The Arctic Cycle

Critical Stages/Scènes critiques: On Theatre and Ecology at Critical Junctions featuring many CSPA Contributors online now!

The initiative for this Special Issue of Critical Stages / Scènes critiques arises from our shared and sustained interest in the interdisciplinary, and, indeed, transdisciplinary Environmental Humanities that we have always perceived as a particularly compelling and dynamic site within which to formulate and locate our work. It is difficult to conceptualise how this might not be the case for socially-engaged scholarship and active citizenship, as the world is experiencing a climate crisis of extraordinary, and, indeed, dramatic – in all possible senses of the word – scale and iteration.

Vicky Angelaki and Elizabeth Sakellaridou, Editors for The IATC journal/Revue de l’AICT – December/Décembre 2022: Issue No 26

The latest edition of Critical Stages / Scènes critiques explores the intersection of ecology and theatre. Within this edition, you’ll find contributions from CSPA Staff and many friends of the CSPA!

Table of Contents of this Edition

Editorial Note: Transforming (Im)Possibilities to Realities / Note éditoriale : Transformer les (im)possibilités en réalités
Savas Patsalidis, Editor-in-Chief

Special Topic

On Theatre and Ecology at Critical Junctions

Guest Editors: Vicky Angelaki and Elizabeth Sakellaridou (Greece)

Essays

Editor: Yana Meerzon (Canada)

National Reports

Editor: Savas Patsalidis (Greece)

Interviews

Editor: Savas Patsalidis (Greece)

Performance Reviews

Editor: Matti Linnavuori (Finland)

Book Reviews

Editor: Don Rubin (Canada)

Plays

Editor: Critical Stages/Scènes critiques

Focus: Ukraine

Editor: Critical Stages/Scènes critiques


CSPA Related Contributions

Global Networked Ecoscneography: Creating Sustainable Worlds for Theatre Though International Collaboration.
  • CSPA Director Ian Garrett is co-author with collaborators Tessa Rixon and Tanja Beer
By Tessa Rixon*Ian Garrett**Tanja Beer***

“Mundane” Performance: Theatre Outdoors and Earthly Pleasures
  • Rising CSPA Quarterly Editor Evelyn O’Malley is co-author with collaborators Cathy turner and Giselle Garcia on
by Evelyn O’Malley*Cathy Turner**Giselle Garcia***

Ecodramaturgy and the Genesis of the EMOS Ecodrama Festival
  • Friend of the CSPA, Theresa J. May
Theresa May*

Town Hall
  • Friend of the CSPA and Co-founder of the Climate Change Theatre Action Caridad Svich
Caridad Svich*

About the Editors

*Vicky Angelaki is Professor in English Literature at Mid Sweden University (Department of Humanities and Social Sciences). She was previously based in the United Kingdom, where she held full-time, permanent roles at Birmingham City University; University of Birmingham; University of Reading. Major publications include the monographs Martin Crimp’s Power Plays: Intertextuality, Sexuality, Desire (2022); Theatre & Environment (2019); Social and Political Theatre in 21st-Century Britain: Staging Crisis (2017); The Plays of Martin Crimp: Making Theatre Strange (2012) and the edited collection Contemporary British Theatre: Breaking New Ground (2013; 2016). She co-edits the series Adaptation in Theatre and Performance (Palgrave Macmillan, with Kara Reilly). She is currently completing the research project Performing Interspaces: Social Fluidities in Contemporary Theatre, funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (Sweden). The project will result in an Open Access monograph, contracted with Palgrave Macmillan/Springer. 

**Elizabeth Sakellaridou is Professor Emerita of Theatre Studies at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. She has taught and lectured widely on contemporary theatre in various academic institutions in Greece, elsewhere in Europe, and in the USA. She has published on contemporary British and European theatre, classical and modern Greek theatre, performance theory, cultural and gender studies, and, more recently, the hybrid space of performance phenomenology. Her publications include Pinter’s Female PortraitsContemporary Women’s Theatre (in Greek); Theatre, Aesthetics, Politics (in Greek); and numerous articles and chapters published in international journals and collected volumes respectively. She is also a critic, dramaturg and translator of dramatic works from English into Greek and vice versa.

The Arctic Cycle: Dispatch to the Future

Join us in New York City for Dispatch to the Future, the official kick off of Climate Change Theatre Action 2021, a three-month festival of participatory theatre and action around climate taking place in more than 30 countries around the world.

Sunday, September 19, 2021 – Rain or Shine!
New York City’s Central Park @ West 103rd Street
Every half hour from 12:00-4:00 pm
$15 tickets

Featuring original short plays by Angella Emurwon (Uganda), Jessica Huang (US), Aleya Kassam (Kenya), and Marcus Youssef with Seth Klein (Canada), with additional text by Chantal Bilodeau, Dispatch to the Future takes you on a 75-minute interactive guided walk through a series of live performances tucked away in green oases. In turn poetic, political, and whimsical, this event aims to be a joyful and family-friendly experience. You will also be invited to participate in the Climate Ribbon arts ritual, launched at the Climate March in NYC in 2014.

The walk and the plays are directed by Lanxing Fu, Megan Paradis Hanley, Rad Pereira, and Jeremy Pickard. Produced by Sami Pyne.

GET YOUR TICKET NOW

Our entire cast and crew is fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Groups will be limited to 15 people. Masks are optional for fully vaccinated individuals based on personal comfort levels, but we ask that you wear one if you are not vaccinated. We will follow CDC guidelines as they continue to evolve.

Artists Envisioning a Green New Deal: Energy Transition

At the core of the Green New Deal is a profound transformation of the means by which we power our lives. The vast majority of energy consumption is still powered by fossil fuels, gravely harming human health and intensifying the climate crisis. How can we artists support, reflect, and explore the transition to clean and renewable sources of energy?
 
The fifth installment of our Spring Speaker Series: Artists Envisioning a Green New Deal focuses on the transition to clean and renewable energy. Join us on Wednesday, May 26 for a conversation with Toba Pearlman, Senior Attorney and Renewable Energy Advocate with NRDC’s Climate & Clean Energy Program; Alex Nathanson, a multimedia artist, designer, technologist, and educator whose work explores sustainable energy technologies; and Joan Sullivan, a photographer and writer who has documented the construction of some of the largest utility-scale wind and solar projects in North America. The panel will begin with a reading of Javaad Alipoor’s short play “The Deal,” written for Climate Change Theatre Action 2021. The conversation will be moderated by Thomas Peterson, Artistic Associate with The Arctic Cycle.
 

Wednesday, May 26, 2021
7:00-8:00 pm ET
Free Zoom Webinar

RSVP FOR THIS EVENT

RSVP to receive the Zoom link and join the webinar. The conversation will also be livestreamed on our YouTube channel.

Alex Nathanson is a multimedia artist, designer, technologist, and educator. His work explores both the creative and traditional applications of sustainable energy technologies. His work has been featured at Issue Project Room, the Museum of the Moving Image, Film Society of Lincoln Center, and the Art Prospect Festival. As a solar power designer, he has created interactive and educational projects for The Climate Museum, Solar One, and the NYC Department of Education, among others. Currently, he runs Solar Power for Artists, a design studio and education platform. His book, A History of Solar Power Art and Design, will be released by Routledge on July 16, 2021.

Elizabeth Toba Pearlman leads NRDC’s work on renewable energy expansion in the Midwest, which encompasses wind, solar, storage, transmission, and grid design. Before joining NRDC, Pearlman worked at Tesla and at SolarCity. After graduating from the George Washington University Law School, she was a legal fellow with the United Nations Environment Programme based in Nairobi, Kenya and then a legal fellow and outside counsel with Sierra Club’s Environmental Law Program. She lives in Chicago.

For more than a decade, the Canadian photographer Joan Sullivan has documented the construction of some of the largest utility-scale wind and solar projects in North America. More recently, Joan has started to shift her attention toward what she likes to call “the human transition”: the talented men and women who are building our post-carbon infrastructure – electricians, mechanics, ironworkers, lineworkers, and heavy machinery operators. Joan is also experimenting with abstract photography as a new language to express her anguish about the climate emergency.

Climate Change Theatre Action 2019 is Just around the Corner!

WE’RE DOING IT AGAIN!

Climate Change Theatre Action 2019 is just around the corner. Once again, we’re bringing 50 new climate change plays by 50 international playwrights into the world. We’re lighting the way and imagining together how to create the just and sustainable future we all deserve.

To get the project underway, we need to raise $15,000 by December 13th – our most ambitious campaign yet! – so we can commission our playwrights. We would love for you to become part of this amazing community of changemakers. Can you chip in $10, $25, $50 or more? Every contribution level gets you some cool perks that we have lovingly put together for you as an expression of our gratitude.

This is an all-or-nothing deal: either we reach or goal, or we get no money at all. Please contribute generously and help us spread the word by sharing this campaign with your networks. Are you with us?

I'M WITH YOU