By Imara-rose Glymph

I’m delighted to bring you this refreshing interview with San Francisco-based, award-winning actor, singer, director, San Francisco Mime Troupe (SFMT) collective member, and drama professor Velina Brown. Since graduating with a degree in counseling from San Francisco State University, Velina has combined these skills to develop her life and career coaching services through The Business of Show Biz. She also contributes as a monthly columnist to the Theater Bay Area Magazine.

Velina was a principal actor in the 2013 SFMT musical satire Oil & Water, speaking truth to power about the corporate, extractivism fueled, environmental devastation of the Ecuadorian Amazon and the lives of its residents – both human and nonhuman. In this interview, we explore theatre as a platform for socio-political and environmental activism, the revolutionary ethos of the Mime Troupe, and why intersectionality is at the heart of it all. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

You have been a collective member of the San Francisco Mime Troupe for 21 years and been involved in over 27 productions. What first drew you to political satire, which the troupe employs?

What first drew me to wanting to work with the company was a show called Seeing Double (1989). If you heard our recent radio plays, Tales of the Resistance, the song that finishes the first episode, “Jade For Hire,” is from this comedy of errors about the Israel-Palestine relationship and the two-state solution. One of my classmates in the Counseling Department at San Francisco State, the late Emily Shihadeh, was one of the main writers for the show. Her family was forced out of the home that had been in their possession for 130 years when the state of Israel was created. My husband was a lead actor, having joined the troupe in 1988, but I didn’t get involved until 1992. When I first saw the show, I was really impressed by the blend of educational and interactive entertainment.

I learned a lot about what was going on in the Middle East from this source because at the time, the discussions people were having were simply, “It’s complicated.” It was a huge project; they went onsite to Israel and Palestine, playing both sides of the bank even though it was potentially dangerous (they received threats for presenting controversial material). There were perspectives contributed from Israelis, Palestinians, Jewish-Americans, and Palestinian-Americans, which represented a broad viewpoint. I was really moved by the powerful combination of witty, humorous scripts, spectacular performance, and music into a holistic package that impacted people’s consciousness and awareness of the world. What started as a one-time experience turned into a thirty-year adventure of mine.

Tell us a bit more about the mission and inner-workings of the Mime Troupe. There is great emphasis on a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multigenerational, democratic vision to unite people across boundaries with artistry and humor. How does this influence the process of making?

People come into the collective with specific skills to contribute. Over time, other talents are developed and expanded to different areas. Our head writer, Michael Gene Sullivan, has 32 years of experience acting and 20 years of experience directing and writing with the troupe. The last head writer, Joan Holden, had a 33-year involvement. With 11 members, the troupe determines democratically what material will function for the next season. Newer member, Marie Cartier, collaborates in writing the clever commercial skits. Daniel Savio, our composer/lyricist, has a lineage of activism through his father Mario Savio – leader of the Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley. Everyone has a hand in the decision-making process in the sense that collectively, we are all the artistic directors. We decide as a collective. Our process is ever-evolving, discussion-based, writing and rewriting as we act. The troupe creates shows about our burning issues whether environmental justice, elections, racial justice, and economic injustice to ultimately highlight the oppressive profit > people mentality fueled by unbridled capitalism. 

A huge part of our mission is the accessibility of our art. Theatre institutions are exclusive/elitist in that not everyone is allowed into the traditional theatre space or able to afford shows. The majority of SFMT performances are free and we mostly perform in public parks, although we do ask for pay-what-you-can donations to support our craft. We often perform in rugged conditions where we strive to be resourceful. It is exhausting, rewarding work. Even though we are a leftist, radical group, we still get critiqued by liberal audiences for “preaching to the choir.” The truth of the matter is that people go see shows where the demographics match their own and each place has its own specific population. We encourage our audiences to venture outside of their spheres of familiarity as the troupe has performed nationally and internationally. We sometimes speak to constituencies who do not share the same mindset as we do, connecting across differences to find common ground. In this way, it is essential to realize that true listening is not the same as agreeing.

That is what attracted me to SFMT. Many people who come to watch us are active, engaged, intelligent global citizens, who want to be part of actual change. They have this innate understanding that no one is free until we all are free. “Who are we and who do we want to be?” We explore these questions interactively to envision the just society we want to see.

Oil & Water, the 2013 environmentally-focused musical show featuring dual storylines tackling corporate extractivism, inspired me to reach out to you regarding this series. Did SFMT connect directly with scientists while composing this piece? What investigations influenced the research?

While we did not go directly to the site, we conducted extensive research during the origination of the material. We gathered a resource list to provide the scientific and experiential background for the writing. The list includes literature – The Tyranny of Oil by Antonia Juhasz, and Blue Gold: The Fight to stop the Corporate Theft of the World’s Water by Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke – that feature a relationship between the pursuit of oil, water privatization, and clean water access. 

We are not environmental scientists – we are artists who are progressively showcasing social issues from the perspective of the working class. If we feel that an issue is especially pressing to those who have to work for a living, we reach out to experts in the appropriate fields and ask them to come talk with us. 

We host talkbacks and panels after each show so that the public can interact with experts and organizing leaders, and ask questions. SFMT reaches out to activists to offer our performance space as a platform for publicity and an effective organizational tool. For Oil & Water, twelve environmental organizing groups, including 350 Bay Area and Amazon Watch, had booths set up to give them greater exposure and mobilize interested participants. After watching our shows, people feel motivated to seek out involvement with the subject matter, to become better informed on how to assist with the cause.

Why was this show different from the traditional Mime Troupe performances? What roles did you play and what did you hope would be conveyed about the climate crisis?

The National Endowment for the Arts, which typically funds us, had been slashed that year as the federal emphasis shifted away from the arts. People in Congress actually complain about us by name! These representatives don’t know what we do; they believe the troupe spends frivolously on tights and makeup. In response, we created a stripped-down show with four actors where I played the devil in the first act, “Deal With the Devil,” and one-half of a lesbian couple, Gracie, alongside Lisa Hori-Garcia, in “Crude Intentions.”

Lisa’s character, Tomasa, is a documentarian shooting footage to capture the exploitative oil interests in the Amazon – a story based on a real whistleblower who was threatened by giant Chevron. Tomasa shields herself as a modest restaurant owner in the Mission District of San Francisco, all the while retaining the investigative side of her nature. The play ends with a catering scene at an exclusive event for oil executives and a mastermind plan to expose the injustice. That’s the interesting aspect of these corrupt, supposedly invincible, entities – they assume that people in service industries will not wield this information against them for social good. Working-class folk are not seen as important enough to care or worry about… 

In “Deal With The Devil,” the given circumstances are that a woman president has been murdered, Rotimi Agbabiaka is reinstated as the new Obama-esque president, and Earth has been totally destroyed after being stripped of environmental protections. The only area that is preserved is Washington D.C., showcasing the class inequities caused by the climate crisis. Those who are on the frontlines of the crisis, BIPOC, are not the ones exacerbating the issue. Yet, though they contribute the least to the problem, they are the most impacted. That is environmental racism in a nutshell. The people in control of making decisions that poison our ecosystems do not have to deal with the ramifications. The problem that my character, the devil, is experiencing is ironic in that she must prevent humans from becoming extinguished by the impact of environmental degradation in order to preserve her mission of temptation. In this hilarious scenario, the devil is a climate activist advocating for the health of the planet. This role reminded me of the prophetic words of Chief Seattle: “Only when the last tree has died, the last river has been poisoned, and the last fish has been caught, will we realize that we cannot eat money.”

In what ways has climate change impacted your life and community personally? 

I guess that depends on what the definition of a community is. The Mime Troupe is affected primarily by how weather fluctuations affect outdoor performances. The weather has changed drastically in just 20 years and the fact that we are performing right out in the open makes it that much more real. The climate conversation is visceral for us because we are working out in the elements. We see what the differences are in real time; they are impossible to ignore or negate, whereas most people can live their hermetically sealed lives in denial. 

As a California resident, it blows my mind that now there is such a thing as “fire season.” That’s not a good season to have. Usually, we think of holiday seasons or cherry-picking seasons but to have a situation where there are constant droughts and wildfires is a frightening sign. The long term impacts of forest fire air quality and pollution are yet to be understood. How is that going to affect us down the line – especially if it continues?

The reality is that this is not just a community concern, it is a species concern. One must have an awareness of that scope. I just finished the audiobook The Grown-Up Guide to Dinosaurs by Ben Garrett. There is something really poignant about these species that dominated the planet for much longer than homo sapiens have existed. It is humbling to know that this land was once fully inhabited by these prehistoric creatures and then suddenly they were gone. Some might say that this is the ebb and flow of evolution but one thing is for certain: human activity has greatly accelerated the alteration of our climate. If we don’t act now, we will not be around for much longer. The Earth has been around for a few billion years; it will repair itself. It is the survival of living beings that we should be concerned about.

What does the future hold in store for you? 

I am going to be continuously working on the eight-part serialized radio plays titled Tales of the Resistance, presented by the Mime Troupe, in place of doing a live performance. This is the way that we adapted to COVID-19, a symbol of the resilience of theatre. The first episode, “Jade For Hire!” is a half-hour detective noir looking at racial discrimination and class divide in an increasingly gentrified, tech-bound city. The second episode was released on Saturday, July 18 online and through local Bay Area radio stations KALW, KMUD, KTDE, KZXY, and KZFP. Check out the wonderfully bizarre radio plays in the adventure, horror, and science fiction genres on the SFMT website. The episodes continue on into fall 2020.

(Top image: Velina Brown singing.)

This article is part of our Black Artists & Storytellers series.

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Imara-rose Glymph is a student at Bennington College pursuing an interdisciplinary degree looking at multi-cultural identity, language, biology/ecology, and performative arts. Most recently, she was a media fellow with Global Citizen Year, documenting Indigenous Women’s agricultural stewardship, and a representative of Intersectional Outreach with Extinction Rebellion. She has been involved in the climate conversation since leading youth delegations in the GIN 852 conference Hong Kong, organizing bio-tours of mangrove conservation areas, and guiding students as an Arctic Hall Docent with the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. 

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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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By Amy Brady

This month I have a fascinating interview for you. Matthew Schneider-Mayerson is an author and Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at Yale-NUS College, who studies climate fiction. His latest academic study, “‘Just as in the Book’? The Influence of Literature on Readers’ Awareness of Climate Injustice and Perception of Climate Migrants,” examines the impact of climate fiction – specifically, Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Water Knife â€“ on readers. We discuss his findings below.

Your latest article, “Just as in the Book,” is a fascinating look at how Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Water Knife influences readers. What inspired you to conduct this study?

I started reading a lot of climate fiction in 2011 or so. As it became more common and received more attention, it struck me that while there was a lot of interest in different aspects of this new category of literature, its psychological and political potential was frequently highlighted by authors, critics, and scholars. They were, and still are, responding to an important question – what can literature and art do to move and inspire readers, and thereby contribute to efforts to respond to climate change, that other forms of communication don’t? This is a fascinating theoretical question, but it’s also an urgent empirical question. Given the incredibly short time frame we have to transform fossil-fuelled civilization, the empirical element seemed particularly important to me. So I was surprised to learn that until recently, there were no empirical studies on what happens when real people encounter environmental literature. An article I published in 2018 was the first empirical study to examine the influence of climate fiction on its readers. This study continues that research, but focuses on more specific questions, and a single novel.

Why did you choose to center this study on The Water Knife?

I found Paolo Bacigalupi’s previous novel, The Windup Girl, to be really innovative and provocative, and I read The Water Knife when it came out in 2015. One of my main areas of research is climate injustice, the disproportionate consequences of climate change on different groups of people, as well as climate displacement and migration, which are expected to accelerate in the next few decades. While a lot of climate fiction touches on injustice in some form, The Water Knife really centers it, along with climate migration. So it seemed like an ideal choice for a study focused on the ability of climate fiction to influence readers’ awareness of climate injustice and perception of climate migrants. Beyond its conceptual focus, The Water Knife is a popular and critically acclaimed novel by one of the most widely read and respected environmentally-engaged English-language authors of the last decade. As most readers will attest, it’s a very engaging book – a speculative eco-thriller set in a desiccated, collapsing, and apocalyptic near-future Southwest, and an effective exercise in placing a pulpy and hard-boiled thriller in a climate-changed future.

Could you briefly describe the framing of this study? How did you choose your participants, and what key question(s) did you seek to answer?

The main questions we were interested in exploring were who reads a novel like The Water Knife, and why; how it influenced readers’ perceptions of climate change; whether it raised awareness of climate injustice; whether it led readers to identify with climate migrants; and what lessons or messages readers took away from their reading experience. We recruited participants through Mechanical Turk, an online service that has become popular for social science research, and sorted them into two groups: Americans who had read The Water Knife; and Americans who read fiction regularly but hadn’t read The Water Knife. The former group was the focus, and we asked them a battery of multiple-choice and open-ended questions. The latter group was a kind of control; we asked them some of the same questions, and, after presenting them with the book cover, a description, and a blurb, asked them if they were likely or unlikely to read the book. 

I found it interesting that many respondents – both liberal and conservative â€“ found the novel to reinforce an individualistic if conservative view of the world. Why do you think that is?

I was also surprised by this at first, but it makes sense. The world of The Water Knife is very Hobbesian – the government and the social order are collapsing, states’ borders are closed, opportunities are few, everyone is out for themselves, empathy is fatal, and violence is ubiquitous. Judging from the public statements Bacigalupi has made, he intended this as a cautionary tale – if we don’t act now to mitigate climate change, this is the kind of hellish future we’ll be stuck with. And that’s been a common framing for apocalyptic climate fiction. Given the tendency towards confirmation bias, it’s not surprising that some conservative readers found this depiction of the selfishness of human nature to be accurate – that’s a common belief among American conservatives. But liberal readers also picked up on this individualistic framing, and some found it to be compelling and “realistic” – it’s a very engaging novel. This is potentially problematic, since the novel might unintentionally reinforce an inaccurate perspective on human nature that won’t help us respond collectively to climate change, and might contribute to some exceptionally bad outcomes. 

How did the novel influence participants’ views of climate change?

On views of climate change in general, the responses generally echoed what I described in my 2018 article. For many readers, the novel minimized the psychological distance that many people feel from climate change, which is one obstacle to recognizing its gravity and urgency – that it’s something that happens in the future, in faraway places, to people who are unlike them. The Water Knife, like other works of climate fiction, seemed to make a climate-changed future much more vivid and visceral, and this led to some intense emotional reactions. Unsurprisingly, given the novel’s dystopic world, these were mostly negative emotions – worry, sadness, and fear. Very little hopefulness or joy.

Additionally, the novel seemed to lead to more awareness of climate injustice. There was no existing polling question to measure awareness of environmental injustice or climate injustice, so we asked participants in both groups, “Picture the people most affected by climate change. What do they look like?” Then we coded the responses. After excluding the participants that gave non-substantive answers or purely physical descriptions, there was a significant difference between those who read the book and those who didn’t. This suggests that The Water Knife was effective at raising awareness of climate injustice. This is valuable not just because climate injustice is real and important, but because just and effective policy and political responses will need to address climate and environmental injustice, and support for those responses requires an understanding of these basic facts.

How did the novel influence participants’ views of climate migrants? 

Here the results were mixed. On one hand, the novel was effective in getting a diverse range of American readers to identify with climate migrants. This might have been because two of the three protagonists were climate migrants, and they offered a wide range of pathways for identification – different ages, genders, backgrounds, and social status positions. This identification and empathy is potentially important, because as climate displacement and migration become more central aspects of the world we inhabit, developing just, humane, and effective policies will be absolutely critical, and literature and media might play a role in influencing people’s willingness to support such policies.

On the other hand, we found that the Hobbesian violence of The Water Knife is potentially counterproductive. Authors and critics might hope that portraying a dystopic cautionary future will scare readers into engaging in progressive politics today, but it might not work out that way. A vivid depiction of desperate climate migrants engaged in a self-interested and violent struggle for survival can backfire, since even liberal readers might not empathize with climate migrants, but fear them. This is a real risk, and it’s one that authors and other cultural producers should take seriously. It’s possible that narratives like The Water Knife might not motivate progressive environmental politics, as authors and critics often hope, but support for climate barbarism – callously allowing the less fortunate to suffer – or even ecofascism. In the past this possibility might have seemed merely theoretical, but the recent rise of ethno-nationalism around the world, as well as recent acts of mass violence that have been justified in part on environmental grounds, should raise concerns about the shape that conservative responses to climate change might take.

What’s next for you? Do you have any other empirical studies of climate-fiction in the works? 

I’m currently collaborating on a quantitative experiment focused on two climate-fiction short stories, and I’m planning a study focused on the ability of climate fiction to inspire readers – that feels like a crucial subject. And I’m working with three colleagues, Alexa Weik von Mossner, Wojciech MaÅ‚ecki, and Frank Hakemulder, to develop the field of empirical ecocriticism, which this research is part of, and bring more empirical attention to environmental literature, art, and media. We’re hoping that this kind of research will be useful to critics and scholars as well as authors, artists, and other cultural producers. Readers can check out our website to see the work that’s been done in this area, get in touch about collaborating, and add their own. 

This article is part of the Climate Art Interviews series. It was originally published in Amy Brady’s “Burning Worlds” newsletter. Subscribe to get Amy’s newsletter delivered straight to your inbox.

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Amy Brady is the Deputy Publisher of Guernica magazine and Senior Editor of the Chicago Review of Books. Her writing about art, culture, and climate has appeared in the Village Voice, the Los Angeles Times, Pacific Standard, the New Republic, and other places. She is also the editor of the monthly newsletter “Burning Worlds,” which explores how artists and writers are thinking about climate change. She holds a PHD in English and is the recipient of a CLIR/Mellon Library of Congress Fellowship. Read more of her work at AmyBradyWrites.com at and follow her on Twitter at @ingredient_x.

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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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By Andrea Szucs, Kris Fricke, Ronna Magy, Teresa Stern

Reader-submitted stories of the COVID-19 pandemic, in no more than 100 words. While the submission of stories may have slowed, the pandemic continues. Read past stories here. Submit your own here.

SHATTERED WORLD

March 29th. A light rain falls through glowing daylight, I stand in my backyard. The normal Sunday village noises – lawn mowers, kids playing – are absent. There is nothing, the disquieting stillness of a nuclear winter. I listen to a voice message from my ex. Her beautiful warbling voice sings a melancholy sailor’s song of loneliness and longing, drawing out the somber words with heartfelt intensity. I stand with my eyes closed in the shimmering silence of our shattered world, and listen. My throat tightens, a hot tear rolls down my cheek.

— Kris Fricke (Birregurra, Victoria, Australia)

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SPOKEN SILENCE

On daily walks, I consider that house. One month’s collapsed fence stacked in the yard. Bent nails, weathered pickets, uneasily detached. Splintered posts guarding barren patches of lawn. From crumbling cement, dark-haired mother stares into summer’s skies. Above her mask, wrinkles chisel her eyes. Parents tethered to porches, children indoors. Empty school rooms, silent playgrounds; I look to this woman, nod, and walk on. Like others, I have covered my face. Begun to fade with the anonymous days. What is this life lived behind masks? Faces concealed, what else is obscured? Ordinary encounters taken away. Spoken silence infecting these times.

— Ronna Magy (Culver City, California)

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SILVER LININGS

Did you know that hope is the only positive emotion that needs something negative or uncertain in order to be activated? In 2020, the world as we knew it changed. Virus. Death. Dark clouds. Yet I notice beauty. Kindness. Love. I cherish relationships more. I do stop and smell the flowers. I do creative projects just because I want to, not because of the reward. I notice that the colors are more vivid. Is it less pollution in the environment, or in my mind? I feel socially distanced, yet emotionally connected and evolved. I dare to hope and find the silver lining.

— Andrea Szucs (New York, New York)

(Top photo: Reflection on silver linings.)

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EVERYTHING

Everything is the same; everything is different. Both are true. Everything is the same: the sun rises, we breathe air, we love our dear ones, we linger over conversations. Everything is different: the earth warms, the air can kill, virtual is a poor substitute for a hug, face time and FaceTime are not equal. Everything is everything. We are all everything, all connected to one another in our peril and our pandemic, to one another in our hope and our possibilities. These last are the most important – hope and possibilities, turned to collective action.

— Teresa Stern (Seattle, Washington)

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This series is edited by Thomas Peterson. One of the editors of Artists & Climate Change, he is also an organizer and theatre director whose work focuses on the climate crisis.

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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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By Jeff Biggers

BRINGING MIGRATION VOICES AND STORIES ON STAGE IN AN AGE OF CLIMATE CRISIS 

Every two seconds someone in the world is displaced from their home.

This line repeats in my mind, as if it’s a cue for an actor to enter the stage. But it comes from the latest report of the UN Refugee Agency, which counted nearly 80 million people forced from their homes in 2019, many due to climate and environmental crises. 

“They all have stories,” Amara Sacko tells us.

We’re sitting under a stand of pine trees, to the side of the Podernuovo villa in the Tuscany forests in central Italy. Our chairs are arranged in a circle, a dozen actors with scripts in hand, still stumbling over our first readings in this experimental theatre troupe. A dozen actors, along with a cadre of musicians, I should add, from over 10 countries – including Mali, Gambia, Guinea and Guinea-Bissau, Brazil, Ghana, New Zealand, Italy, France, Ethiopia, the US, and Italian-raised citizens from Colombia, Sri Lanka, and India.  

Thanks to composer James Demby, an Italian musician and professor at the Conservatorio Luigi Cherubini in Florence, we’ve been invited to rehearse during the summer in this historic villa and forest grounds, for the Mare Nostrum Theatre Project, our intercultural theatre initiative, prior to our performance at the Museo di Antropologia e Etnologia di Firenze. James has also brought in acclaimed Ghanian Ewe drum master Ruben Agbeli, along with a European classic orchestra. 

A former medical student from Mali, Amara has placed down the script of our play, Damnatio Memoriae, after we reached a scene about a boat journey of Africans departing from Libya, across the Mediterranean. Having fled his own country during violent political unrest, losing his sight in one eye from an attack, he quietly recounts his harrowing journey across the Sahel, into Algeria, and then the chaos of Libya, the point of departure of boats for nearby Sicily and the Italian coast.

“When you’re on the boat, you have nothing but your stories,” Amara continues in Italian, our lingua franca among the multi-lingual troupe. “You have no idea if you’re going to survive at sea. Many don’t. And we don’t even know who we lose, who they are, what their stories are. It’s another form of ‘damnatio memoriae.’” 

The title of our play, Damnatio Memoriae, juxtaposes the Ancient Roman edict that granted emperors the right to condemn someone’s presence or memory from public view or historical record – to literally remove someone’s existence and destroy any artifacts, including statues, coins, paintings, engravings – with current efforts to deny or forget the African and Arab histories and contributions in Italy during a period of increased migration.

As an American writer and playwright who has been based part of the year in Italy for decades, I have always been fascinated by this official Roman process of forgetting, and its ramifications today in Italy. I believe there is a presence in Roman ruins, especially among its African and Arab histories, which needs to be recovered and reconsidered. Through theatre, I believe we can begin the process of reconciliation with the victims of “damnatio memoriae,” especially those from African countries and the Middle East, as a symbolic first step in reversing historical denial.

That includes my own role as the playwright and director, and the roles of all actors in the theatre troupe, even before we take the stage. The intense training in a remote villa, the exchanges among meals, the long walks and drumming sessions – all of these have served as points of references for adding voices and stories in a new play. 

Damnatio Memoriae draws on years of research and dispatches in Italy, including the draft of a play I wrote on immigration in Bologna in 1989. It’s also based on interviews with recent immigrants, including those I met in Sicily, when 3,500 deaths at sea in 2014 marked the passage from Libya as the deadliest migrant crossing in the world.

Last week, 45 people from Mali, Chad, Senegal and Ghana died off the coast of Libya, when the engine exploded on their boat. 

After a tragic boat accident off the Sicilian island of Lampedusa, which resulted in 366 deaths in 2013, “Mare Nostrum” became the official name of Italy’s maritime policy of assisting refugees – who were labeled as “clandestines.”  We reclaimed the ancient Latin term, mare nostrum â€“ our sea – as a way of reclaiming the stories lost at sea and in the process of historical conflicts. 

Returning to Bologna, I approached theatre director Guido Ferrarini, who founded Teatroaperto in 1974 in the tradition of the “Nuovo Teatro Popolare” movement, and shared our sense of urgency to pull back the curtain on the immigrant experience, often lost in the endless political debates, and provide a stage for immigrant voices from Ancient Rome to modern Italy.

“In the theatre,” Ferrarini told me, “we can touch on one of the most important, compelling and unavoidable issues of our times: the integration of peoples. This process is inescapable, and our role is to reintroduce in the theatre the challenges of immigration, or better, the migration of people on earth.”  

Damnatio Memoriae unfolded as our struggle to recover the past, and its presence in modern times. We open the curtains with an Italian troupe doing Shakespeare and his portrait of “Aaron the Moor,” in his outrageously bloody play about Ancient Rome, Titus Andronicus. Borrowing a time-bend device from Sicilian playwright Luigi Pirandello, we bring to stage a troupe of immigrant actors in search of a stage, attired in Ancient Roman costumes, led by the historical Septimius Severus, a Libya-born Ancient Roman emperor who died in present-day York, England, and whose son, the eventual Emperor Caracalla, enacted the historic Antonine Constitution, which granted citizenship to all free men in the Roman Empire – a right to native-born citizenship that no longer exists. 

In our troupe, Caracalla and Geta, the real life sibling rivals for the throne, are played by Loua Hervé from Guinea and Don Lukasz Senghore from Gambia. 

From the clash of two theatre troupes, one Italian and one composed of immigrants, a new play comes into view, weaving together the stories of the actors and their ancient and modern conflicts over migration, birthright, citizenship, family conflict, fatherhood and motherhood, redemption – and even love.

Amara, playing the role of Emperor Severus, is part of bringing these new stories and voices to the stage, in his own way.

“It’s one thing to watch films or reportages on migrations, including problems of drought and environmental crises,” says Guy Lydster, a celebrated sculptor in Italy and a New Zealand-born actor who trained in the theatre in California. “But when you hear these stories from the very people who have experienced them, and incorporate them into characters, it places a new sense of urgency and meaning on the stage.” 

In Damnatio Memoriae, Lydster plays the role of the director of the Titus Andronicus Italian theatre troupe, who is confronted by the intrusion of immigrant actors demanding the stage for their side of the ancient story.

At first offended by their unprofessional arrival on his stage, the veteran director must wrestle with his own conflicts over who has the right to tell their story on stage, and what role the theatre plays in giving life to certain voices. Or, whether the stage can provide a safe, healing and creative space, as well as a historical and narrative context, for immigrant stories to be voiced and heard and expressed in more authentic and compelling ways.

Countries like Mali, among others in the central Sahel, are facing mega droughts, floods, and other environmental crises from climate change that have transformed the region’s agro-pastoral systems and led to conflicts over natural resources and land. In actor Luciana Milani’s native Amazon rainforest in Brazil, fires have increased by over 80% last year, destroying one of the world’s greatest carbon sinks in staving off cataclysmic climate chaos. 

The roles of the actors on stage also reflect the roles of our own counties in climate change: the average American or Brit, for example, emits more CO2 in two weeks than someone from west or central Africa over the entire year.

Standing on the shores of Sicily years ago, the jagged remains of a shattered boat at my feet, I listened to an Italian villager describe the voyage of migranti across the Mediterranean. The survivors of the boat crash, which had been launched from Libya, included Somalis, Nigerians, Eritreans, and Syrians, among others. Framing the issue as part of a cycle of migration, on an island whose ruins and current ways betray millennia of migration realities, the Sicilian fisherman understood better than anyone what the UN Refugee Agency recently termed a “paradigm change” in unprecedented levels of forced displacement. 

As we see in Damnatio Memoriae, today’s immigrants in Italy continue to walk along the ancient road of Via Appia in Rome, where a mysterious Septizodium monument constructed by Severus in Ancient Rome once welcomed their arrival from Africa.

Ex Africa semper aliquid novi, the Ancient Romans declared: From Africa always something new.

That includes the theatre and our stories on stage.

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Jeff Biggers is the founder of the Climate Narrative Project, and author of numerous books, most recently Resistance: Reclaiming an American Tradition. More on his play, Damnatio Memoriae, can be found here. 

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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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By Mary Woodbury

For this post we head back to India, this time with Katy Yocom, author of Three Ways to Disappear. Ecofiction is a type of literature that handles nature-oriented and human-impact plots while telling a great fictional story that imagines or reflects real environmental concerns, in this case the plight of endangered Bengal tigers.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Leaving behind a nomadic and dangerous career as a journalist, Sarah DeVaughan returns to India, the country of her childhood and a place of unspeakable family tragedy, to help preserve the endangered Bengal tigers. Meanwhile, at home in Kentucky, her sister, Quinn – also deeply scarred by the past and herself a keeper of secrets – tries to support her sister, even as she fears that India will be Sarah’s undoing.

As Sarah faces challenges in her new job – made complicated by complex local politics and a forbidden love – Quinn copes with their mother’s refusal to talk about the past, her son’s life-threatening illness, and her own increasingly troubled marriage. When Sarah asks Quinn to join her in India, Quinn realizes that the only way to overcome the past is to return to it, and it is in this place of stunning natural beauty and hidden danger that the sisters can finally understand the ways in which their family has disappeared – from their shared history, from one another – and recognize that they may need to risk everything to find themselves again.

With dramatic urgency, a powerful sense of place, and a beautifully rendered cast of characters revealing a deep understanding of human nature in all its flawed glory, Katy Yocom has created an unforgettable novel about saving all that is precious, from endangered species to the indelible bonds among family.

The manuscript of Three Ways to Disappear won the 2016 Siskiyou Prize, and the novel was published by Ashland Creek Press in 2019.

While at its heart Three Ways to Disappear is a book about family tragedies, lost connections and a seemingly failing marriage, endangered tiger conservation in the Aravalli forests forms the epicenter of the novel’s plot, where most of the action takes place … The book makes the reader contemplate on larger questions: At what cost is tiger conservation worthwhile? Can the persistent human development around forests be stopped to avoid conflict situations? Is the goal of tiger conservation without expansion of tiger territory really sustainable?

— Prathap Nair, Firstpost India

The topic of the environment must by necessity include economics and the reality of politics. Yet in these vitriolic times, how do you find words to bring disparate voices to the table without further polarizing the conversation? Literature can take that role as it bridges a strong fictional narrative to the complicated world in which we live…. Yocom’s novel achieved this with clarity and grace. Not only are the characters changed by the end of the story, we are changed for having known them.

— North American Review

CHAT WITH THE AUTHOR

Thanks so much to Katy for talking with me about her new novel.

I’m interested in your research for Three Ways to Disappear. You traveled to India, where your novel’s main character also ends up. What was your trip like?

India is an intense, vibrant place. I was there for three weeks, the first half with my mom, the second half traveling on my own but always with a guide. We were there during an intense cold spell that arrived the same day we did, which meant we hadn’t packed warm enough clothes. We spent a lot of the trip shivering, but the cold turned out to be a huge advantage, because it brought the tigers out into the open. I’d heard lots of stories of people going to tiger reserves and never seeing a single tiger. We had the opposite experience – seeing tigers, sometimes close up, nearly every day we went into the parks.

I built the trip around extended visits to three national parks: Ranthambore, in Rajasthan; Kanha, in Madhya Pradesh; and the Sundarbans, in West Bengal. Each was fascinating in its own way. Ranthambore is spectacular – the landscape itself with its towering cliffs and ancient ruins – and then you’ve got tigers and other wildlife prowling through. I’d never seen anything like it. It’s where I decided to set my novel, because the landscape is so beautiful and the tigers came out of hiding, so I was able to see how they interacted with the landscape. I also got to visit two villages not far from Ranthambore, and the people I met there and the experience of being in the villages ended up being integral to the story I was telling.

I liked reading Three Ways to Disappear because of several reasons. One is that I was born in Louisville and spent a lot of time there during my life. It’s always good to revisit the area. Another is that the story also takes place on a tiger preserve in India, which I guess most of us have never experienced. So there’s an American setting and then an entirely far-away place, which might ground a lot of readers while also journeying somewhere they’ve never been. How was the writing experience as you shifted between these places?

To be honest, it was a challenge to render Louisville as vividly as I rendered India, because India was so new to me. India was just a pleasure to write about because it brings the senses alive in so many ways. Louisville – a city I love, where I’ve lived for nearly 30 years – is the setting and backdrop of my life, and for that reason I found it more difficult to bring to life on the page. Familiarity creates this false sense of default, this sense that the neighborhoods, the houses, the cars, the topography that form your experience are basically the same for readers everywhere. It’s not true, of course, but it’s a hard trick of the mind to get past.

India upended all that. Aside from the simple need to describe people and places that wouldn’t be familiar to many Western readers, I also found that I had to render certain activities with extra care. There’s a scene in the book where Quinn, at age 10, is drawing a bath for her siblings. If that scene were set in the States, I could have described it just that simply – I’d write, “She drew a bath,” and you’d know what I mean. We can all easily imagine what that looks like. In India, though, that act becomes something completely different. Had the servants been in the house – and, of course, her family had servants; it would have been considered wildly radical for them not to – Quinn never would have been allowed to draw the bath at all. Then there’s the fact that the house wouldn’t have had hot water pipes, so she had to heat the bathwater on the stove. Drawing the bath became a huge challenge for her. That said, it also became much more interesting to write and, I hope, much more interesting for the reader.

Sarah DeVaughan, the main character, grew up in India, then moved to Kentucky with her family. She feels called back to India, as a journalist, to help preserve the endangered Bengal tigers. The book is part romance, part environmental story, part journey. How do you weave together such powerful parallels that will end up inspiring the reader?

First of all, that’s lovely of you to say, so thank you. I’d say if the story inspires readers – and I hope it does – it’s because Sarah is a deeply passionate character. Her career in journalism has kept her on the outskirts of events, and she wants more than that. So she leaves journalism to throw herself into the effort to save the tigers. She literally throws herself into a river (well, she ends up in the river accidentally, but still) to save a tiger cub. When she develops romantic feelings for one of the other characters, she throws herself into that, too. I hope readers will feel the liberation that comes with following one’s passions, even though it’s a messy thing to do. Sarah’s sister Quinn, by contrast, spends most of the book mired in fear for her son, afraid of the dangers of daily life. She’s not wrong to be afraid, given her son’s illness, but her fear stifles her and creates a drag on all her relationships and on her creative life. She has to work hard to overcome it and to begin to reshape her life. Her story is quieter, but I hope in its own way, it’s inspirational too.

There’s also some family secrets back home. This adds suspense to the story. I felt that the act of forgiveness was also an act of family preservation – so the idea of preservation is involved throughout the story. Do you have any more thoughts on that?

I love the way you put that! Is it okay if I steal that idea? I hadn’t thought of it that way, but you’re absolutely right. The family members have each kept their secrets out of guilt and shame. In trying to protect themselves from the judgment and rejection they fear, they’ve built walls around themselves. And you can see the way those walls have damaged them. By confessing their secrets, naming their guilt, and asking for forgiveness, they are taking enormous risks in order to open up the possibility of healing. And when the shoe is on the other foot and they’re being asked for forgiveness, and they are able to offer it, they let the healing begin.

Thank you for putting it that way. You’ve taught me something new about a story I’ve been living with for close to fifteen years. I love that.

Steal away! Environmental fiction seems to be increasing these days due to the many ecological crises we find ourselves in. What are your thoughts on how this fiction might enhance the world? And how did you feel when the manuscript won the Siskiyou Prize?

Thank you! It was such an honor to have this story win the Siskiyou Prize. I can’t tell you how much it meant to me.

I agree, environmental fiction is moving more to the fore. The world is waking up to the reality of a climate crisis that is already affecting all our lives, and that will affect the future of life on this planet. You’ve got climate strikers – young people demanding that people in power address the issue of climate change after shoving it to the side for far too long. You’ve got fiction writers like Barbara Kingsolver and Amitav Ghosh, who have both been writing about the environment for years. Ghosh’s most recent book, Gun Island, addresses climate change and human migration in a way that will appeal to readers who love mysteries and action-adventure. I think that’s key, that the fictional stories being told are not didactic, or at least not only didactic. That first and foremost, they’re good stories. I was really pleased when Three Ways to Disappear was named a Barnes & Noble Top Indie Favorite, because I took it to mean that Barnes & Noble sees my book as having fairly wide appeal. It can only be a good thing that environmental fiction is moving into the mainstream.

One of the key differences between environmental fiction and nonfiction is that you’re not likely to pick up a nonfiction book about environmental issues if you’re not feeling psychologically prepared to face news of planet-wide disaster. It’s just too overwhelming. Fiction allows us to enter into a story that perhaps addresses the same topic but takes it down to a human level. That’s absolutely key. We meet characters, we empathize with their dilemmas, we take heart from – or have our hearts broken by – their struggles. With their courage and grit, they allow us to feel the elation of their successes and imagine ourselves taking action, as they’ve done. With their failures, they teach us to mourn, which means opening ourselves up to the pain of truly grievous losses.

Regardless, it’s the particular genius of fiction to inspire empathy in the reader. And empathy is exactly what we need in order to find a way to care about the difficult truths about the natural world without succumbing to the paralysis of despair. My hope is that by creating empathy and a sense of urgency, fiction can release people from both self-protective apathy and self-defeating despair. It can create an openness that allows for action, whether that action is attending a march, making a donation to an environmental organization, or simply talking about these issues with others in our community. Each of those actions is so important.

I think you hit the nail on the head regarding the importance of this fiction. Are you working on anything else at the moment?

Right now, I’m busy traveling the country with this book. I’ve got an idea for my next novel cooking, but for the moment it’s on the metaphorical back burner.

I cannot wait to hear more; have a great time on the tour!

MORE INFORMATION

Thanks to Katy for the following links, which can give readers a place to take action as well as learning more about endangered Bengal tigers.

• As far as links, my go-to is World Wildlife Fund, which is leading the global effort to save the tiger.
• I found this article really interesting, about the need to involve tribal communities more in wildlife conservation efforts. 
• At home, the issues tigers face are different – mainly the problem is that tigers are kept by private owners in inhumane conditions. The Big Cat Public Safety Act is currently working its way through Congress to make private ownership illegal, which would put an end to some of the horrors endured by captive big cats.

This article is part of our Wild Authors series. It was originally published on Dragonfly.eco.

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Mary Woodbury, a graduate of Purdue University, runs Dragonfly.eco, a site that explores ecology in literature, including works about climate change. She writes fiction under pen name Clara Hume. Her novel Back to the Garden has been discussed in Dissent Magazine, Ethnobiology for the Future: Linking Cultural and Ecological Diversity (University of Arizona Press), and Uncertainty and the Philosophy of Climate Change(Routledge). Mary lives in Nova Scotia and enjoys hiking, writing, and reading.

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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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By Peterson Toscano

For Olivia Oguadinma in Nigeria, storytelling has become central to her life. Though she is studying to be a chemical engineer, it is her passion to promote the UN Sustainability Goals among her peers that has led her into storytelling through her podcast, Gems on Earth. For the Art House, Olivia discusses the role of storytelling in motivating her peers toward meaningful action.

While in university in Nigeria, Olivia joined Enactus, the world’s largest experiential learning platform. Through the projects she helped organize with fellow Enactus members, she was able to put into practice some of her ideas about storytelling and social change. She then decided to form a learning community. Now, in this time of pandemic lockdown, she has turned to the internet, and through her Gems on Earth podcast, she reaches young people throughout Western Africa and beyond. 

Artist Shane Petzer in Barrydale, South Africa talks about turning trash into art. Through the Magpie Art Collective, he and fellow artists create breathtakingly beautiful chandeliers all made from trash. Two of these hung in the White House in Obama’s private quarters. During this time of coronavirus lockdown, members of the Magpie Art Collective have partnered with the Quakers in the Western Cape to create #QuakerPeaceDoves. Find out about how you can take part in the collective remotely and turn your trash into art.

Next month, illustrator and comic book artist Violet Kitchen talks about the role of the artist in taking on big issues like climate change. She also talks about creating art with constraints as she collaborated with Solomon Goldstein-Rose for his new book, The 100% Solution – A Plan for Solving Climate Change.

If you like what you hear, you can listen to full episodes of Citizens’ Climate Radio on iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, SoundCloud, Podbean, Northern Spirit Radio, Google Play, PlayerFM, and TuneIn Radio. Also, feel free to connect with other listeners, suggest program ideas, and respond to programs in the Citizens’ Climate Radio Facebook group or on Twitter at @CitizensCRadio.

(Top image: Magpie Flower Ball by the Magpie Art Collective.)

This article is part of The Art House series.

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As host of Citizens’ Climate Radio, Peterson Toscano regularly features artists who address climate change in their work. The Art House section of his program includes singer/songwriters, visual artists, comics, creative writers, and playwrights. Through a collaboration with Artists and Climate Change and Citizens’ Climate Education, each month Peterson reissues The Art House for this blog. If you have an idea for The Art House, contact Peterson: radio @ citizensclimatelobby.org

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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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