The Broadway Green Alliance (BGA) celebrates five years of greening productions this week by launching an initiative to bring sustainable practices to theaters across the country. In collaboration with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the BGA says its online Theatre Greening Advisor is the most comprehensive theater greening information database available.
The organizations want to provide environmentally preferable options to producers, theater owners, designers, managers and design shops in the same way that the BGA brought them to Broadway in New York City.
5 comments:
As someone who has been to many Broadway performances over the past five years, I was surprised to read about BGA in this article. I had absolutely no idea that this organization existed. However, I am completely in favor of Broadway theaters becoming more environmentally conscious. I wonder how costly it is to have a BGA representative present every night backstage at Broadway theaters. I'd be interested to learn how BGA handles this factor. It is great that many of the lead actors on Broadway have stepped up and participated in supporting the BGA, and I imagine this trend will continue to escalate in the future. It is also fantastic that this organization is reaching out beyond Broadway. If Broadway is becoming more environmentally conscious, perhaps other regional, off-broadway, and educational theaters will follow suit. However, I would like to see the statistics on how wasteful Broadway is daily compared to other theaters across the country.
This is a very encouraging article, and it's nice to see this is not a new entity, but one that has been making quantifiable progress over the last half-decade. Of course, any mention of Bryan Cranston wins my favor as well. From the looks of the statistics, the BGA has been making irrefutably significant alleviations. That said, I'm not seeing any change in the actual culture of consumption and waste production on Broadway, just a more efficient way of doing it. All in good time, I suppose. I'd like to have seen a way theatre patrons can get involved, or at least become aware of the changes being implemented. If theater-goers were conscientious of Broadway's striving for greenness, perhaps their participation could be utilized. All in all, it's great to see a change in sentiment is redefining Broadway's inefficiency. I hope it keeps going!
WOW. I have been to a few shows over the past five years and never expected that they had been practicing such a green way. It is also great to see that even the stars of the show are participating in this green movement and helping over see green habits in the theater. I also found the battery piece interesting, in my high school we would change the batteries for ten microphones every performance going through eighty batteries in one weekend and it always astounded me, if a broadway show did that they would be throwing away hundreds of batteries a year. This greener Broadway is truly inspiring and influential.
A very inspirational read, to say the least. I think that green practices are something that is really needed in every industry. Its especially cool to hear that it is very prominent in the industry that a lot of us are familiar and interested in. Like Olivia said, my high school also went through countless amounts of batteries and I was always trying to figure ways that we could better ourselves and our environmental impact. On the other hand, I agree with what Clayton said about how it is great that they're taking these steps but we aren't quite seeing any change just yet. I suppose we'll all just have to be patient and help out in any way we can.
I'm so glad that we have an organization like this. As an industry dedicated to both entertainment and art, we can lose sight of the fact that we, like every other industry, have a duty to ensure that our practices do not harm the environment. The bit about rechargeable batteries is great- as Olivia mentioned, battery waste always shocked me as well, and I'm glad this has been addressed. I know that there have been other steps towards more sustainable practices in theatre, especially in the fields of set design and construction, and it would be interesting to see some articles about this.
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