What Do We Know About the Earth? LubDub Theatre Co Invites You to Fill in the Blanks

Miranda Rose Hall’s To Tell a Story About the Earth is part scripted play, part guided introduction to devising. The story follows a fledgling theatre company that, after a disastrous debut, has decided to call it quits. However, when the local librarian requests a new performance for Earth Day, the young artists have a decision to make. In the spirit of Mad Libs, the script includes prompts that guide ensembles through the process of devising their own short play-within-a-play: a ten-minute performance about a natural subject close to home.

Published in May 2025, To Tell a Story About the Earth was commissioned by Concord Theatricals and developed by LubDub Theatre Co. As part of the play’s development, the creative team traveled to Washington, DC in fall 2024 for a workshop presented by Georgetown University’s Department of Performing Arts and hosted by professor Maya E. Roth. Working alongside playwright Miranda Rose Hall, Caitlin Nasema Cassidy and Geoff Kanick co-directed the piece, and Robert Duffley served as dramaturg. The interdisciplinary creative process convened students, faculty, and alumni from areas of study including theatre and performance studies, environmental law, entomology, and biochemistry. Here, the LubDub team reflects with Professor Roth on this template for joyful, interdisciplinary co-creation at the crossroads of new play development, environmental studies, and local activism.

Robert Duffley: When we make art about the climate, it can be so tempting to “go big”: We want to speak in planetary terms. This play reminds me, however, that there’s power in keeping things simple and local. So let’s start this conversation simply and locally. What did we do?

Miranda Rose Hall: We did a test run of this new play to see if our Mad Libs-style experiment could work and whether the script resonated with actual young people.

Caitlin Nasema Cassidy: We spent October on Georgetown’s campus, following auditions in August.

Maya E. Roth: We created a flexible structure that helped to incubate a work while infusing curriculum from different disciplines.

Geoff Kanick: We worked with students from different areas of expertise. Some had theatre experience, and some didn’t!

Robert: How did this experiment begin?

The play itself acknowledges how difficult devising can be, but the script sets you up for success. The prompts help you narrow your focus from the whole planet to a specific subject from your local environment.

Miranda: In 2020, Concord Theatricals commissioned a group of playwrights to create flexible, license-ready work for schools and community groups—disrupting the production-to-publication pipeline at a time when major producing companies were paralyzed. Concord told me that teachers were asking for plays with flexible casting that give young people creative agency while speaking to what’s going on in the world. I had always wanted to write a play with a Mad Libs-inspired element, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. 

Previously, I had written A Play for the Living in a Time of Extinction, and a lot of young people had been asking about the rights. I thought that perhaps this piece about one woman in her thirties having an existential crisis about extinction is not the best fit for high schoolers, so I started to think seriously about a climate piece for young ensembles. I also wanted to bake in LubDub’s own devising practices so students could experience what it means to make new environmental work from scratch. As the script came together, we realized that we really needed to test these concepts out, so we reached out to Maya and Georgetown. In 2023, we were able to visit for a few days to test out some of the devising instructions specifically, and then—after a week with professional actors in New York—we returned in 2024 for a full workshop.

Robert: The prompts in the play ask students to think about an environmental subject close to home. For LubDub, “close to home” has always included Georgetown. Three members of our leadership team are alumni, and we’ve been invited back as a company several times since graduation. Especially since this piece is geared toward young performers, we wanted to make sure it aligned with the interests of people on campus today. Maya, how did the project connect with your experiences in the classroom?

Maya: I was excited about this opportunity to incubate new work and support this company that I really believe in—I taught some of you, and we’ve been able to partner in the past. LubDub worked previously with Georgetown students for On the Lawn, and I teach A Play for the Living in a Time of Extinction. Even though that play isn’t formatted like a Mad Libs, there are improvisational prompts, which help students from multiple disciplines engage. Especially with big, distressing topics like climate change, it’s crucial to create gentle, generous structures for reflection and play. The casting for To Tell a Story About the Earth resonates with that spirit. The characters are archetypes: a leader, a dreamer, a critic. That formula felt welcoming to my students, who are often LGBTQ or international or hold identities not traditionally reflected in most character breakdowns.

Robert: What can we say about how we structured the process?

Geoff: We worked hard to care for students. We wanted multiple opportunities for them to contribute meaningfully without feeling overwhelmed. So we structured our time clearly and communicated our goals at the beginning. We took a week to read through the text, start to answer the prompts, and decide on a “subject” for the devised portion. Then, while Miranda did rewrites, we spent the second week devising. We entered week three with new pages, which was very exciting for the students, then we put everything together for a public sharing.

Miranda: We were also testing opportunities for casting outside the six named characters. We asked if the devised portion could include a larger ensemble of students who don’t have as much availability, and the answer was yes.

Caitlin: There’s room for a large “devising chorus.” That could be students who want a part-time commitment, or even a partnership between the theatre and other groups like a choir or the step team!

Maya: Those options are so important. On many campuses right now, students are overwhelmed. It can be especially challenging to engage with immersive offerings. In our case, linking the project to a one-credit class, with Robert as the designated faculty member, helped support the creative process while meeting wider curricular goals.

Robert: Let’s talk a bit about what this “guided devising process” looks like, and how that grows out of our company’s work together over the last ten years.

Geoff: We think of it as “devising with bumper rails.” The play itself acknowledges how difficult devising can be, but the script sets you up for success. The prompts help you narrow your focus from the whole planet to a specific subject from your local environment. We don’t know what this subject will be in the various places that the play is produced. In this way, the work becomes a true collaboration. We, the original artists, make space for something we couldn’t imagine on our own. We make space for you to experience the joy of a little mini-creation in the context of a structured experience.

Caitlin: I think this is the right time to bring in the word “fun!” I’m thinking so much about fun these days, especially when it comes to climate and collective decision-making. In LubDub’s own devising process, we foreground fun and play and shared discovery. That’s so important, especially when we’re working with difficult topics.

Maya: We can say “creative engagement” all we want, and that’s important, but students also want joy. They want to laugh. If we can have that while still prompting reflection, that’s the magic.

On campuses, and in the wider world, it’s a polarized moment: It’s hard to work together.

Robert: The script is a blueprint for creating relationships, as well as a story that will look different in each individual production. As a writer, Miranda, is it scary to open the text to so many different interpretations?

Miranda: It’s a relief! I wanted to leave space for artists of a different generation to speak to the things they care about. Initially, I was nervous that I would feel like a dinosaur, writing for students in their late teens and early twenties. But I tried to channel what I remember about that age: I had high energy, strong opinions, and my friends were my whole world. To a certain extent, that’s still true. We’re still hanging out and trying to make theatre together. Bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, eager theatre kids are eternal. 

I also wanted to write about the drama of collaboration. Honestly, I was thinking about the archetypes in a writers’ room—the different personalities and perspectives, and all the work it takes to try to make something with other people. When it falls apart, it’s incredibly painful; when it works, it makes you feel larger than life.

Maya: On campuses, and in the wider world, it’s a polarized moment: It’s hard to work together. That drama feels real. We’re looking for ways to say the things that need to be said and then find our gestures of care and repair. Tensions can turn to delight when we shift the focus from the overwhelming crisis to things we love that are small and local: a river, a tree. Our students chose to devise their short performance around a specific path on campus.

Geoff: We always say, “What happens in the play happens in the room”—wisdom shared by our friend, director Shana Gozansky. In the case of this play, it’s deliberate. You start with the biggest kind of question: “What do we know about the Earth?” Then, you have to boil that down. In rehearsal, we considered many possible devising subjects, but everyone had a personal story about this ash tree-lined, brick pathway near the front gates. Many of the stories had to do with rushing—this was a place everyone hurried through on their way to class. Thinking about the path itself became an opportunity to slow down: We were able to actually go outside and be present together in this tiny piece of “the environment.” This launched a process of discovery: We learned so much about the history of this path and the species who live there.

Meaning is something we are always making and remaking together.

Robert: From so many different teachers and friends, we are often reminded that only the local is truly universal. Nobody actually lives at the abstract, planetary level, so our stories about the environment tend to be most effective when they’re about our environment. What possibilities are opened by this shift from the whole earth to something local, something small?

Caitlin: The arts have the power to invite noticing, to invite us to make meaning with other species and the places we share. I mean, I’ve spent so many years walking around Georgetown’s campus, and if you had pointed to this path and asked me if it was of great importance to me, I would have said no. But now it is—and that change is action. Stories that root us in our local environment create relationship, and relationship creates ecological belonging, which we know leads to better stewardship.

Robert: There’s something radical there. When I started college, I thought meaning had been made already—it was something I would receive. There’s so much more agency in the idea that meaning is something we are always making and remaking together.

Maya: That’s why theatre can be such a good forum: There’s a place for you, whether you’re in the science club, or you’re a debater, or you’re an artist who tends to keep quiet in class. You find ways to work together, to make a little piece of meaning. There’s joy in that.

Geoff: We still get updates from the students about the path, about the trees and the nature around it. The noticing lasts a long time beyond the show itself. That’s powerful.

Maya: Georgetown emphasizes “reflective engagement”—the idea that the humanities help us engage with the wider world even as we learn to understand ourselves in new ways. That’s built into the play, especially the prompts. That creative opportunity, integrated into curriculum, appealed to students from across the university.

Caitlin: We had performers studying biology, international relations, human rights. We brought on a student sustainability associate pursuing a career in environmental law.

Miranda: That was so refreshing. I get really frustrated by the desire to classify everything by discipline. Is it art? Is it activism? Is it policy? Climate issues ignore those boundaries—they’re affecting all of us. I think theatre offers something special here. If you’re making policy, or in a lab, or organizing all day, you need a place to have fun. In the rehearsal room, all these different people can come together and be weird and funny, even while creating something with emotional depth and meaning.

Caitlin: That reminds me of Toni Cade Bambara—“make the revolution irresistible.”

Robert: It’s so easy to claim that “no one is doing anything!” for the environment. The more delicate truth is often that many different people are doing many different things. It’s important to notice and amplify each other’s efforts—that’s how local actions become larger movements. How were we able to tie this project into broader environmental initiatives at the university?

Caitlin: We were able to partner on multiple aspects of the project with Georgetown’s Earth Commons Institute. We went to volunteer at the Hoya Harvest Garden, a space on campus newly reclaimed for agriculture, and we hosted a talkback featuring sustainability associate Sophia Alexandrou, alumna Ashanee Kottage, and Dr. Leah Buckman, an Earth Commons affiliated faculty member who teaches a course called “Bugs and Fungus Among Us.”

Miranda: Research into Georgetown’s natural landscapes was also part of the devising process.

Robert: We found that, even at this major research university, knowledge about many trees on campus was literally endangered: Their individual histories were held by one groundskeeper who had recently retired. We were able to integrate that story into the devised performance.

Caitlin: I hope this play sparks similar learning everywhere. Research can take many, many forms. First, we notice that we all have a connection to a specific place or species. Then, we start to notice gaps in our shared knowledge about this subject. Those gaps become opportunities for discovery.

Geoff: Then, when you’re filling in the prompts, you have to try things out. Not every idea works, and that’s okay. Sometimes, a little tiny thing sprouts and turns into a major moment. When we only see the final product of a creative process, we don’t get to see the parts where the artists are brainstorming and wrestling with ideas. Here, we’re celebrating the journey, including the ups and downs.

Miranda: Also, as we engage in that process, we don’t take ourselves too seriously. We can make fun of how weird theatre is, even as we enjoy it.

Caitlin: Balancing the silly and the serious—that’s one of LubDub’s values.

Maya: I think that really helps, especially for a younger generation that can be very anxious. Because of the frame story, the “bumper rails,” there isn’t too much pressure to make the ten-minute performance “good” artistically. You succeed if you follow the prompts to discover something interesting and if you can laugh along the way.

Miranda: Structurally, the ten-minute performance is not the end of the whole play. I wrote a final scene which helps bring things together, so even if you’re still learning how to “stick the landing,” you have support!

Robert: That’s important. We should say, too that the published version of the play includes a process guide.

Geoff: That guide includes our advice for structuring your own creative process—how to think about the prompts, the devising process, etc. Those discoveries were very much a product of our time in the room with students.

Caitlin: On the LubDub website, we also have a page of resources for devising and sustainable production.

Maya: You guys are collaborating with everyone in the room, even if you’re not physically present.