By Caroline Reck

I want to tell you a story about a Styrofoam cup, and how, in giving voice to this one cup, many others were saved from a wasted life.

I’m the artistic director of Glass Half Full Theatre in Austin, Texas. Our company creates new works of theatre using the precise physical language of both humans and puppets – through clowning and object puppetry, in which existing objects are manipulated as characters – to confront global issues of environmental and social justice and explore imaginative solutions. In 2018, we presented an original stage production called Polly Mermaid, Apocalypse Wow!, based on a “walk about” persona that Indigo Rael, a company member, had created. Polly, whose purpose is to help people rethink their interactions with “disposable” plastic, has been an in-demand persona at live events such as Earth Day ATX and the San Marcos Mermaid Festival, and even has a short film detailing her origin story.

Indigo and I co-wrote the script for the stage production, which features live actors and object puppetry. While some of our company’s work is for all ages, this one is aimed at adults. Polly Mermaid is “polymer-made,” a mermaid who, sometime after the demise of humanity, evolved from the plastic trash in the ocean. She reigns over numerous species of sentient sea creatures, including schools of flip-flop fish, crabs made from discarded prescription bottles, and jellyfish created from plastic umbrellas. Polly loves plastic – can’t get enough of it, really – and couldn’t be more pleased that humanity (long extinct) has gifted her ocean with so much plastic garbage.

In this eco fable, an incidence of time travel propels a Styrofoam cup, named Cup, from our present time into this imagined future. Cup describes to the ocean trash puppets how her entire life – from being molded into shape, to waiting to be selected in the store, to being filled with hot liquid – is just the preamble to the shining moment of being brought to the lips of a human woman who is about to take a sip. This magical, sexy moment, this fulfilment of Cup’s life purpose, is so brief, and so honestly performed by puppeteer Gricelda Silva, that the devastation Cup feels once she is discarded after only seconds of fulfillment is legitimately heartbreaking. The other plastic trash commiserate; they too were used only temporarily before being tossed away. They mourn their brief instant of utility and languish, unloved and devoid of purpose for hundreds of years, outliving their “people” ten to fifteen times over.

Part of the value of this scene is that it is slightly ridiculous yet oddly compelling. In our experience as clowns, it’s easier to gut-punch an audience once they’re laughing. Cup is just a small part of the show, one of many that ask audiences to reverse their perspective on patterns of behavior. Yet in the year and a half since the production, so many people in town have come up to me and the other performers telling us how that moment changed how they viewed and used disposable objects. They tell me how they’ve stopped using plastics. They are fixing things that break rather than discarding them. They are buying fewer products. They’ve stopped relying on recycling as a solution. They are enforcing new rules in their households and communities.

Theatrical moments like these put people in the position of empathically recognizing their own ecological impact, which results in them actively changing their daily habits.

In the spirit of climate justice, Glass Half Full Theatre has set a goal to reach people less actively engaged in the battle against climate change, people who might be enticed by a sci-fi play, or a clown show, or a revisionist bilingual Don Quixote. We devise in a variety of sophisticated puppetry and physical theatre forms, but we often return to object puppetry because it is such an effective tool to help audiences reenvision the mundane world.

I believe this imaginative reenvisioning is key to breaking open the complex work that must be done to reverse climate change. As a society, we don’t pay attention to the small objects that surround our day. Most of us buy things and dispose of them almost without thought. It isn’t just carelessness; we are compelled by advertising and planned obsolesce to consume and dispose without imagining where the object came from or where it will go when we are done with it. We were raised to demonstrate our own value through the value of the objects that surround us, and that means regularly buying new things for ourselves and our loved ones to show we value ourselves and others.

If climate change is a result of our cultural values, then it follows that we can fight it by reevaluating those values, by championing the future over the present, the givers over the takers, and the collective over the individual. Inherent in object puppetry is a sense of cosmic equality: every object can become the protagonist in its own story. Once an audience accepts this, they can begin to undermine the prevalent assumption that humans are the inalienable protagonists in the story of planet Earth.

Glass Half Full Theatre’s productions often point out that humanity (more specifically, dominant Western culture) hasn’t been the best steward of the planet, and that humankind’s current pattern of behavior does not indicate that we’re well suited to saving the planet. Many of our company’s futurist narratives include the demise of humanity and the survival of a resilient Earth. Our intent is not to be pessimistic. Rather, we provoke audiences to defend humanity’s place on Earth through a reevaluation of lifestyle.

Another of our shows, The Global Arena, features WWF-style wrestlers representing climate change solutions (“Carbon Capture,” “Alternative Energy,” “Rubber Man”) fighting against “Mz. (mass) Extinction” to save the planet. It’s exhilarating to participate in a live theatre experience where the audience is yelling and screaming in support of lifestyle change, propping up the potential solutions against the seduction and ease that is represented by Mz. Extinction. Audiences leave the experience pumped up, looking for action and accountability, rather than depressed by the statistics that occasionally make even the staunchest environmentalist want to curl into a ball and sob.

We want people to feel energized, to be reminded of what we are fighting for. We don’t want audiences to feel judged or that we are somehow holier-than-they for caring about these things. To that end, we are trying to set impossible goals with the likelihood that we will fail miserably and publicly. We plan to produce a show this season with a zero-dollar materials budget. It will mean more time, more labor, more creating, but we’d rather put every cent we can into the hands of the creators and performers, and openly show how much harder it is to avoid buying new. When we fail, because we break down and buy batteries, or gaffe tape, or lighting gels, we’ll share our failures audaciously on social media and as part of the show.

Climate change is such a monumental problem that it can feel like we’ve all already failed, and nothing can be done. So let’s be open about striving hard and failing big. Our cultural narrative is full of characters we love and admire who achieve glory in striving for the impossible. It’s Don Quixote tilting at giants, Luke confronting Darth, David fighting Goliath. It’s time to get comfortable with the likelihood of failure, and practicing terrifying realities onstage is the dominion of the theatre artist.

Cup will be making a return, this time to a virtual reality video experience Glass Half Full Theatre is creating, which will be available on the internet or as a live installation in 2020 in Austin. It’s called Trash Trial/Trash Trail. The year is 2050, and zero-waste practice is strictly enforced. Random audits are performed in landfills using DNA analysis, and the user of any improperly discarded item is brought to justice. Audiences experience this 360-degree movie from the point of view of the defendant on trial. Every disposable cup they’ve ever used, and every hairbrush they’ve tossed out, becomes both evidence and witness in a case against them. Babies fill the jury box and preschoolers are the judge and prosecutor. Our audiences took the planet away from these young people, and now the audience has to pay. Luckily, trash mutant Polly Mermaid is the lawyer, and she’ll be able to get their sentence reduced if they participate in a live event called Trash Trail, a trash hunt where convict-participants collect trash from the park.

The point of the hunt is to expose participants to new ways to view trash. They can collect items and find a new use for them with the help of artists, who will be on hand, to envision that future. Or, they can dispose of it and learn, through our team of experts, how to be more detailed in their sorting. We hope that Trash Trial/ Trash Trail can be replicated in other localities by interested artists to reinforce the “think global/act local” practice that is so important in environmental justice.

In a spirit of joy, hope, and accessibility, Glass Half Full Theatre moves forward into the widening jaws of climate crisis with the recognition that while not all individuals are responsible for this crisis, we must all be responsible for its resolution if we want to stay in it at all. We are always looking for new ideas to make the solutions more palatable, possible, and potent, and we welcome outreach from other groups and individuals in pursuit of this goal.

(Top image: Polly Mermaid: Apocalypse Wow! featuring Indigo Rael.)

This article was originally published on HowlRound, a knowledge commons by and for the theatre community, on October 3, 2019.

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Caroline Reck is the Producing Artistic Director of Glass Half Full Theatre, an Austin, Texas based theatre that creates new works of theatre using the precise physical language of both humans and puppets to confront global issues of social and environmental justice. Caroline is a graduate of Ecole Jacques Lecoq (France) and teaches Physical Theatre at St. Edwards University in Austin. She curates The Austin Puppet Incident and has performed with Trouble Puppet, The Rude Mechanicals, and Ballet Austin.

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Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

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“Looking back at my home from space, I heard voices: the soft whisper of stories and songs from across time and space, rising up from the surface of the Earth, like rain falling upwards into the sky.”

Devi from The HomePlanet

Secretly, I had been dreaming of writing a play about space exploration for over twenty years – ever since I encountered Kevin Kelly’s 1991 book The Home Planet, published by the Association of Space Explorers. The photography taken from space, which is set beside personal reflections about space travel from astronauts around the world, is mind-blowing. I wanted those photos on stage, and huge. I wanted the astronauts’ compelling words to be heard.

Earlier this year, in the lead-up to the anniversary of Apollo 11 and all the media attention that came with it, I longed for more views that contemplated the larger picture Kelly’s book suggests: With all the beauty and wonder, why we are not doing more to safeguard the planet, which scientists tell us is both unique and rare? I decided to write the play I had long wanted in order to explore the tension between the forces of competition and aggression that gave rise to space exploration in the first place, and the sense of love and commitment to home, family, and place inspired by the photography that came back. In other words, as the character of twelve-year-old Millie in the play demands, “If we can go to the moon, and now to Mars, why can’t we fix climate change?” I stole Kelly’s title, The HomePlanet, but deleted the space to use visual language to underscore that our home and planet are indivisible.

What interested me was how the Apollo 11 anniversary and those gorgeous photos could call attention to the climate crisis and give voice to the youth activism that regularly saturates my climate theatre class. I live in Eugene, Oregon, where the first lawsuit by twenty-one youth plaintiffs – Juliana v United States (also known as Youth v Gov) – was filed in Federal court in 2015. The case is making its way to the US Supreme Court as I write, and the Youth Climate Movement has exploded. Young people around the world are challenging the systems that have treated our planet as a stockpile of resources for wealth extraction rather than as a home. I wanted my play to also show how tending to our relationships with family and place is also a form of activism.

As a settler-descendent artist who regularly collaborates with regional Native tribal communities on plays that deal with issues like water rights, it was important that the play include Indigenous voices and perspectives. As a white Euro-American artist committed to allyship, I was also determined that the play include a diverse and international cast of characters.

The HomePlanet is the story a Native family of three generations of women: a mother, who is a US astronaut, who must decide if she can commit to being part of Apollo’s Moon to Mars mission; her daughter, a climate activist; and a grandmother, who navigates the conflict between them by reminding them both of the story of Sky Woman, the Indigenous creation story the grandmother had learned from her elders. The play moves back and forth between home place, outer space, and the astronaut training facility in Houston, Texas. The words of international astronauts are woven throughout, providing a vast spatial and historical/temporal landscape. But, ultimately, it’s a play about coming home, about our collective responsibility, and the concerns of young people whose futures are at risk.

During the play’s development, I worked with two groups of students over six months, workshopping ideas and generating significant parts of the play through improvisation and creative processes (Viewpoints, Laban, Element Work). Students also did research on the Apollo missions, focusing in on the environmental and social issues that concerned them the most, and they responded to writing prompts and wrote songs, poems, and stories. They interviewed family members, exploring their own histories to feel the stories they carry in their bodies, and considered where they came from, who they are, and where they are going. Students read the plaintiffs’ manifestos and biographies from the Youth v Gov lawsuit – which alleges that, through its actions, the government has violated youth’s constitutional rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” – created composite characters based on the plaintiffs, and wrote their own stump speeches. These became part of the play, and composed a full-on climate protest scene that moved into the audience at the end of act one.

I turned to an Elder in my community, Marta Lu Clifford (Grand Ronde), with whom I have collaborated for several years, to help us explore the possibilities for an Indigenous viewpoint in the story. She shared her counsel and perspective on the topics of home, climate, stories, and space. We dove into the many varied tellings of the story of Sky Woman: a creation story told throughout the Great Lakes region and shared in print by many Indigenous authors, including Thomas King and Robin Wall Kimmerer. Marta felt that the story of Sky Woman had a place in the play.

Apollo 11 was preceded by Apollo 8, which looped around the moon in December 1968. Astronauts on that mission read from the book of Genesis and ethnocentrically wished the world a Merry Christmas. We wanted to link this back to Sky Woman, so decided to flip it by asking: “What are other creation stories, what would others read?” Because of the students’ conversations with their parents, grandparents, and elders, our play included narratives from across the globe, such as the Chinese creation story Pangu and the Norse creation story of Yamir and Odin. We used movement-based devising to explore their sometimes-fantastical imagery, and we talked about the different values each story imparts.

Sky Woman teaches that humans make and remake the world in partnership with the animals, the water, the wind, and the sun. In Kimmerer’s retelling, she invites us to consider the Native concept of “seven generations”: from our present-moment vantage point, we must look back three generations and account for what we have done, and look forward three generations and imagine the impact of our choices going forward. In contrast to the Judeo-Christian story of Adam and Eve, the story of Sky Woman reminds us all that we are responsible for maintaining right relations with the planet that sustains all lifeways. The story of Sky Woman, and Marta’s participation, gave us a central spine on which to hang the many heritage stories, the astronauts’ reflections, the youth climate movement protests, and the international concerns over water, resources, and environmental justice.

Developing the play with students and guest artists over six months enriched my writing process in ways I had not anticipated. While not technically a “devised” play in the sense of complete collaborative decision-making, the process resulted in major portions of the play being drawn from students’ creative work. Many of these students continued into the rehearsal and production of the play in spring 2019 and felt a sense of ownership and accomplishment, as well as involvement in the subject matter that would not have been possible without a collaborative process.

The result was The HomePlanet, a story-weaving that served as a meditation on the meaning of the fiftieth anniversary of the moon landing, but also on the power of stories to shape our relationship with one another and our home. The journey of the three generations of women is literally brought home in one of the final scenes when Blue, the mother and a Native astronaut, returns to find her daughter asleep on the couch having a nightmare. “I thought you were going to Mars, I thought you were never coming home,” Millie sobs. “I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to move to another planet. I like this planet!” Blue holds and rocks her, saying, “I do too. We’re not, we’re not moving. People aren’t moving to Mars. It’s just science right now.” Then, she says: “Even if I go, I’m always coming home. What is it you always say, ‘There’s no planet B’? Well, there’s no planet B, and there’s no plan B. We’re here to stay. We live here. This is our home.”

These lines have a dual effect, asserting not only a human commitment to Earth, home, and family, but also an Indigenous assertion that this is still Native land and that “we’re still here.” After telling Blue about the Sky Woman story she learned from her nana, Millie asks, “But are you going back to space?” It is the thing Blue has worked all her life to attain. She tells her daughter the truth. “Yes, probably. But I’ll always come home. I’ll always come back for you.” Similarly, in the face of climate change, there are no easy answers. But when we know what is at the center – home, family, kinship with the land – those choices can be made with awareness.

(Top image: The Story of Sky Woman. The HomePlanet by Theresa May at University of Oregon.)

This article was originally published on HowlRound, a knowledge commons by and for the theatre community, on October 2, 2019.

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Theresa May is a director/devisor and ecodramaturg concerned with how the stories we tell shape the environment we share, and faculty at the University of Oregon where she teaches courses in Native  theatre, Latinx theatre, Eco-theatre/Theatre of Climate Change, and Site-Specific Theatre/Embodiment. She is Artistic Director of Earth Matters on Stage (EMOS) Festival. Currently she collaborates with Native tribal communities around traditional ecological knowledge and climate change in the Pacific Northwest. Her community-based play, Salmon Is Everything,  developed in collaboration with tribal communities on the Klamath River in response to the 2001 drought and salmon crisis, was published in 2014 (2019 second edtion) by OSU Press. 

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Artists and Climate Change is a blog that tracks artistic responses from all disciplines to the problem of climate change. It is both a study about what is being done, and a resource for anyone interested in the subject. Art has the power to reframe the conversation about our environmental crisis so it is inclusive, constructive, and conducive to action. Art can, and should, shape our values and behavior so we are better equipped to face the formidable challenge in front of us.

Go to the Artists and Climate Change Blog

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