Climate Change Theatre Action
Basic information
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Full project title
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Project Description
Climate Change Theatre Action 2019 was a worldwide distributed festival of short plays about the climate crisis. CCTA used theatre to bring communities together and encourage them to take local and global action on climate. It encouraged leadership and self-determination, made it easy for everyone to engage with an art form they may not be familiar with, and empowered people from all walks of life to harness their creative potential and put it in service of the greater good.
Project Region
EU Programme or fund
Description of the project
Summary
Climate Change Theatre Action 2019 took place September 15 - December 21, 2019. Fifty playwrights from around the world (including seven from EU countries) were commissioned to write short plays under the theme “Lighting the Way” to give center stage to the unsung climate warriors and climate heroes who are lighting the way towards a just and sustainable future. These plays were then freely available to producing collaborators interested in presenting an event during the project’s time window. Events could be intimate readings, public performances, radio shows, podcasts, film adaptations, etc. Collaborators were free to design their event to reflect their aesthetic and community, and to include additional material by local artists.
Collaborators were also urged to think about an action – educational, social, or political/civic – that could be incorporated into their event. This could involve the scientific community, other departments within a university, local environmental organizations, etc. Examples of actions that took place include: presentations by activists, scientists, and voter education organizations; donations to tree planting and other local initiatives; conversations with environmental justice organizations; letter campaigns to legislators; the development of new sustainability strategies; and pledges to reduce one’s carbon footprint.
Over 220 presenting collaborators in 28 countries produced events, engaging over 3,000 artists and reaching an audience of roughly 26,000 people. Participating EU countries included: Austria, Czechia, Germany, Great Britain (pre-Brexit), Ireland, Italy, Slovenia, and The Netherlands. Somewhere between one and 700 people attended each of these performances, which occurred not just at theaters but at universities, in elementary schools, parks, community centers, churches, and public squares, and even on kayaks. In 2020, the plays were published in an anthology and they continue to be performed and studied worldwide.
Key objectives for sustainability
CCTA’s two key objectives in terms of sustainability are 1) to bring communities together around climate stories in order to spark demand for sustainability and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, one of the top priorities identified by environmental leaders in Helicon Collaborative’s “Farther, Faster, Together: How Arts and Culture Can Accelerate Environmental Progress” and; 2) to bridge the gap between local and global issues, and encourage thinking at large ecological scales.
Based on research findings from the field of intrinsic impact, it is expected that CCTA 2019 events supported social cohesion and the building of individual and community identity, which is documented to lead to behavioral changes and activism. The theoretical basis for intrinsic impact grew out of consultancy WolfBrown’s work for the Major University Presenters consortium. CCTA 2019 events also had the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through the impact of climate education on audiences and the artists engaged – for example by accompanying their presentations with a climate positive action.
In addition, through stories from and about various parts of the world, CCTA 2019 united people in different communities who share a common experience; this is essential in driving action at the scale required to address the problem. For example, a play about rising temperatures in Singapore resonated with school children in Germany, and a story from Australia about the negative impacts of pollution on wildlife echoed in Italy and Slovenia. The project helped people find common ground across political, geographical, and ideological boundaries. Events provided a safe and neutral way for stakeholders with different perspectives to come together, build trust, and find common ground. Presenters commented on their ability to bring together people from opposite ends of the political spectrum to discuss charged issues, and to build bridges between various fields of expertise.
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
CCTA 2019’s key objectives in terms of aesthetics were 1) to help seed empowering visions of the future; and 2) to provide a safe space for grieving and dreaming.
The climate change conversation is dominated by stories of natural disasters and policy failures; as a society, we are constantly reminded that we are failing on every level. Too often when artists tackle climate change, they offer visions of dystopian worlds and apocalyptic futures, adding to this onslaught of bad news. While there is no minimizing the severity of our situation, focusing solely on failures, and excluding our many successes, can lead to cynicism and despair.
Our 50 CCTA 2019 playwrights were prompted to think beyond headlines and write stories of climate warriors and climate heroes who are lighting the way towards a just and sustainable future. These could be individuals or communities fighting for justice or inventing new technologies; animals, plants, or spirits imparting wisdom; or a part of themselves they didn’t know was there. The result is a collection of plays that is extremely moving but also whimsical, magical, spiritual, absurd, and funny, and that offers visions of what is possible. Examples include plays about new technologies; what it means to be a hero; giving legal rights to Nature; and standing up to big corporations.
In addition, as a slow, unfolding crisis, climate change can give rise to strong emotional responses such as grief, a pervasive sense of loss, helplessness, and despair. Most climate spaces do not make room for these emotions. They are organized around ideas (science) or action (activism). In contrast, CCTA 2019 made room for audiences to feel, acknowledge, and share their feelings about the climate crisis, and then dream their way out together. The project provided the support of a like-minded community and a haven for audiences and participants alike to bring all of themselves to the task of reimagining our future.
Key objectives for inclusion
Indigenous people, people of color, and people from underdeveloped countries are often excluded from conversations and decision-making processes around climate change. Yet they are the most severely impacted and have the least resources to protect themselves and recover from extreme weather events. One step in correcting this inequality is to make sure that everyone’s voice is heard.
For CCTA 2019, our 50 playwrights represented all inhabited continents or, in effect, dozens of cultures and Indigenous nations. They were from industrialized and developing countries, urban and rural areas, and ranged in age from early 20s to mid 60s. Some were from low-lying island nations threatened by sea level rise, others from countries facing severe heat waves, floods, or droughts. Some were recent migrants, some inhabited the country their ancestors chose or were brought to, and many lived on and fiercely protected the land where they were born. The percentage of writers of color vs white writers was 60 percent.
Although events took place all over the world, the majority of CCTA 2019 producing collaborators were white. Though this was far from ideal, the plays provided an opportunity for participants and audiences to reflect on the systemic abuses of power that make some communities more vulnerable to climate change than others. The performances of the plays also allowed, and in some cases required, casting actors of color, inviting greater inclusion in the art-making process. For audiences accustomed to seeing shows where they don’t feel represented culturally, racially, or economically, the CCTA 2019 plays offered a welcoming point of entry.
Finally, unlike traditional models of production where resources are held by institutions and serve only a handful of artists, CCTA is entirely artist-driven, serves hundreds of artists, and reaches thousands of audience members worldwide. In this way, anyone with internet access can participate and join the movement.
Results in relation to category
Most arts and culture organizations focused on climate change address the need of the sector to shift to more sustainable practices. They include pioneers such as Julie’s Bicycle in London and Creative Carbon Scotland in Edinburgh, who have been instrumental in getting organizations to recognize their social and environmental responsibility, and reduce their carbon footprint. However, few organizations are working to galvanize the arts and culture sector to include climate change content in their work. Most present one-off projects and then move on to other topics. In the theatre, CCTA has been instrumental in filling this gap.
In addition to organizing the project, we have presented about it at theatre conferences in Austria, Germany, Italy, and Slovakia, offering it as a model and enlisting more CCTA participants who then often go on to create climate-related theatre projects of their own. CCTA 2019 has led to new collaborations: In 2021, one participant from the U.S. will be going to Austria on a Fulbright fellowship to work with another participant there on a theatre and climate project. And the plays continue to circulate. Recently, someone from Emilia Romagna Teatro Fondazione contacted us to get permission to present plays from the anthology in Bologna, Modena, and Cesena. While the plays are written in English, many get translated by participating artists and organizations, allowing them to connect to a wider audience.
CCTA 2019 didn’t just see an increase in the number of participants; we saw an increase in the depth of engagement as well. Many returning producing collaborators scaled up their event, programming multiple performances of a show or, in the case of universities, moving from a small event in a classroom to a mainstage event as part of their regular theatre season. Some followed up, as in the case of a participant in Czechia who writes for a magazine, with articles about the intersection of theatre and the climate crisis.
How Citizens benefit
Producing collaborators included theatres, universities, schools, environmental organizations, faith organizations, individual artists and activists, and conference organizers. As we collected feedback, we heard about finding solace in the plays during a horrific wildfire season in Australia, and about a performance in a town in the U.S. with high rates of climate denial receiving coverage from a local TV station. We heard about “engrossed” audiences at an event in Mumbai produced by the National Center for the Performing Arts, and about a “galvanizing evening for Calgarian citizens used to being shamed for expressing concern or taking action on climate change.” We also heard about students in Berlin, who expressed that staging CCTA plays helped them “feel empowered to take on political activism in greater force and allowed them to delve more deeply into discussing climate change with their friends and families;” and students in Austria who surmised that they might combine a career as climate change activists with continued engagement in theatre. Other successes included sold-out runs, demand for reprises, requests from local governments to bring the plays to schools throughout their cities, and an invitation to perform at the European Parliament.
Some artists chose to engage more deeply with climate justice and climate change issues, and audience members changed their behavior – for example, taking up the challenge of making their institutions more sustainable, giving up single-use plastic, or reconsidering how what they eat impacts the environment – as a result of their participation in CCTA 2019. Students developed curiosity for sustainable practices, writing research papers on this newly found interest and/or becoming environmental activists. Relationships developed in the course of organizing CCTA 2019 events sometimes outlived the project, building tighter social bonds between those involved and a shared sense of identity.
Innovative character
Research findings from the climate change communication literature show that stories can help people better understand, accept, and discuss climate change. As a storytelling medium, theatre can make climate change more accessible and relatable; it can trigger reflection, generate empathy, and foster new ideas. And it can help people imagine different ways of being and relating. Complex, nuanced, and empowering stories reflecting how environmental issues are intertwined with socio-economic factors can more effectively engage audiences than technical or policy language. Such stories can give people a sense of agency and make change feel not only possible, but positive and fun.
CCTA uses a model first pioneered by Caridad Svich, founder of NoPassport Theatre Alliance, almost a decade ago. The theatre action model works with diverse and notable playwrights to create a collection of short plays, which are easy to produce and build a critical mass around timely social questions through a network of participating collaborators. However, we have refined this model to increase the quality of our work and our impact: since 2015, our first CCTA, we have broadened the scope of the original model, significantly increased the number of participants, encouraged new models of dissemination (radio, podcasts, film adaptations, livestream), and sought new partners.
As a result of CCTA 2019’s impact and innovations at the intersection of climate communications and the arts, the project has garnered several awards: Climate Arts Award from NewArts in Canada; President’s Sustainability Leadership Award from York University, Canada; and Climate Change Public Engagement Award (Runner-up) from Climate Outreach, UK. In addition, Chantal Bilodeau, who spearheads the project, was named one of “8 Trailblazers Who Are Changing the Climate Conversation” by Audubon Magazine in 2019.
