By Chantal Bilodeau 

AN ANTHOLOGY OF SHORT PLAYS ABOUT THE CLIMATE CRISIS

This fall, The Arctic Cycle, in collaboration with the Centre for Sustainable Practice in the Arts, published Lighting the Way, a volume anthologizing the short plays that made up Climate Change Theatre Action 2019. What follows is excerpted from the anthology’s introduction. 

This anthology is a leap of faith. It is one attempt to address the climate crisis, one item on a long list of efforts by scientists, engineers, academics, politicians, activists, writers, thinkers, dreamers, communities large and small, and, increasingly, artists. It is a tool for reflecting and grieving, for learning and growing, and for dreaming and acting. It was conceived to bring us together around a complex and polarizing issue, and to give us the strength to not only ask for, but also enact significant change.

The stories we tell each other matter – often more than we realize. Whether made-up or true, they are a reflection of our beliefs and values, of the many unspoken rules that shape culture and our understanding of reality. We grow up hearing them informally from our parents and families. They are further refined through formal education, conversations with friends and strangers, and our awareness of the moment and place in which we live. Ultimately, they are affirmed through personal experience. They are such an integral part of our identity that when challenged, we will fight to the death to protect their integrity. Our stories are, quite literally, who we understand ourselves to be. And yet, they are constructed – an act of imagination. (For more on how stories influence who we are, see The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaningby Jeremy Lent).

We don’t have to look very far to see the power of stories in action. In a court of law, although the facts are the same for everyone, the side most skilled at weaving those facts together – in essence, the side with the most compelling story – wins. In politics, narratives determine policy: whether we care about biodiversity loss, extractive practices, or environmental justice is a function of the story we tell ourselves about how important these things are and who should be responsible for them. In our personal lives, stories bind us together as families and communities – so much so that the first thing we do when we meet each other is to ask for a story: How are you?

The importance of narrative is why artists are well-positioned to contribute to the climate change conversation. Through their craft, artists can create stories that tackle huge, seemingly intractable problems and break them down into smaller, more relatable components; stories that weave the facts of climate change into meaningful narratives to help us understand what it all means; stories that present alternatives to the dominant discourse and dysfunctional status quo; and stories that start to imagine what a better future, not just for the privileged few, but for everyone, could look like.

In industrialized countries, the mainstream environmental movement has for too long been dominated by white male voices and experts. It is not uncommon for the lived experiences of frontline, racialized, and low-income communities, and the lived experiences of women, to be considered less important or less valuable than white male expert opinions, or to be ignored all together. While we decidedly must heed the advice of scientists – as we are painfully learning through the many failures to control the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. – there is also a need for subjective experiences, for hearing about the struggles of human beings no matter where they fall on the economic scale or color spectrum, for the messiness of emotions, and for every other unquantifiable thing that makes us human.

American poet Lucille Clifton famously said: “We cannot create what we can’t imagine.” Research has shown that imagining an act can activate and strengthen regions of the brain involved in its real-life execution. In addition to validating our experiences and giving voice to those whose experiences are not recognized, we have the power to shape our reality, to use our most unique human feature – our imagination – to dream up stories that can bring into existence what we want to actualize.

The global climate crisis is, well, global. Which means we all have a role to play in reversing it. We all have skills and networks of influence that can be called upon. That’s why a few years ago, Climate Change Theatre Action (CCTA), the project that is the impetus for this anthology, was born. As artists, we were not going to just stand to the side and watch the crisis unfold. There was something we could do.

What is Climate Change Theatre Action?

Inaugurated in 2015 and hosted biennially, CCTA is a worldwide series of readings and performances of short plays about climate change, presented to coincide with the United Nations Conferences of the Parties – the annual meetings where world leaders gather to discuss strategies to reduce global carbon emissions. It is spearheaded by The Arctic Cycle, in partnership with the Centre for Sustainable Practice in the Arts. 

We typically commission 50 playwrights (although this year we ended up with only 49), representing at least a dozen countries, to write a five-minute play about an aspect of the climate crisis. We then make this collection of plays available to anyone interested in presenting an event in their community during a three-month window in the fall. Events may range from readings to fully-produced performances, and from podcasts to film adaptations. Event organizers can design their event to reflect their own aesthetic and community, and include additional material by local artists.

To emphasize the “Action” part of Climate Change Theatre Action, we also encourage organizers to think about an action – educational, social, or political – that can be incorporated into their event. These actions may involve the scientific community, local environmental organizations, or political or direct action. In the past, organizers have hosted panel conversations with climate scientists, pledged to reduce consumption or adopt plant-based diets, and written letters to legislators to demand policy change.

The five-minute format of the CCTA plays is not accidental. We want the plays to be as user-friendly as possible so they can be presented in a variety of contexts and fit in a wide range of budgets, including no budget at all. The short format means that the plays require few resources to perform, can be presented individually as part of larger events – like conferences or festivals – or grouped together in any number to create an evening of theatre. They can also be studied in classes, shared at family gatherings, read in podcasts or at marches – the possibilities are endless. 

Lighting the Way

CCTA 2019 took place from September 15 to December 21, 2019. Earlier in the year, we reached out to playwrights, keeping an eye on gender and racial representation to make sure that our group was well balanced. Once we had the playwrights assembled, we offered the following prompt:

This year, we want to give center stage to the unsung climate warriors and climate heroes who are lighting the way towards a just and sustainable future. These may be individuals or communities fighting for justice or inventing new technologies; they may be animals, plants, or spirits imparting wisdom; or it may be a part of yourself you didn’t know was there. Feel free to be literal – or not – and to travel forward or backward in time.

The prompt was intended as a starting point for the research and writing process, with each writer free to interpret it in their own way. But it also hinted at a route we prefer that the narratives avoid, which is the apocalyptic route. For one thing, as my friends Lanxing Fu and Jeremy Pickard, co-directors of eco-theatre group Superhero Clubhouse, often remind us: the apocalypse is a privileged narrative. It assumes that the terrifying future that is imagined, with food shortages and power failures and wars over resources, doesn’t already exist. It suggests that this is the worst thing that could happen to society while completely disregarding the fact that many communities already live under those conditions.

Furthermore, as I mentioned earlier, the brain can be activated to actualize what we imagine, so if we only imagine the worst, the worst is what we’re going to create. Writers often cite the desire to scare people into action – to make so vivid the consequences of our shortcomings and inaction that audiences will be compelled to act differently. And yet, it seems like the opposite may be true. In a recent paper examining the impact on readers of Paolo Bacigalupi’s dystopic cli-fi novel The Water Knife, Matthew Schneider-Mayerson found that:

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 climate barbarism – callously allowing the less fortunate to suffer – or even ecofascism.

There should still be room for these apocalyptic narratives in the climate conversation, but they certainly shouldn’t dominate our imaginary landscape as much as they currently do. Between scientific predictions, extreme weather events and their coverage in mainstream media, blockbuster movies, and artists’ dystopian depictions of the climate crisis, we are surrounded by narratives of failure. Our CCTA prompt was intended to encourage the playwrights to look beyond the apocalypse and bring to the surface the stories that are not being told.

Going Forward

Local communities are often isolated in their environmental struggles, even when the problems are systemic and widespread, such as sea level rise or pollution from fossil fuel extraction. My hope is that through stories from and about various parts of the world, this book can help unite people who share a common experience, an essential feature in driving action at the scale required to address the climate crisis. For example, a play about deforestation in India might resonate with a community in Brazil, or a story about Indigenous land rights in New Zealand might have echoes in Canada.

I also hope that the 49 CCTA plays included in this anthology can help people find common ground across political and ideological boundaries, and across disciplines. In the past, they have provided a means for stakeholders with very different perspectives to come together and build trust. Past presenters have commented on their ability to bring together people from disparate ends of the political spectrum to discuss charged issues, or to build bridges between different departments at their institutions.

Finally, it is my sincere hope that this anthology will encourage more people to think and talk about the climate crisis in ways that are thought-provoking and empowering instead of demoralizing and paralyzing. May this book inspire students to find out more and get involved, professors to consider new ways of teaching about the climate crisis, and artists to lend their voices to this most pressing and dire of issues. May it contribute to showing the role that the arts and storytelling can play in shifting our culture toward greater resilience and justice, and, ultimately, toward sustainable living.

Lighting the Way: An Anthology of Short Plays About the Climate Crisis is available as a paperback and ebook on Lulu.com.

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Chantal Bilodeau is a playwright whose work focuses on the intersection of science, policy, art, and climate change. She is the founder of Artists & Climate Change, and the Artistic Director of The Arctic Cycle, an organization that uses theatre to foster dialogue about our global climate crisis, create an empowering vision of the future, and inspire people to take action.

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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 GiGi Buddie

Last month I had the pleasure to return (virtually, of course!) to my college, Pomona College in Claremont, California, to attend an event presented by the Department of Theatre and Dance. As a rising third-year and theatre student currently taking a gap year, this event was the perfect way to stay connected with the department, professors, and students in the midst of my leave and the pandemic. The event was produced in response to and in celebration of the release of the 2019 Climate Change Theatre Action (CCTA) anthology. 

Founded in 2015, Climate Change Theatre Action is a worldwide series of readings and performances, where every other year, fifty professional playwrights representing all inhabited continents as well as several cultures and Indigenous nations, are commissioned to write five-minute plays about an aspect of climate change based on a prompt. The 2019 prompt, “Lighting the Way,” was designed to specifically give center stage to the unsung climate warriors and climate heroes who are lighting the way towards a just and sustainable future. 

In fall of 2019, I was lucky enough to produce the Pomona College CCTA event, perform a handful of the plays, and facilitate talkbacks with the audience and invited experts. I had an incredible experience, and this year, I have gone one step further to help organize CCTA 2021, by interning with The Arctic Cycle, the organization behind CCTA, and even lending my voice to the soon-to-be-released CCTA 2021 trailer! 

Since I have been so involved with CCTA, I was excited to see what this year’s event would look like, especially since it could not be performed live. The Pomona College Department of Theatre and Dance, in conjunction with the Pomona College Environmental Analysis Program, Envirolab Asia, and The Arctic Cycle, presented a number of environmentally-focused plays live and over Zoom. Performing from all over the world were first-year students in the freshman seminar class “Theatre in the Age of Climate Change,” taught by Professor James Taylor.

On November 11, 2020, the small seminar class of eight students, directed by Professor Giovanni Ortega, utilized the strengths of the Zoom medium to create an intriguing performance. Accompanied by virtual backgrounds, snapchat camera filters, and sound effects, the production was a wonderful encapsulation of the power of theatre and the mission statement of CCTA – to gather communities around personally-resonant stories, foster conversations, and encourage action around the climate crisis. This production was certainly global with actors performing from across the United States, Turkey, Belgium, and Jordan. The project succeeded in bringing communities together from across the Claremont Colleges Consortium and from around the world.

In the wake of the U.S. presidential election, now more than ever, we artists need to find ways to celebrate the “little victories,” and this project was certainly a little victory. This year has been full of loss, tragedy, and hardship, and many of us seem to overlook the little pockets of happiness that surround us. The election of a new U.S. President has brought a wave of hope to the country, and has allowed me to finally celebrate the little victories and little pockets of happiness that were waiting to be found at the edge of a seemingly brighter future and new presidency. 

Although the COVID-19 pandemic has made personal connection difficult to find, especially in the performing arts, which heavily rely on groups of people getting together in the same physical space, and has taken hope from many of our lives, these students found a way to keep that connection alive by celebrating through a new platform and bringing awareness to the climate crisis. To me, this production was a culmination of what hope and little victories look like. A new generation of scholars, artists, and students are defying the odds and emerging into the world despite all the challenges that 2020 has brought. They have decided to use their voices to speak seriously about our planet. These are the voices we need, and these are the stories we need to tell.

Our younger generations inform and tell these stories. They hold the power. 

Giovanni Ortega

I sat down and spoke with director and professor of acting, Giovanni Ortega, to talk about his experience with this CCTA event, and the victory of adapting theatre for the Zoom platform. During our conversation, since it was so soon after the election, we spoke candidly about what a gift it was to witness the first woman of color, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, deliver her victory speech and, days later, hear the inspiring words of playwright Chantal Bilodeau’s It Starts With Me, a play that brings a whole new definition to female empowerment. It Starts With Me is a piece written for female and female identifying performers to reclaim their voice. The play holds a mirror to society and asserts that we [women] have the power to enact change… and we will:

MULTIPLE VOICES: It starts with me

SINGLE VOICE: Because I may be young
But I can stand in front of world leaders 
And demand that they do their job 

SINGLE VOICE: Because I may be poor
But I can fight to address female wellbeing and ecological health
Together

SINGLE VOICE: Because I may be marginalized 
But I can draw upon indigenous traditional knowledge 
And heal the Earth

[…]

SINGLE VOICE (softly): It starts with me 
Because without me there is no salvation for anyone
Or the planet

Ortega was adamant about finding creative ways to use the venues and environments the actors were in. Most notably, for their production of Canary by Hanna Cormick, he utilized filmmaking to juxtapose the modern world with Belgium nature. Canary is a beautifully written piece that brings awareness to elements contributing to the climate crisis that are often forgotten, like petroleum-based chemicals in our detergents, makeup, lotions, etc. It then shows how these chemicals affect a human being – the writer herself, personified by the actor – who is struggling to live in such a polluted world, even at a micro level: 

I am standing here amongst you for that body 
whose genes have mutated, developed a warning signal
A body whose white blood cells attack petrochemicals 
Treat them like an allergy, a poison
With a potentially fatal immune response

[…]

Her cells, on a hair-trigger
Changing system pathways to explode at will
Stuck on a feedback loop until every single source of food and water and breath is lost to the rising tide of reactivity
A body injected with biologics and chemotherapy and pain
Just to only barely survive the uninhabitable spaces we create around it

A body whose throat swelled up because her nurse accidentally wore eyeliner
A body swollen with hives from a piece of plastic
A body shaken by 100 seizures daily because of the propylene glycol in your soap

A body that can smell your laundry powder from across the street
Smell what you ate three days ago through your skin
Smell bacteria
This body stands here for a body that doesn’t know if it is an evolution or an illness

It’s important to note that the students studied many of these plays in class with Professor Taylor before performing them, and Ortega was quick to note that the interpretation of these young creators could not be overlooked; they added another layer to the meaning of the plays. During the post-show talkbacks, the students spoke as scholars with a comprehensive knowledge of the environmental crises on which the plays focused. The project was collaborative and aimed to uplift the ideas that the students came up with. Most of them were pushed outside their comfort zone in taking on the task of performing live theatre through an online medium.

These first-semester, first-year students, many of whom are not trained as actors, tackled a huge theatrical and Zoom feat with grace, dedication, and excitement. I believe that by studying these plays before performing them, which is something that rarely happens in a “normal” production process, the students formed a closer connection to both the scripts and the climate issues that the plays deal with, and they were able to translate that knowledge into their performances. Oftentimes, the most important thing missing from the climate conversation is personal connection and stories, and with this event, these young artists helped fill that gap. The point of an ecodrama is to open avenues for further exploration and reflection, and to incite change, even if it’s on the smallest scale. After all, as Ortega said: “If we can affect just one person, we’ve done our job.”

(Top image: Selim Bayar in a Zoom performance of there are a lot of stories you can tell about humanity by David Finnigan)

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GiGi Buddie is an American Indian artist and student studying theatre, with an emphasis in acting, at Pomona College. Whether it be through acting or working in tech, GiGi has dedicated much of her life to the theatre. In the summer of 2019, her passion for art and environmental justice took her to the Baram River in Malaysian Borneo where she, alongside Pomona professors, researched the environmental crisis and how it has been affecting the Indigenous groups that live along the river. As a result of her experience researching and traveling, she student-produced the Pomona College event for Climate Change Theatre Action during the fall 2019 semester.

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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 Ariana Akbari 

ON ISLAMIC ART TRADITIONS & THE ENVIRONMENTAL ARTS MOVEMENT

When we, in the United States, think about environmental art or art as environmental activism, National Geographic-style photographs of ducks covered in oil or rustic collages screaming “Save Earth Now!” probably come to mind. However, as a contemporary art critic whose studies blend art and architecture and Islamic Studies, what immediately comes to my mind is the predisposition of Islamic art to both incorporate and speak to the state of nature and the natural world, a predisposition heretofore untapped for the environmental cause. It would be beneficial for those interested in climate change and the arts to explore different visual and cultural modes of thinking about arts as activism. 

Islamic art is famously aniconic, meaning that it lacks figural representation, unlike almost all other world artistic traditions. Instead, Islamic art traditionally utilizes alternative means of expression, namely calligraphy, geometry, and vegetal patterns. The lack of iconography in Islamic arts is traced to the beginning of Islam, when the Prophet Muhammad entered the Ka’bah, a holy sanctuary in Arabia that served as a place of worship for both pagans and monotheists, and destroyed the hundreds of idols there, proclaiming that “There is no God but God,” or that only Allah should be worshipped. Although there is nothing in the Qur’an that explicitly states that humans and animals cannot be portrayed in Islamic art, the hadith – supplementary scriptures detailing the practices of the Prophet Muhammad – do make this clear. (Because “Islamic art” covers a wide expanse of time and geography, there is variation in these aniconic practices; however, these themes – calligraphy, geometry, and vegetal patterns – are consistent.)

So, what does this mean for Islamic art and the environmental movement? 

Islamic art can employ alternative and powerful means for displaying and conveying the environmental imperative. Calligraphy in Islamic art is special because it is often Qur’anic and the Qur’an is considered the Holy Word of God. Therefore words, when written in calligraphy in Islamic art, are endowed with a sort of endemic power and holiness that might be more compelling than a typical English-language call-to-arms. At the same time, the recurrence of geometric themes could be evocative of geometries or fractals in nature – in the stars, in biological cells, in various plants. And the incorporation of vegetal themes provides a new challenge to dominant western modes by providing a contrast to themes of destruction caused by industrial might.

There is also a significant vein of contemporary Islamic art that blends Islamic traditions with more secular, westernized art traditions. Here is another potential point of intervention for environmental artists – calligraphy can be superimposed on contemporary photography, and  geometric themes can be combined with more conventional or cutting-edge environmental slogans or symbols.

Environmental art or art as environmental activism can be and must be more inclusive. All religious and cultural traditions should be given special consideration artistically, and the one which I can personally vouch for – culturally and by training – is the Islamic art tradition. In this tradition, environmental art might be holy and practiced and beautiful, invoking the words of God or written actions of the Prophet through calligraphy as they speak to the protection of the Earth. Environmental art could turn the Islamic concept of vegetal scrolls on its head, showing them wilting, breaking, or otherwise consumed or destroyed. Environmental Islamic art could reflect the imperfection of humanity back to us, set against the divine order and geometry of the perfect world that we were given by God and have chosen to recklessly squander. 

(Top image: Shirin Neshat, Bonding (1995). Courtesy of Shirin Neshat/Gladstone Gallery, NY & Brussels, via the Wall Street Journal.) 

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Ariana Akbari is the founder of Climate Justice Texas, an environmental advocacy program based in Southeast Texas, the heart of the oil and gas economy. She studied the History of Art & Architecture and the Comparative Study of Religion at Harvard College, with side jaunts at the University of Houston Hines College of Architecture and the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies. She is passionate about corporate transparency, effectively-built spaces and community programs, and regionally-rooted art & design. 

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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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