Climate Emergency

In this last post in his series, Stephen Spotswood reports on the piece of theatre his students devised, and muses on its successes and everyone’s willingness to participate.

Everyone starts to wonder what they’re creating with Stephen Spotswood on his journey to devise a piece with both environmental studies and theatre majors.

The Dreary Coast is a site-specific immersive work that took place in Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal, and used elements of Greek and Roman mythology, Dante’s Inferno, black metal music, and the canal’s actual history to journey its audience through one of the most polluted waterways in the United States.

The class is split almost right down the middle between theater majors and environmental studies students, with a few crossovers. That first day we have a much more immediate question to answer: Did this mix of drama and science students have the capacity to merge together into the ersatz devising company we needed them to be? Would they be open-minded, generous, and willing to play? If not, the entire semester would be an uphill process.

Karen Malpede shares insight into the importance and compelling nature of climate dramas. 

Summer Banks offers an overview of eco-theatre and talks about her experience watching Katie Mitchell's production of Atmen.

Eco theater is not meant as a protest or an art installation at a climate change conference. It is a complete and independent artistic practice that happens to focus on ecological issues.

In this installment of the series From Scarcity to Abundance: Capturing the Moment for the New Work Sector, Meiyin Wang hypothesizes on the future of theatre and the impact it can have on the world.