Japanese Earthquake

Edinburgh’s greener Fringe

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Fukushima – A Silent Prayer of Poetry

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Wallace Heim writes:

Among the bevy of shows at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe about Hitler, adolescence, Macbeth and stage spiritualists, there is a remarkable number of dance and physical theatre pieces with ecological themes. Consumerism and happiness, oil and politics, the Japanese earthquake, undercover policing, urban architecture and fear of the woods are among the ideas and sensibilities these shows are expressing.

Theatre shows number highly this year, too, with around 70 that have ecological themes varying from the strongly activist to the bucolic. Shows about animals, food and an apocalypse always feature. This year, there are three shows walking to Edinburgh; shows about abattoirs, about the Deepwater oil spill and the Fukushima nuclear leak; and shows about a swamp, plastics, population and the price of milk.

“ashdenizen blog and twitter are consistently among the best sources for information and reflection on developments in the field of arts and climate change in the UK” (2020 Network)

ashdenizen is edited by Robert Butler, and is the blog associated with the Ashden Directory, a website focusing on environment and performance.
The Ashden Directory is edited by Robert Butler and Wallace Heim, with associate editor Kellie Gutman. The Directory includes features, interviews, news, a timeline and a database of ecologically – themed productions since 1893 in the United Kingdom. Our own projects include ‘New Metaphors for Sustainability’, ‘Flowers Onstage’ and ‘Six ways to look at climate change and theatre’.

The Directory has been live since 2000.

Go to The Ashden Directory

SHINSAI: Theaters for Japan

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Practicing for SHINSAI. Photo Erin Baiano/Licoln Center Theater

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Kellie Gutman writes:

A unique event took place at 69 theatres across the United States on March 11, the one-year anniversary of the devastating Japanese earthquake.  Called SHINSAI – the Japanese word for an earthquake disaster – it was a series of readings of ten-minute plays to raise funds for the Japan Playwrights Association.

Some theatres held one or two readings before their normally scheduled productions; others made an evening of presenting many of the plays and songs put together for the event.  More than half of the plays have to do with the environmental disaster in Japan. To read the plays, register here

The Theatre Communications Group helped to organize SHINSAI. Japanese and American playwrights wrote works for the event; Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman reworked two songs from their 1976 musical Pacific Overtures. All plays were to be presented only on March 11.

National Public Radio did a story, which you can hear here.

Yoji Sakate, President of Japan Playwrights Association wrote:

Theater artists in Japan, centered around those living in the Tohoku region that was devastated by the great earthquake and nuclear accident, extend our hand to theater artists around the world to rebuild Tohuku and Japanese society, restoring the conditions that surround the art of theater, such as environments for creative activity, theater buildings, companies, rehearsal spaces, education and audiences.  We seek to work with our international peers to demonstrate the potential of human beings and the theater to overcome adversity as well as the primordial power of expression on stage.

 

“ashdenizen blog and twitter are consistently among the best sources for information and reflection on developments in the field of arts and climate change in the UK” (2020 Network)

ashdenizen is edited by Robert Butler, and is the blog associated with the Ashden Directory, a website focusing on environment and performance.
The Ashden Directory is edited by Robert Butler and Wallace Heim, with associate editor Kellie Gutman. The Directory includes features, interviews, news, a timeline and a database of ecologically – themed productions since 1893 in the United Kingdom. Our own projects include ‘New Metaphors for Sustainability’, ‘Flowers Onstage’ and ‘Six ways to look at climate change and theatre’.

The Directory has been live since 2000.

Go to The Ashden Directory