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Glyndebourne Opera Turbine

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Glyndebourne is an internationally renowned opera house in Southern England, famed for its annual Summer Festival as well as an accessible Touring company that visits six venues around the UK each Autumn. Established by John Christie and his wife Audrey Mildmay in 1934.

Oh, and they have a wind turbine….

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Glyndebourne’s executive chairman, Gus Christie, talks about the new wind turbine at Glyndebourne and the processes involved.

2nd Thought Theatre Returns to Dallas, goes green

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Last year STT went green.  We switched to purely internet based marketing and eliminated playbills in favor of digital projections.  We used the money we saved to pay more to our artists as we strive to be a leader in production quality in the community. This year we are taking things one step further.  Audiences will use their smart phones to either download the playbill to their device at home or scan a QR code to interact with the website and download the playbill to their device once they arrive.  Other theaters tell you to turn your cell phones off.  But not us.  We want you to leave them on, in silent mode of course,” said Chris LaBove.

Second Thought Theatre will be announcing the 2011-2012 Season in the coming weeks.

All shows in STT’s 2011-2012 Mainstage Season will be performed in Bryant Hall on the Kalita Humphreys Campus, 3636 Turtle Creek Blvd Dallas, TX 75129.  To make a donation or to find out more information, please visit www.2tt.co

via 2nd Thought Theatre Returns to Dallas.

$10,000 in prize money for Climate Fix Flicks

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Climate scientists from Macquarie University, the University of Melbourne and Monash University have launched a short film competition, Green Screen: Climate Fix Flicks.

Professors Tim Flannery, Lesley Hughes and Ann Henderson-Sellers are seeking film submissions of between 30 seconds and five minutes that communicate positive messages about a zero or low carbon, clean energy future. Fifteen films will be shortlisted and publicly screened in Sydney around the Australian Film Festival in March 2012. Entries will be judged by a panel of well-known artists, film-makers and scientists including Kimble Rendall (Matrix and I, Robot) and Professor Tim Flannery.

The winning entry will receive $5000, up to five films will be awarded ‘highly commended’ prizes of $500 each, and there is a people’s choice award worth $2500. Participants are encouraged to push their creative boundaries! This competition is a great opportunity to have work seen by high profile film and television professionals as well as audiences around the country.

Deadline for submissions is February 10th 2012.

See www.greenscreen.org.au for further details and official entry form..

Proudly supported by CLIMARTE

Sustainability in Theater Conference: People, Planet, Profit, Purpose

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April 30 – May 1, 2012

Minneapolis, Minnesota

A blended conference dedicated to providing tangible, practical strategies to implementing greener theater practices, ensuring theaters remain a vital part of our community.

Early bird discount through December 31
Discounts for members of MTA, TCG, and CSPA		 Register now
Sponsor the SIT Conference
Make a donation

Day One: Learn

A full day of learning and networking, featuring sustainability experts, sustainability in theater pioneers and success stories. If you don’t live nearby, all Day One activities will be broadcast online. By attending virtually, you can save money, time, and carbon emissions. We will take full advantage of social media to allow virtual attendees to participate, connect and network.

Speakers and facilitators will cover four focus areas:

  • People (stakeholders)
  • Planet (environmental impact)
  • Profit (keep the doors open)
  • Purpose (artistic vision and values)

All feeding into the question “How can we tangibly change the way we run our theaters to ensure we survive and have a significant positive impact on our environment and community?”

Presenting organizations include:

  • Broadway Green Alliance (New York): helped convert 97% of Broadway’s marquees to LED technology
  • Center for Sustainable Practices in the Arts (Los Angeles): working on SHOPLAB, a materials reuse and sharing facility
  • York University (Toronto): developing the Theatre Artisans Green Skills forum
  • Mo`olelo Performing Arts Company (San Diego): published the Green Theater Choices Toolkit
  • Childsplay (Arizona): host of the Sustainability in Stagecraft conference, 2009
  • Earth Matters on Stage: presenter of ecodrama playwrights festival and symposium
  • Center Energy and the Environment: providing practical, innovative, energy solutions for homeowners, businesses, nonprofits, and government

Day Two: Do

Presentations will focus on local resources available in Minnesota. Participants will break off into separate sessions based on their roles in their organizations and with the help of conference facilitators will work on specific challenges and problems they encounter in their work. The goal of the sessions will be to produce tactics for tackling these challenges, to be published and shared with every attendee. We encourage communities outside Minnesota to organize their own local working sessions.

  • Meet like-minded and like-titled individuals to share best practices and strengthen your network.
  • Learn ideas, case studies and tactics for building a sustainable organization.
  • Address common sustainability challenges theaters and professionals like you are tackling now.
  • Gather an arsenal of practical, immediate tactics that can help you spur change in your organization and celebrate small successes right away.

Presented by the Minnesota Theater Alliance and the Twin Cities Sustainable Theaters Group
Hosted by Brave New Workshop

The SIT Conference Task Force
John Bueche, Bedlam Theatre
Leah Cooper, Minnesota Theater Alliance
Kat Duvic, Brave New Workshop
Erin Farmer, Brave New Workshop
Ian Garrett, Center for Sustainable Practices in the Arts
Todd Hintz, Guthrie Theater
Elena Imaretska, Brave New Workshop
Ellen Jones, Bemidji State University
Jenna Papke, Minnesota Theater Alliance
Jill Underwood, Guthrie Theater
Alicia Wold, CostumeRentals

In partnership with Theatre Communications Group and
Center for Sustainable Practices in the Arts


BLDGBLOG: Literary Climatology

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Some fascinating ideas from BLDGBLOG in excerpt form a little while ago, which relate to ideas of ecodrama:

1) Performance Physics 

It was, we might say, not performance art but performance physics: an immersive, urban-scale demonstration of quantum dislocation… constantly out of self-synch in a single setting… the skies of San Francisco temporarily modeling an inter-dimensional event.

2) Sky Forensics

…the passage of the Blue Angels had been setting off car alarms all over the city… the locations of the car alarms always coincided with the physical passage of the airplanes… you could actually reconstruct the aerial trajectories of the planes through entirely indirect means.

In twenty years’ time, then, forensic historians could reconstruct the skies of Fleet Week 2011 using nothing but data from parked cars.

3) Literary Climatology

…we briefly got onto the subject of skywriting… The idea of blogging in the sky through the medium of artificial weather—chemically produced, aerodynamic clouds draping the city in a haze of literary climatology…

Of course, it’s worth the whole post….

via BLDGBLOG: Literary Climatology.

Somewhere That’s Green — TCG Circle

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Per its mission statement, Atlanta’s 7 Stages Theatre devotes itself to “engaging artists and audiences by focusing on the social, political and spiritual values of contemporary culture.” One such value—environmentalism—has yielded a clever campaign that simultaneously promotes the theatre and sustainability.

…marketing director Charles Swint says the theatre asked itself, “What are some creative ways we can promote our shows without spending a lot of money?” Piggybacking off the green kick, 7 Stages partnered with the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) in a campaign where, in return for select buses featuring theatre advertising, 7 Stages will encourage its audience to use environmentally-conscious modes of transportation, like MARTA. “Our staff carpools, bikes and takes MARTA to the office and around town,” says Swint. “We want to encourage our patrons to do the same.” The deal is sweetened by a $5 discount offered to MARTA Breeze Card–holders.

From  Somewhere That’s Green — TCG Circle.

Superhero Clubhouse: the Call to Grow Theater – The Brooklyn Rail

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…This type of question isn’t always asked, but for Superhero Clubhouse, it’s de rigeur.  Founded in 2007 by Jeremy Pickard, Superhero Clubhouse is a “society of theater artists engaged in making original plays and events about the natural world via a green and collaborative process.”  How they make their work is equally as important as the subject matter itself.  A rehearsal room populated with handheld devices may be a solution to printing multiple versions of a script, yet it is also a manner of developing work with more fluidity.  They’re measuring multiple efficiencies here as they constantly tackle large-scale issues: water pollution, mercury poisoning, ethical food production.  In the process, they’re also examining an issue that theater artists are only just starting to acknowledge: how the act of creating theater can be so inherently wasteful.  For Jeremy a play is “a way to realize or actualize the conversations we’re having about bigger issues.”

via Superhero Clubhouse: the Call to Grow Theater – The Brooklyn Rail.

1200 Buildings Commission: Enhancing Melbourne’s Sustainability Performance through Public Art « Carbon Arts

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The 1200 Buildings Commission is a pilot public art project responding to the energy and sustainability performance of a commercial building within the City of Melbourne – the Green Spaces at 490 Spencer Street in West Melbourne. The Green Spaces building is an early entrant in the City’s 1200 Buildings scheme, which aims to facilitate the energy retrofit of 1200 buildings within the municipality, making a significant contribution towards meeting the City of Melbourne’s target of carbon neutrality by 2020.

Carbon Arts is working closely with the City of Melbourne, Guy Wilson of Fort Knox Self Storage and Dave Collins of The Green Spaces to deliver a $30,000 commission by the end of 2011. Eleven artists, designers and architects have been selected to provide proposals for the space and share in the development of a new public arts program. The public arts program aims to leverage the efforts of signatories to the 1200 Buildings scheme by making these largely invisible efforts visible to the public and engaging all Melbournians in the Eco-City vision.

Links: http://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/1200buildings/Pages/1200BuildingsPublicArtCommission.aspx

via 1200 Buildings Commission: Enhancing Melbourne’s Sustainability Performance through Public Art « Carbon Arts.