Climate Emergency

Indigenous playwright David Geary takes us on a journey through his ancestral lineage and land, and highlights the role of the trickster.

Performance artist Hanna Cormick talks about how she uses her body as a metaphor for the damage humans do to the earth, and calls for a more sustainable relationship to our bodies and nature.

Thomas Peterson urges theatremakers to focus on creating work about the climate crisis specifically for their local communities, drawing on lessons from the current response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Devika Ranjan talks about the ways in which migration can influence performance structures, what she has identified as “migratory dramaturgy.”

Adi Eshman discusses Exquisite Corpse Company’s immersive play Water, Water, Everywhere..., which took place on New York Harbor’s Governors Island.

Caroline Reck, artistic director of Glass Half Full Theatre in Austin, Texas, talks about how her company uses clown and object theatre to engage people in the battle against climate change.

Playwright and professor Theresa May talks about creating a show about the planet, Sky Woman, and the Youth Climate Movement, and how collaborating with students enhanced the development process.

Evalyn Parry, artistic director of Toronto’s Buddies in Bad Times, talks about attending a historic summit that kicked of a two-year initiative called Climate Change: Reimagining the Footprint of Canadian Theatre.

Zoë Svendsen discusses working with fellow theatremakers to build and present imagined realities of London and Oslo in post-capitalist and post-fossil-fuel cultures.

Playwright Gab Reisman discusses writing a play about climate change and moving toward a model of collective accountability and civic action.

Ben Barson and Gizelxanath Rodriguez, part of the Afro Yaqui Music Collective, talk about artivism—what it means, what it can look like—in relation to building a jazz opera with various communities around the world.

Karen Malpede argues that significant theatrical engagement with the climate crisis cannot occur in the United States without governmental intervention, and looks at the Federal Theatre Project as a model.

Within the context of the new emergency climate change deadline of 2030, Vijay Mathew encourages the nonprofit arts sector to completely divest from fossil fuels by no longer using air travel for conferences, shows, or any other programming while offering models and solutions to help our thinking about transitioning to a post-carbon arts future.

Alice Stevenson shares some of the most successful initiatives of the Broadway Green Alliance, an organization that leads the charge when it comes to advocating for more sustainable practices in theatre.

Carolyn Reeves looks at multiple barriers to climate change engagement and addresses how the performing arts—and especially theatre—can help overcome them.