Ashden Directory

Peace on earth

December 31, 2012Ashden DirectoryAssociate Editor, Astronauts, Climate Change, Continuum, December 7th, Earth From Space, Features Interviews, Gutman, Interviews News, Metaphors, Peace On Earth, Philosophers, Prelude, Robert Butler, Sense Of The World, Six Ways, sustainability, Timeline, Twitter, Word Overview

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Kellie Gutman writes: OVERVIEW is a short documentary with near-constant views of the earthÂ from space interspersed with comments form astronauts, philosophersÂ and writers. The word “overview” is used to refer to the astronauts’Â views of the earth. It was released December 7th, 2012 and is aÂ prelude to a film in the making, CONTINUUM. Â OVERVIEW gives a strongÂ sense of the world being one environment, and a very fragile one, thatÂ needs to be protected.

The tide could turn with ‘Ten Billion’

December 23, 2012Ashden DirectoryAbbott, Associate Editor, Audiences, Climate Change, Energy Power, Features Interviews, Fossil Fuels, Green Energy, Intellectual Questions, Interviews News, Metaphors, Michael Billington, Robert Butler, Six Ways, sustainability, t-shirt, Theatre Critic, Timeline, Turn Of The Tide, Twitter

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Wallace Heim writes:

Theatre critic Kate Abbott in today’s Guardian joins Michael Billington in reporting a life-changing experience watching Ten Billion at the Royal Court.

Like the facts that Stephen Emmott presented, Abbott can recite the well-polished instructions to “help us out of this hole”:

“Never buying a car, iPod, or cotton T-shirt again â€¦ stopping our addiction to fossil fuels, starting a mass-desalination programme, building green energy power points on every strip of land, harnessing every scrap of wind, and every turn of the tide â€¦”

But one change is missing. What about demanding that theatre itself changes? What about demanding that mainstream theatre no longer turns away from the compelling emotional, moral and intellectual questions of how humans can continue to live in a time of climate instability? Theatre is more than science, more than facts, more than an instruction manual. What about demanding that theatre takes on its full life-changing role, somewhere between fiction and fact, and becomes the place where audiences wrestle with their future?

See ‘Ten Billion’ from another side.

‘Ten Billion’ from another side

December 20, 2012Ashden DirectoryAccumulation, Al Gore, Belief, Cherry Picker, Climate, Collocation, Darkened Room, Disbelief, Educator, Emotions, Experience Theatre, Introductory Lecture, Michael Billington, Nomination, Old News, Redolent, Reputation, Scientist, Unscientific Poll, Urgency

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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, itâ€™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 â€˜old newsâ€™, a â€˜first-year introductory lectureâ€™, â€˜Al Gore without the cherry pickerâ€™.

Billingtonâ€™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 -Â 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 personâ€™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 theatreâ€™s role as educator has been met.

But if youâ€™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.Â It requires doing something like the processes of science, itself â€“ its questioning and cross-questioning, experimentation, doubt and informed agreement.

Theatre may not be the place to present firm courses of action; Emmottâ€™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.

‘Ten Billion’ changes Billington

December 19, 2012Ashden DirectoryAssociate Editor, Climate Change, Ecosystems, Features Interviews, Human Overpopulation, Interviews News, Katie Mitchell, King Lear, Lion King, Metaphors, Michael Billington, Reflection, Robert Butler, Six Ways, sustainability, Theatrical Performance, Timeline, Twitter, Upstairs, Water Shortages

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Stephen Emmott in Ten Billion

Wallace Heim writes:

Michael Billington in today’s Guardian nominates Ten Billion as the ‘mostÂ momentous theatrical performance’ of 2012. The show was a lecture by StephenÂ Emmott, at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, on the consequences of human overpopulation and climate change.

Billington writes:Â ‘I came out shaking with fear, but also moved by theatre’s capacity toÂ confront the emergency facing our planet.

‘This was theatre doing what it does best: confronting us with unpalatableÂ facts about our very existence. This doesn’t mean that there is no room forÂ invented stories or that King Lear and The Lion King have suddenly becomeÂ redundant. But Ten Billion, directed by Katie Mitchell, shocked us into aÂ new awareness of the future, and even the existing present, with ecosystemsÂ being destroyed, the atmosphere polluted, temperatures rising and a billionÂ people facing water shortages.

‘I don’t know a single person who saw it whoÂ didn’t feel it was a life-changing experience. If enough people, especiallyÂ those in positions of power, could see Emmott’s lecture, it might, justÂ might, help to save our planet from destruction’.

Turkey limerick: melting glaciers

December 6, 2012Ashden DirectoryAmerican Citizens, Associate Editor, Climate Change, Coastline, Duke University, Eastern Standard Time, Epidemic, Features Interviews, Global Temperature, Gutman, Himalayas, Interviews News, Limerick, Melting Glaciers, Metaphors, Nicholas School, Robert Butler, Six Ways, Storms, Twitter

Melting Glaciers in the Himalayas (Credit: top-10-list.org)

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Kellie Gutman writes:Â Unable to pass up the opportunity to submit an “Environmental Turkey of 2012” in the form of a limerick, to the Nicholas School of Environment contest at Duke University, I have chosen the epidemic of melting glaciers worldwide as my subject. Â The contest, open to American citizens, ends at midnight Eastern Standard Time tonight.

My offering:

As the global temperature warms

Our planet reacts with fierce storms.

The impact is felt

When our glaciers melt

And the coastline around us re-forms.

See: There once was a turkey

Hitting the high water mark before Sandy

December 2, 2012Ashden DirectoryAssociate Editor, Baseball Fields, Chalk Lines, Climate Change, Features Interviews, Feet Above Sea Level, Flood Protection, Heavy Hitter, High Water Mark, Impossibility, Interviews News, Lower Manhattan, Metaphors, Mosher, New Yorker, Robert Butler, Six Ways, Ten Feet, Twitter, Water Line

Eve Mosher: High Water Line

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Wallace Heim writes:

The Talk of the Town in the New Yorker last week was all about Sandy. Elizabeth Kolbert framed her piece on the impossibility of flood protection around an artwork by Eve Mosher.

Using a Heavy Hitter, the machine to make chalk lines on baseball fields, Mosher drew a blue line around the edge of Brooklyn and lower Manhattan ten feet above sea level, the height that waters were expected to rise during a once-in-a-hundred-year flood.

Mosherâ€™s plan with High Water Line was to leave a visual mark and to open up a space for conversation, in 2007.

“I have pictures of where I drew the line and, if you look at the debris line, theyâ€™re pretty close”, Mosher writes on her blog, continuing, “I never wanted to be right.”

A bestiary of wonders, or, ‘Attenborough on acid’

November 6, 2012Ashden DirectoryAdvance Reviews, Anthony Davies, Axolotl, Bella Bathurst, Callum Roberts, Climate Change, Coral Reef, Daily Telegraph, Frans De Waal, Interviews News, John Lloyd, Monstrosities, Philip Hoare, Richard Holloway, Robert Butler, Robert Macfarlane, Roy Wilkinson, Simon Critchley, Stuart Kelly, Zebra Fish

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Wallace Heim writes:

Caspar Hendersonâ€™s The Book of Barely Imagined Beings. A 21st Century Bestiary came out this month, published by Granta.Â Here on Ashdenizen, Caspar contributed to our metaphors for sustainability with coral reef.Â And on the Ashden Directory, he was part of our panel on theatre and climate change in 2006.

Robert Macfarlane calls The Book of Barely Imagined Beings a genre-bending grimoire, a spell-book of species.

Reviewers are marveling at how the compendium of real animals, from theÂ axolotl to the zebra fish, prompts Caspar’s essays on the nature of seeing,Â walking or being:

Philip Hoare in the Literary Review

Roy Wilkinson for Caught by the River<
Bella Bathurst in the Daily Telegraph
Stuart Kelly in the Scotsman

John Lloyd for We Love This Book
Anthony Davies in the Ham and High.

The advance reviewsare by Robert Macfarlane, Frans de Waal, Callum Roberts, Simon Critchley,Â Roman Krznaric andÂ Richard Holloway.

Real Monstrosities calls it ‘fantastic!‘.

Caspar blogs at The Book of Barely Imagined Beings.

dramas missing in action

November 5, 2012Ashden DirectoryAssociate Editor, Boston Globe, British Lad, British Playwrights, Climate Change, Dearth, Don Aucoin, Features Interviews, Gutman, Interviews News, Metaphors, Missing In Action, Robert Butler, Six Ways, Steed, Theatre Critic, Tony Award, Tonys, War Horse, World War I

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Kellie Gutman writes:

With War Horse coming to the end of its run in Boston, the theatre critic for the Boston Globe, Don Aucoin remarks on the dearth of war dramas on stage. Â He writes:During a decade when the United States was mired in two wrenching, costly, and divisive wars, the only combat drama to win a Tony Award as best play was a heartwarming, puppet-driven tale about a British lad and his beloved steed in World War I: War Horse… In fact, if you scan the list of plays, musicals, and performances nominated for Tonys in the past ten years, you’d barely know we were at war at all.

Until recently, much the same could be said about plays on climate change.

See british playwrights have “blithely ignored” climate change

Nigerian theatre mixes oil and climate, on the ground

October 25, 2012Ashden DirectoryAfrican Technology, Angry Mob, Communal Farmers, Dramatist, Effects Of Climate Change, Famines, Flood Defences, Gmo Seeds, Government Area, Juncture, Nairobi Kenya, Nigerian Playwright, Organic Waste, Play Within A Play, Rehearsals, Resilience, Robert Butler, Startles, Technology Policy Studies, Theatre Style

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Wallace Heim writes:

The Nigerian playwright and academic Greg Mbajiorgu got in touch with us after reading Robert Butler’s blogs on Ashdenizen on the difficulties of writing plays about climate change. Greg sent us his play, Wake Up Everyone, which has a preface quoting from this blog.

Wake Up Everyonebegan as a commission by the African Technology Policy Studies Network, Nairobi, Kenya for their international conference on climate change in Nigeriain 2009.

That policy world is represented in the main character, Maukwe Aladinma, a retired professor of agriculture, now attempting to get the local government in the rural Ndoli area to build flood defences and advising communal farmers on using organic waste and planting stronger, non-GMO seeds. The professor, too, is a dramatist. In a play-within-a-play, the actors of his theatre company rehearse scenes describing the effects of climate change, those happening now and those anticipated: rivers dried, torrential floods, tornadoes, plagues, famines and poverty. The surrounding scenes are of a naturalistic theatre style; the rehearsals are a play to be performed as if in a dream or possessed.

A local official, Chairperson of the Ndoli Local Government Area, Hon. Edwin Ochonkeya, blocks the building of the defences. When the threatened flood sweeps the land, the farmers become an angry mob, running off-stage to extract revenge on the official.

Greg’s writing is purposeful: to support impoverished farmers, to educate, to build resilience against the effects of climate change in rural Nigeria.

The information on climate change is familiar enough, if uncomfortable. The role of the expert in presenting knowledge to farmers is familiar, too, the belief and disbelief, the sometimes awkward juncture of different kinds of experience, the social power implicit in different kinds of knowledge.

The depiction of the official, Ochonkeya, is what startles. His actions are presented as commonplace. A militant against the oil companies, he was on the verge of forming his own kidnapping gang when a massive oil spill damaged his family’s land and killed his father. He employed a lawyer to bring an action against the companies, who settled out of court for three hundred million naira and funded his campaign for local office on the condition that he didn’t make any further case on behalf of affected farmers. He won his campaign with the rhetoric of environmentalism: ‘Before this plague of climate change the oil companies had milked our land dry, but have given nothing to nourish it. All that is left (of my family’s farmland) is thick layers of oil, oil in our waters, oil in our wet lands, oil in our fragile soil, down to the roots of our edible crops, oil and more oil…’

And now, he is stopping any adaptation to or mediation of climate damage.

In a single character, the play conveys the immediate, turbulent, deceptive forces underlying oil production in Nigeria and in Canada, Baku-Tbilisi, Iraq, the Arctic, a world not wholly expressed by the activists against it, working across political boundaries.

It couldn’t be more topical. Last week, in The Hague, four Nigerians and Friends of the Earth began a lawsuit against Royal Dutch Shell Plc for Â its environmental record in the in Niger Delta, a case that may set a precedent for claims related to the activities of international corporations.

And on Friday, Wake Up Everyone received a first Individual Award in Arts and Humanities Research at the 5th Nigerian Universities Research and Development Fair in Mina, Niger State.

miniature horse meets war horse

October 24, 2012Ashden DirectoryAnimal Cruelty, Animal Rescue League, Basil Jones, Boston Globe, Broadway Production, Climate Change, Cruelty Case, Dedham Massachusetts, Features Interviews, Gutman, Interviews News, Miniature Horse, Play Date, Puppet Company, Puppeteer, Robert Butler, Six Ways, Twitter, War Horse, Windsor Castle

Celeste and Joey, courtesy the Boston Globe

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Kellie Gutman writes:

War HorseÂ opened in Boston on October 10 for a two-week run. Â The traveling Broadway production, which originated at the National Theatre a few years ago, is getting all sorts of press. Â The day before the opening the main characters – the horse Joey, his owner and his puppeteer – went to the Animal Rescue League in Dedham, Massachusetts to have a play date with Celeste, a miniature horse who had been involved in an animal cruelty case earlier in the year. Â Joey is a well-traveled steed. Â He has also been to Windsor Castle where he apparently won over the heart of the Queen. Â The Handspring Puppet Company cofounders Adrian Kohler and Basil Jones, who designed the War HorseÂ puppets, were featured in a long article about their puppets in the Boston Globe.