circus tent functions as both a lobby and calling card. To borrow a line from The Tempest, “Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises/ Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.”

When the ISF leadership, executive artistic director Olena Hodges and operations director Angelica Metcalfe, planned the 2024 opening of their fifteenth season, they considered their company values and focused on the most elusive: regenerative sustainability. This value was established after Hodges attended a “Climate Justice + Theatre Making” workshop hosted by Groundwater Arts in 2022. According to the Island Shakespeare Festival website, “sustainability is foundational. We seek to build a base so that we may persist with financial, environmental, and creative endurance.”

Sustainable actions became a regular talking point among ISF company leadership after meeting with Groundwater Arts. ISF started by conserving extraneous paper waste and examining necessary sustainability actions across the company. These conversations led Hodges to require an intimacy director be hired for every season, followed soon after with a permanent line item for a mental health coordinator. These policies were put in place with artists in mind to make their practice more sustainable.

As ISF was incorporating regenerative sustainability as a value, city and county grants, like the City of Langley and Island County Lodging Tax grants, began including questions that asked organizations how they foster sustainable tourism. “Sustainability is an important conversation in our island community,” said Hodges, “How do we balance the industries that exist here with the resources that we have?” Theatre companies are too often pressured to foster tourism and ticket sales by promising the artistically newest, biggest, and brightest. This approach generates enthusiasm, but at a cost. “What is sustainable in theatre?” asked Hodges, “Costumes get thrown away. Sets get thrown away or stored for years and take up space.”

Hodges and Metcalfe reflected on the creatively sustained, paid artists; mindful stock usage;  and happy patrons enjoying the festival grounds, and they zeroed in on the massive amounts of garbage they had to independently haul away from the field each night. “We’re an outdoor theatre. We should do everything we can to set the bar for our arts community for how we can be sustainable,” Hodges said. 2024, they decided, would be ISF’s first festival run of producing “zero-waste,” which they defined as creating zero waste that would go to a landfill.

ISF leadership knew they needed to make both a difference and a profit, so they looked to their own community for support and guidance. The company’s modest budget already demanded that they borrow, reuse, and recycle as many materials as possible from costumes to set pieces to paint. This newly identified goal would require the leadership to seek new and collaborative partners to help them eliminate front-of-house waste completely.

First, ISF partnered with Salinity Seafood and More to oversee the concessions and lobby. Owner Emily Wilder, a lifelong Washingtonian with a degree in Sustainable Foods and Agriculture from Evergreen State College, curates Salinity Seafood’s product list to ensure her featured vendors have sustainable and humane business practices in addition to a delicious product. She sold shelf-stable items alongside concessions like bagels, cookies, and smoked fish from area artisans. This partnership turned the tent into a hub of local specialty foods with a gift shop boasting only handmade, small batch gifts including pottery, scarves, and jewelry. Theatregoers enjoyed King Lear with a side of organic mushroom jerky and left with a not safe for work geoduck (pronounced gooey-duck) sticker.

Conscious consumption is one part of a sustainable practice, but Hodges and Metcalfe knew they needed to confront their waste issue directly. To achieve this goal, ISF partnered with rePurpose Whidbey, a grassroots zero-waste nonprofit that believes there is no such thing as trash and everything is a resource. Whidbey residents Derek Hoshiko and Joan Green started the company in December 2021. rePurpose Whidbey strives to educate community members about reusing materials instead of buying new and reducing waste—independent efforts that can lead to a zero-waste future for all. They host presentations, free repair events, beach clean ups, and food composting workshops to deepen the relationship between community and waste management and inspire policy change.     

“When we learned ISF had forty-two performances over the summer, we were excited about the impact it would make,” said Green. The challenge of a two-month-long public event was relatively new to the organization, but rePurpose was well-practiced in their public implementation technique. “My favorite part of this work is telling the organizers to hide the trash cans,” boasted Green. “They look at us like we’re crazy, but when they see that it works, and people can sort their so-called waste, the light bulbs go off.”

rePurpose Whidbey was particularly happy to tackle a summer strategy with Wilder at Salinity Seafood. Hoshiko shared, “The biggest misconceptions about adopting sustainable environmental actions in a home or business [involve] a failure of [imagining] that zero-waste is possible combined with an assumption that one’s own impact is a drop in the bucket.” Wilder also understood that people could be hesitant to try but believed in the power of a single consumer behavioral shift. She sees individuals taking environmental action as the work of “micro influencers,” people with a small sphere of influence. The success of one action or acquisition of one new eco-friendly technique can easily spread via word of mouth throughout a community or workplace. Said Wilder, “Let's use those peer-to-peer networks to spread hope about positive actions we can take.” The team at rePurpose Whidbey trusted that all planning would be enthusiastically supported by ISF and Salinity Seafood.

With Salinity Seafood and rePurpose Whidbey on their side, ISF was set to transform their front of house experience, which included a big, decisive move: all garbage cans were removed from the lobby. Perishable foods such as bagels and cream cheese were served on small aluminum trays, and hot beverages were served in thrifted mugs. All eating utensils and surfaces were gathered in a box at the end of each performance and hand washed. Guests who bought snacks with wrappers or brought their own food were provided ten brightly colored bins wherein to dispose of their waste. The bins were labeled with a range of options from “crunchy plastic” to “aluminum cans,” and a covered compost bucket was available for organic matter.

After a 42-show run and more than 2,850 visitors, only one small lunch sack of waste containing a few diapers, three broken ceramic mugs, a handful of sticker backings, and some tape went to the landfill; the sustainable concessions and gift shop broke all previous earnings records.

These results were possible only through enthusiastic communal support. Staff and volunteers received additional training for the new system. Audiences were open to the new sorting layout. Theatregoer Deborah Fisher remarked, “I liked knowing all those materials would be taken care of and I helped make it so.” Volunteers educated audience members about the new sorting system, answered sorting questions when needed, and helped bag the individual waste categories for the weekly collections. All food waste was collected and distributed in a residential garden as compost. While ISF fell one bag short of their zero-waste goal, Hodges and Metcalfe’s decisions dramatically reduced waste while increasing profits and deepening the connection with the community.

ISF plans to partner with Salinity Seafood and rePurpose Whidbey again with a few adjustments. “I think it is important to stick to the basics and not make any assumptions about our past success,” said Horoshiko. Green noted a specific interest in starting planning sooner and partnering with Salinity Seafood to further minimize pre-packaged foods offered at the concessions. She stressed the benefits of avoiding packaged goods as they are “usually better for our health, less processed, and with no microplastics or chemicals touching the food.”

Championing sustainability, in an industry that historically enables burnout, includes mindfully utilizing labor donated by volunteers.

The festival will widen the scope of the effort while maintaining the necessary organizational structure to support the expansion. The rePurpose Whidbey program will start earlier to include the rehearsal process and expand the disposal area to include the green room and backstage area. rePurpose Whidbey hopes to have volunteers on site specifically to answer questions, and Salinity Seafood will create an additional front-of-house position. The new position will manage the sorting of recycled items and reusing of serving utensils without the need for nightly training. Direct landfill waste was reduced, but the volume of discarded materials from almost three thousand visitors, staff, and company remained the same. It was a big ask for a revolving roster of volunteers to sort recycling and hand-wash utensils every night along with their greeting and seating duties. Championing sustainability, in an industry that historically enables burnout, includes mindfully utilizing labor donated by volunteers.

Zero-waste was the material goal in 2024, but Hodges sees a more expansive sense of program success. Audience members received an education while helping ISF decrease their waste, and they can apply their learnings in other environments. “A lot of people don’t even know what is recyclable. I didn’t know there was so much to recycling. I thought all #1 and #2 plastics could be recycled, and this initiative changed that idea,” remarked Hodges. Some patrons even admitted to composting their food scraps for the first time. Hodges saw an increase of mindfulness around waste disposal:

It is powerful to watch people walk up to the big display of different recycling options with the things that they’ve just used to eat with and [to] have to think about what kind of plastic is going where and how much plastic. It really puts into perspective how much disposable stuff we use every day.

Once again, ISF has a set zero-waste goal for 2025, understanding it is as much of a physical target as an ongoing community service.

ISF did not decide to prioritize environmental action on a whim. Whidbey Island residents endure the effects of climate change with each passing season. The island is vulnerable to the climate crisis by way of harsh storms, heat waves, and air pollution. Bands of water vapor that form over the Pacific Ocean and dump precipitation once they reach land, known as “atmospheric rivers,” have been increasing with frequency and severity, leaving rain damage to the land, island infrastructure, and the ISF grounds in their wake. According to the Board of Island County Commissioners, “In 2021 from June 27th to 29th, three out of the four hottest temperatures ever recorded in Washington occurred through the State.” Rising summer temperatures are projected to persist, which means more safety provisions needed during outdoor rehearsals. Whidbey is even powerless in the face of heat elsewhere in the region, as smoke from wildfires burning as far away as California and Canada can make the air quality unhealthy enough to cancel a scheduled show. A company relying on pay-what-you-will ticket prices and donations needs every performance in order to meet revenue goals and keep the arts accessible for all.

A few bagels served on aluminum trays does not solve the climate crisis, but they are evidence of an openness to change.

A few bagels served on aluminum trays does not solve the climate crisis, but they are evidence of an openness to change. This small company with a full-time staff of two challenged three thousand people artistically and behaviorally. If theatre invites an appraisal of the societal condition, then the way we are asked to navigate through a theatre can, too.

“I hope this program demonstrates to our community that we care about where we live and being careful in our existence here,” said Hodges. “We see our role as one of symbiosis in our community and environment.”