Climate change poses an existential threat to humanity and theatremakers need to be part of addressing it. Here, you’ll find content about artistic work that engages with the climate crisis, as well as learnings about how to make theatre practices more eco-friendly. Chantal Bilodeau’s long-running Theatre in the Age of Climate Change series is a must-read, and don’t miss Groundwater Arts’s video series on the Green New Theater.
The Latest
Essay
Passing the Baton
by Chantal Bilodeau
7 April 2026
Essay
The Making of Things We Will Miss: Meditations on the Climate Crisis
by Emily K. Harrison
16 March 2026
Essay
Theatre as a Partner in Environmental Sustainability Awareness in Delta State, Nigeria
by Dennis OBIRE, Cornelius Onyekaba , Eseovwe Emakunu
The Foundry Theatre presented their 2015 Dialogue series This Changes Everything with events in New York City that will be livestreamed on global, commons-based peer produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv on 11 May, 18 May, 30 May, and 1 June at 4 p.m. PDT (Los Angeles) / 6 p.m. CDT (Chicago) / 7 p.m. EDT (New York) / 23:00 GMT / 12 a.m. BST (London).
Jennifer Sokolove talks about funding work around climate change, and how organizations can reimagine granting to support work at the intersection of art activism.
Jeremy Pickard of Superhero Clubhouse searches for hope and asks impossible questions as he creates nine Planet Plays, which examine the world in the context of climate change.
Sarah Cameron Sunde explores the issue of water rising on our planet, explores the drastic changes through art, and implores people to consider the water.
How Can Artists Shift the Climate Change Story?—Thurs, April 23—Participate with hashtag #howlround
20 April 2015
This hour-long conversation will take place on Thursday, April 23 on hashtag #howlround at 11am PDT (Vancouver) / 1pm CDT (Austin) / 2pm EDT (Toronto) / 18:00 GMT / 7pm BST (London).
Alanna Mitchell talks about transforming her book Sea Sick: The Global Ocean in Crisis into a one-woman show, and the conversation she found in theatre.
Chantal Bilodeau kicks off the series Theatre in the Age of Climate Change with an account of her trip to the Canadian Arctic and how that changed how she wanted to write plays.
Adam R. Burnett looks at resilience in theatre, how artists seem to forget where they’ve been, and the ethical responsibilities in the production of production.
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.
CultureHub in New York City presented the discussion The Mirror up to Nature: Reflecting the Environment in Designs, Maps, and Theatre livestreamed on the global, commons-based peer-produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv on Sunday 26 October at 22:00 GMT (London) / 6 p.m. EDT (New York) / 5 p.m. CDT (Austin) / 3 p.m. PDT (Vancouver) / 9 a.m. AEDT on Monday, October 27 (Sydney). In Twitter, use #howlround.
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.
Chantal Bilodeau reflects on a decade of curating the Theatre in the Age of Climate Change series and the ways the work (and world) has shifted in that time. She invites you to contribute your own thoughts on theatre and the environment to the commons.
Is there space for hope in climate crisis theatre? What happens when teachers are just as terrified as their students? These questions and others reverberate through Emily K. Harrison’s reflection on the process and performance of an intergenerational, devised work exploring the (potential) collapse of the Anthropocene.
People, Planet, and Performance: From the Global South to the World
A Series from Africa on Climate Emergencies, Sustainability Practice in the Arts, and Planetary Crises
This is a broad-based interdisciplinary, intercultural, and cross-sectoral exploration of climate justice within the context of theatre and performance with a focus on the Global South.
Series
Artists/Ideas/Now
Artist-led conversations exploring some of the biggest issues facing the world today