Via HowlRound.

Playwright Karen Malpede recently wrote an essay for HowlRound, a Center for the Theater Commons, highlighting how tragedy and theater needs to be restructured around the truths of climate change. At the end of the essay, she highlighted important theatre artists and playwrights making work to begin challenging art to take on a more active role in leading climate change, including a regular contributor to the Center of Sustainable Practices in the Arts Chantal Bilodeau.

Here is the beginning of Karen Malpede’s article:

Relatively recently, the climate modeling of climate scientists has allowed us to see into the future. While we don’t know everything we know enough to ask if we wish to damage the planet beyond repair in this the new Anthropocene era, when the earth’s ecosystems are being altered by human beings at an unprecedented rate. The knowledge we now have thanks to climate models creates both a terrifying certainty and a spiritual dilemma for every person. And to confront the spirit, humans turn to art. Literature changes paradigms, whether the literature of the Bible or of the great Greek Tragedies, we learn our selves through the word.

To read more of how she traces climate’s importance and the arts’ historical role in shaping paradigms like climate change, see here for the full article.