Thursday, February 08, 2007
Alas, poor planet
Guardian Unlimited Arts: "Lavish sets, global tours, whopping fuel bills ... is theatre the eco-vandal of the arts world? Mark Fisher goes on a round-Britain audit to find the worst offenders - and signs of hope "
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4 comments:
Well it is true that the theater is not terribly green, but often something as large scale as a theater is going to have issues saving energy and resources. Office buildings and residence halls can manage to do it, but that is because they are a simple environment comprised of lots of the same parts, for example rooms. A theater on the other hand has a massive lobby, an even more massive theater, possibly a scene shop, all that have to have their own specific constraints. Making theaters more eco-friendly just requires a lot more creative thinking in order to not loose the abilities of the space, but to gain the green stamp. Some of the examples though in this article about the "good" productions seem like comparing apples and oranges because of the styles and scopes of the shows to which they are being compared.
Indeed. Theatre is a huge nature resource-consuming industry. Although some people are making effort to reuse/recycle material, they are still consuming. The difference is just the quantity.
Some opinions in the article are not quite reasonable. ex: "Lobby Light" (Theatre may use economic lamp! and get rid of unnecessary), "travel"( If it concerns to time and distance, the flight is just the only choice), "audience drive to theatre" (This is issue about the urban plan of local government. maybe there is no bus nor subway to be theatre).
However, we still can make the effort to save nature resource. Before using it, consider well if it's necessary. And Reuse it. And Recycle.
I had an Assistant Director on a recent show ask me why we couldn't just plant some trees to make up for all of the CO2 that our foggers and hazers were releasing. It seemed pretty silly at the time, but why not? It would take more time to do things efficiently and not just take the easy way out, but sometimes you're not under pressure and you might as well.
My understanding is that approach causes more problems than it solves. I had a similar thought once involving giant algae colonies. I don't remember where I saw it, but the plant a tree solution isn't as effective as cutting the emissions in the first place. :-(
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