Tuesday, February 24, 2015
Can Theater Save the Planet?
Extended Play: In 2010, theater artist Cynthia Hopkins joined an arctic expedition as a project of Cape Farewell, a UK-based international not-for-profit program that brings together artists and scientists to stimulate cultural dialogue around climate change. From her experiences sailing through frigid seas around the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, Hopkins created “This Clement World,” a musical performance piece that layers tropes of investigative theater with invented time travelers, ghosts, and choral folk opera. “This Clement World” premiered at St. Ann’s Warehouse in 2013.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
If I had a nickel for every time a director said in rehearsal, “We are going to change the way the world thinks about this topic that is discussed in the play that we are currently doing” I would be a very rich man. I do truly believe that theater does have the ability to change the way the world thinks about any given issue. However, not every play has the ability to do that, and should be doing that. Many times I have found that having the goal of using theatre to create awareness for a topic or issue is much for successful. This is because the audience leaves the production thinking about the message that they have been left with when the curtain goes down, promptly starting a conversion. This is instead of the production directly telling them how they should act and feel about the issues. I do not like when directors do this because they are basically telling the audience how they should think. That’s my two cents.
When I read the title question my first response was, “Of course! Theater can do anything!” But now I’m a bit skeptical, there is already so much propaganda on save the environment out in the world, form magazines to TV shows that I don’t really know how much more incorporating productions into that can do. I feel as though, once something enters the theatrical world, it becomes sort of fantastical, something that’s happening “over there” or in a world that can’t be taken seriously. Not to say that educational theater is a complete farce, it’s just something that’s normally focused on children for a reason. I suppose that other forms of art may have an easier time of getting through this kind of message, but art is a form of entertainment and in this day and age entertainment is taken pretty lightly. But in that same vein subliminal encouragement is a proven thing, so maybe after seeing such a show the audience will be more inclined to recycle and turn off lights. I’m still s skeptic.
Post a Comment