Yearly Archives: 2015

Extreme Whether Is Coming Paris

George Bartenieff & Karen Malpede, Co-Artistic Directors

artwork by Luba Lukova

“Powerful, potent drama,” The Kenyon Review

“Provocative and brave, laced with humor and danger.” Andrew Revkin, The New York Times

Theater Three Collaborative, as part of ArtCop21, and in a three-nation collaboration (USA, Switzerland and France) will stage bi-lingual readings oExtreme Whether in Paris, December 10, 11, 12, in collaboration with Cei de Facto, a rising Swiss theater, Bi-lingual Acting Workshop, Paris-New York and the Fondation des Etats-Unis, Paris, with Swiss, French and American actors.

We are grateful the Rockefeller Brothers Fund which has provided us with a generous travel grant. And, as always, we are grateful our audience for your continued support of theater that could not exist without you. Please help pay the actors by making a donation of any size and your name will be added as a Producing Partner our Paris program. Become part of bringing an American climate change play the international festival of culture surrounding the United Nations Climate Conference.

We’ll be in the thick of things and Karen will be blogging in the lead-up and from Paris for The Kenyon Review, donors can choose receive the blogs by email. Click link her first blog: “Extinction: The Illusion of Abundance”.

Extreme Whether, a play by Karen Malpede, developed and produced by Theater Three Collaborative, featuring George Bartenieff and Kathleen Purcell, from the original New York cast, will be part of ArtCop21, in Paris, during the United Nations Conference on Climate Change, Cop21.

We thank the following for their funding and collaboration:

Nurturing Local Seeds Into Global Vibrancy: Climate Change Theatre Action

By Chantal Bilodeau

This post originally appeared on Howlround, and is being posted under a under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License(CC BY 4.0). You can find the original post here: http://howlround.com/nurturing-local-seeds-into-global-vibrancy-climate-change-theatre-action

This week on HowlRound, we continue our exploration of Theatre in the Age of Climate Change begun last April with this special series for Climate Change Week NYC. How does our work reflect on, and respond to, the challenges brought on by a warming climate? How can we participate in the global conversation about what the future should look like, and do so in a way that is both inspiring and artistically rewarding? Find the rest of the series here.

A common complaint about the theatre is that it is so small and reaches so few people that it has no impact.

I disagree.

It is true that theatre doesn’t have the reach that film or television have. But why should it? It was never meant for mass consumption. It is also true that theatre is slow moving. Most organizations plan their seasons one or two years ahead, and are not equipped to respond to the immediacy of a moment. However, theatre artists are not bogged down by these limitations. Rally enough of them and you will reach a great number of people, often on a deeper level than any mass media could. Get them excited about an idea and they will move faster than you can say “climate change.”

This has been my experience working on the international Climate Change Theatre Action (CCTA). A collaboration between NoPassport, The Arctic Cycle, and Theatre Without Borders, CCTA is a US/Canada initiative designed to raise people’s awareness about the United Nations 2015 Paris Climate Conference (COP21) taking place November 30 – December 11, 2015. Ironically, between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the highest retail season of the year, world leaders will convene in the City of Light to negotiate a binding agreement that will aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to a “safe” level. By all scientific accounts, COP21 is our last chance at keeping the climate reasonably under control, and our lives and the lives of all other dwellers on this planet, well, livable.

To mark this momentous event, and the fact that in April the US became chair of the Arctic Council and established, as one of its focus areas, addressing the impacts of climate change, Elaine Avila, Caridad Svich, Roberta Levitow, and I conceived of CCTA. Our goal is to invite as many people as possible, who may not otherwise pay attention to this history-in-the-making event, to participate in a global conversation. Modeled on previous theatre actions focused on gun control and the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon BP oil spill, CCTA draws on the expertise and resources of local artists, while being global in scope and uniting multiple countries and culture around a common issue.

CCTA consists of a series of readings and performances of climate change-themed plays, poems, and songs. We have curated a collection of one to five minute pieces in three languages by writers from all six livable continents, from countries as diverse as Australia, Canada, France, India, Jordan, Kenya, Mexico, Palestine, Uganda, the UK, and the US. These plays will be made available to collaborators worldwide who will design their own event and present them in the months of November and December. The events can be as modest as a reading in a classroom with a group of students, or as elaborate as a fully staged performance in a theatre in front of an audience.

The pieces are as varied as the artists writing them. They are about rich and poor people of every culture and color, are set in urban and rural areas in developed and under-developed countries, are realistic, metaphorical, reflective, funny, wistful, irreverent, scary, and sad. Together, they form a mosaic of climate change experienced on a personal level. They paint a portrait of communities struggling to understand what is happening to our world and how to best respond to it.

All Climate Change Theatre Action events will be registered with ArtCOP21. Acting as an umbrella organization, a little bit like 350.org did for the People’s Climate March in September 2014, ArtCOP21 is creating a map where cultural events related to COP21 will be listed. In addition, when technically possible, events will be livestreamed on HowlRound TV, making them accessible to all CCTA participants and to global audiences.

As I write this, more than sixty collaborators have agreed to host events, ranging from readings in living rooms to day-long festivals, from radio programs to site-specific performances near glaciers. In addition to Canada and the US, we have venues in Australia, Brazil, Chile, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Italy, New Zealand, Pakistan, Panama, Portugal, Serbia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, the UK, and Zimbabwe. By the time this is published, we will most likely have secured close to seventy-five venues. I’m hoping that when it is all said and done, one hundred events will have been presented worldwide.

Theatre is a mighty tool. The only thing small about it is the vision of those who don’t know how to harness its potential. This season four women theatre artists with no money whatsoever, are, in effect, creating a global movement. Through sheer force of will, and many hours spent at the computer and Skyping across time zones, we are planting, one by one, a series of local seeds that have the potential to affect our economies, political systems, environments, and cultures. And if they are nurtured right and the gods smile on us, these seeds will grow into a vibrant explosion of echoing voices worldwide. Is this not an apt metaphor for how we need to handle climate change?

It is always tempting to trust that others—with more time, more knowledge, more resources—will do the work that needs to be done. But theatre cannot wait for sluggish institutions to take the lead, just like climate change cannot wait for governments to regulate or big corporations to smarten up. We each have a responsibility to plant and nurture our own seed. And with some luck, a neighbor might be inspired and also plant a seed. And so might the neighbor’s neighbor. And soon, we will realize that the music carried by the wind is actually a harmony of global voices fighting for the right to enjoy a healthy and sustainable planet.

If you would like to host an event as part of the Climate Change Theatre Action, see the Call for Collaborators and contact us on Facebook.

The UK’s Live Production Industry Comes Together to Change the Foundations of Our Culture

“We have set ourselves ten challenging goals for the decade ahead. Only by working together will we be able to solve our biggest issues. These goals set the pace for the live production industry and reflect our shared aspirations and needs.” SiPA’s Craig Bennett

On 8th September, The Unicorn Theatre, the UK’s theatre for young audiences, provided a symbolic venue for the press launch of SiPA – The Sustainability in Production Alliance.

SiPA has been created by the industry to provide a central hub for collaboration and culture change. Its initiative encompasses issues around equality, well-being, education and development, waste, procurement, renewable energy, transparent reporting of environmental and social impacts, fair pay and resilient industry economics. The SiPA goals create an aspirational, active and practical framework that is common to all. www.sipa.org.uk/goals

As an industry that is integral to the creative and cultural sector, we must recognise the power of culture and the cultural narrative to the delivery of change. SiPA will work with the existing networks of industry membership organisations; professional bodies and environmental sustainability organisations such as Julie’s Bicycle and Creative Carbon Scotland.

For years individuals and companies have been battling some of the 21st century’s biggest challenges alone. By 2025, the period covered by the SiPA initiative’s goals, today’s 8 year olds will be entering adulthood. As an industry, we want to ensure that we have provided the foundations for them to achieve their potential.

SiPA’s Industry Sustainability Goals will be ratified, discussed and signed at the PLASA London trade show, October 2015. Individuals, businesses and organisations can sign digitally at www.SiPA.org.uk/sign from 1st October 2015.

PLASA London, ExCeL Centre

Sunday 4 October 1415 – 1500 SiPA Goal Launch

Sunday 4 October 1615 – 1700 Social Sustainability Panel

Monday 5 October 1615 – 1700 Economic Sustainability Panel

Tuesday 6 October 1015 – 1100 Environmental Sustainability Panel

http://www.sipa.org.uk/events

www.plasashow.com/seminars

Matthew Griffiths, CEO Professional Lighting and Sound Association commented: “The approach to this is key because it’s about the collective. It’s about everybody’s problem – it’s about everybody’s solution. SiPA’s approach mirrors all of our experience of working in theatre and live events which is that nothing happens in isolation – anything that happens on stage can’t happen without a whole supply chain behind it.”

SiPA’s Craig Bennett said: “For 12 months, SiPA has partnered with over 70 individuals and organisations from all areas of the live production industry. SiPA has worked to identify ten goals that universally represent the issues we face as individuals and organisations. We have explored the stories of the live production industry and together we have uncovered ten major shared goals.”

Lucy Kerbel, Director, Tonic Theatre commented on the goals:

“…ensuring our industry attracts the breadth of talented individuals out there is vital but the second important thing is making sure we can keep hold of them, re-imagining how we work and how we structure our organisations – it’s about how we set the industry up for the next few decades rather than operating in a way that suited the world as it once was.”

Tom Harper, Resource and Sustainability Manager, Unusual Rigging explained:

“In our sector, there’s a really essential requirement to look at how we value resources. There’s a massive gulf between acknowledging and accepting that change needs to take place in the industry and knowing how to practically apply it. It comes down to narrative and storytelling and SiPA encourages a shift forward on a much bigger scale.”

Mhora Samuel, Director of The Theatres Trust said:

“…people from various facets of the industry have come together to make and really interrogate what this declaration means to us all – as we’ve done that we’ve talked about the power and importance of the stories we tell through theatre – theatres are where our creativity, curiosity and understanding can be challenged. Our creativity must not be disposable.”

Juliet Hayes, Risk and Sustainability Manager, Ambassador Theatre Group stated:

“With SiPA entering the picture, it’s a very good opportunity to join these very strong, like-minded people together – all passionate about the goals SiPA has put forward. We need collective expertise in response to these challenges so I’m very much for SiPA and what it stands for.”


About SiPA:

The Sustainability in Production Alliance (SiPA) was formed in 2014 following a panel discussion assembled by the Association of Lighting Designers. During the debate it became apparent that sustainability had not moved forward substantially within the industry since 2008. Furthermore, it was recognised that each facet of the industry working disparately could not affect the necessary culture change. This realisation created a wave of concern and ultimately led to the creation of the cross industry initiative SiPA.

Split into three pillars of sustainability – social, environmental, and economic, the ten SiPA goals have been devised, interrogated, de-constructed, debated and agreed by a working group numbering over 70 freelancers and representatives of organisations, businesses and professional bodies including:

PLASA, ABTT, PSA, The Theatres Trust, Stage Management Association, ALD, Women in Stage Entertainment, Entertaining Sustainability, Ambassadors Theatre Group, National Theatre Wales, Tonic Theatre, Cameron Mackintosh Ltd., SOLT/UK Theatre, Julie’s Bicycle, London Theatre Consortium (13 London theatres), National Theatre, Unusual Rigging, White Light, Arts Council England, The Society of Theatre Consultants, Manchester Arts Sustainability Team, Dance Consortium, SBTD, Creu Cymru, The Audience Agency, Show Force, Creative Carbon Scotland and various training and educational institutions.

More information can be found in the goals document www.sipa.org.uk/goals

SiPA is 100% unfunded but has been supported in-kind by:

  • Entertaining Sustainability – for sharing of their web space and forums
  • PLASA – for provision of space and a show stand at the PLASA trade show
  • The Association of Lighting Designers – for initiating the debate
  • The Theatres Trust – for provision of meeting space
  • White Light Ltd – for support and provision of materials

About PLASA: PLASA is the lead international membership body for those who supply technologies and services to the event, entertainment and installation industries. PLASA’s activities include lobbying, organising trade show events, publishing, developing industry standards and developing industry certification schemes.

About The Theatres Trust: The Theatres Trust is a statutory consultee on theatre buildings in the planning system. It provides expert advice on the sustainable development of theatres, distributes capital grants and helps to promote awareness and solutions for theatres at risk. The Theatres Trust champions all theatres, historic, contemporary and new, in theatre-use, in other uses or disused.

About Tonic Theatre: Tonic Theatre was created in 2011 as a way of supporting the theatre industry to achieve greater gender equality in its workforces and repertoires. Today, Tonic partners with leading theatre companies around the UK on a range of projects, schemes and creative works. Its goal is to equip UK theatre with the tools it needs to ensure a greater level of female talent is able to rise to the top.

About Unusual Rigging: Established in 1983, Unusual Rigging is the UK’s most experienced provider of rigging and stage engineering solutions, working across Europe, principally in the entertainment, special event, exhibition and presentation industries.

About The Ambassador Theatre Group: Founded in 1992, the Ambassador Theatre Group Ltd (ATG) is the world’s number one live-theatre company with 45 venues in Britain, the US and Australia. ATG is also one of the most prolific and internationally recognised award-winning theatre producers in the world.