Introductory Lecture

‘Ten Billion’ from another side

This post comes to you from Ashden Directory

Wallace Heim writes:

Michael Billington, in his nomination of Ten Billion as the best theatre event of 2012, claims that all the people he knows who saw the production found it life-changing. From my unscientific poll of the dozen people I know who saw the production, including myself, it’s possible we were in a different theatre. The lecture was well-crafted, the production tight, but the event was neither moving, informative or motivating. It was ‘old news’, a ‘first-year introductory lecture’, ‘Al Gore without the cherry picker’.

Billington’s lauding of the production is encouraging. That he, and others, were deeply affected is even more so, although one wonders what he has avoided reading or seeing for the past 20 years if the information presented was shocking. But Billington finds that it is not merely the accumulation of statistics, but the presence – the performance - of Stephen Emmott, the verifiable scientist, the speaker with a creditable reputation outside the theatre, that gave the production its urgency.

For this audience, the fluid realm of belief and disbelief that makes theatre work had to break down for the shock of climate instability to be heard. At the same time, the very theatrical occasion of sitting in that darkened room redolent of emotions of past productions, listening to another human speak, heightened any effect.

Asking again of those who found the production lacking, I found in each person’s experience at least one, if not many moments when the numbers add up, when the terror hits, when someone trusted speaks about a future irreconcilable with what one could bear. These events can be motivating and if Ten Billion provided that for some, then theatre’s role as educator has been met.

But if you’ve already had that experience, theatre is where you want to go to understand it, and a collocation of facts will not do that. This is a far more confused territory, requiring human imagination and many avenues of intelligence, deliberation, conflict and consent. It requires doing something like the processes of science, itself – its questioning and cross-questioning, experimentation, doubt and informed agreement.

Theatre may not be the place to present firm courses of action; Emmott’s advice to get a gun falls especially short. Conventional forms of theatre may, or may not, be adequate to the combination of reality and fiction that understanding climate change demands. But theatre, or something like it, continues to be a place where collectively, humans find a way through. There will continue to be many kinds of productions for many kinds of audiences. The hunger for a theatre by the audience that gets the facts but wants more continues to be strong.

“ashdenizen blog and twitter are consistently among the best sources for information and reflection on developments in the field of arts and climate change in the UK” (2020 Network)

ashdenizen is edited by Robert Butler, and is the blog associated with the Ashden Directory, a website focusing on environment and performance.

The Ashden Directory is edited by Robert Butler and Wallace Heim, with associate editor Kellie Gutman. The Directory includes features, interviews, news, a timeline and a database of ecologically – themed productions since 1893 in the United Kingdom. Our own projects include ‘New Metaphors for Sustainability’, ‘Flowers Onstage’ and ‘Six ways to look at climate change and theatre’.

The Directory has been live since 2000.

Go to The Ashden Directory

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Jackrabbit Homestead: Tracing the Small Tract Act in the Southern California Landscape

imagePHOTOGRAPHS BY KIM STRINGFELLOW

SHOW OPENING & LECTURE WITH THE PHOTOGRAPHER (FREE)

THURSDAY- OCTOBER 22, 2009 6:00-9:00

UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism Center for Photography,
Northgate Hall, U.C. Campus Hearst & Euclid

“Stringfellow attacks her subject as a historian, a collector, and a photographer with the vision of a Walker Evans on acid.” —Danny Lyon, author of The Bikeriders and Conversations with the Dead

In conjunction with this event, I will be leading the Land Use & The Built Environment: Photographing the Albany Bulb workshop with Fotovision on October 24th & 25th, 2009 — 10:00 am to 5:00 pm. Please visit Fotovision’s Web site for more information and to sign up for this workshop.

Workshop description: Artist/educator, Kim Stringfellow will lead a three-day photographic exploration and collaborative photo book project focusing on the built and cultural landscape of the Albany Bulb, a 30-acre spit of shoreline landfill owned by the City of Albany, which has been “reclaimed” by a variety of interest groups including urban artists, homeless, dog-walkers, teenagers, and environmentalists.

In this unique and challenging workshop participants will have the opportunity to collaboratively produce a book project in the span of a weekend. The workshop will begin with an introductory lecture by Stringfellow on Friday evening. Saturday will consist of a field workshop day where workshop participants document the site photographically supported by field notes and interviews of park users when possible. Sunday will be spent organizing and sequencing the photographs into a print on demand collaborative book project to be printed at Blurb.com.

Additional help with book production, editing and design during the workshop will be offered by Fotovision program director, Adrianne Koteen. PLEASE NOTE: This class will also be meeting on Friday night, October 23rd, from 6-9pm.

http://www.jackrabbithomestead.com/
http://fotovision.org/pages/indexEvents.php?page=weekend
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albany_Bulb

www.kimstringfellow.com