AMERICAN THEATRE: Peter Royston had gotten his dream job. He was stage managing Oklahoma! at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, a “historic” revival featuring queer characters and same-sex couples. As a gay married man, he said, it was “such a life-changing, affirming experience to be backstage.” But in July, after having worked on the show for months, Royston began to have health problems. “I felt chest pains and I couldn’t sleep,” he recalled.
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I had no awareness of this particular facet of the impact of climate change on the entertainment industry. Reading the article, I can only imagine how terrifying it must be for everyone on the West Coast, but particularly those whose livelihoods require outside work. It seems like Oregon Shakes is determined to navigate their way through the adverse conditions, but it also seems like they're at war against an invisible, incredibly pervasive opponent. The industry is only relatively recently making widespread progress on safety measures; now we have to figure out how to protect people from an environmental hazard that they aren't producing themselves. Even then, everyone has to go outside at some point, and everyone has to go home at some point, and these places might not be protected. It doesn't seem impossible that climate change could drive many people out of places like Ashland within the next five years.
It is not every day that we see climate change have a direct impact on the theatre industry in such a visible way. I knew about the wildfires that have been happening all across California but I didn't realize that they had reached as far north of Oregon, and that the smoke was affecting air quality to this degree. It's good to know that Oregon Shakespeare Festival has been planning around how this will affect them not only immediately, but in the seasons and years ahead. Even though they have enforced safety measures there are obviously still people being significantly affected like the stage manager mentioned in this article. Protecting their employees should be OSF's priority so I hope that they will be able to take action to prevent this from happening again. Like Chase said, if this continues it may not be feasible for them to continue to do any kind of outdoor work in this area and they may be forced to move to another location.
Every year it seems like the wildfires are getting worse. As the water sources that through science produce rain dry up more and more and the temperature continues to rise, things continue to dry out, it’s only going to get worse. I really feel for the people involved who have gotten sick. I’ve had to move away from places because the air quality sucked. It also sucks because lost revenue means lost jobs and those jobs are not easily replaced. I live in Oregon for 5 years and there wasn’t a summer that there wasn’t some sort of wildfire that occurred while I was there. It felt like it only got worse as the years went on. The way that OSF is already thinking of next year shows the care and diligence that the production staff are taking to ensure that there is minimal disruption to the lives of not only the patrons who (like me) attend their shows but also to the cast, crew, and staff of the venues. Let’s hope it gets better.
When I worked at Utah Shakespeare Festival, there were some nearby fires that caused a few days of smoke warnings. While no where near as bad as what is described in this article, I was definitely clutching to my inhaler while calling the Greenshow cues. What I loved in this article is that they are thinking of the future and specifically thinking about the change over crew and their health and letting that be a factor in the design decisions. Not having a major set change over in an outdoor venue will be huge to protecting the health and well being of their employees should these fires continue next year. I think what really struck was the ending paragraph. I was in Houston for Katrina and met many people who lost everything in New Orleans. A lot of them were able to stick around in Houston until Ike hit and forced them out of Houston. Eventually we do have to stop running. Run west and you get fire, run south and you get water this summer in Northern Michigan I watched as full time staff members stared slack jawed and exclaimed they had never been in a place where the temperature hit 3 digits before and there we were on the edge of Lake Michigan with 102 degree weather. At some point we have to do something to at least stem the tide of this destructive change, running can only get you so far.
I had no idea the environmental crisis caused this much damage. The terrifying and life-threatening effects it caused must have been truly traumatic. Not just for the health of the residents but just how eye-opening it is as well. You hear a lot about climate change and you think about it, but you never truly experience it face-to-face. You know it’s happening, but you have never abruptly been confronted with it. This article just shows how harmful this state of mind is when it comes to our environment. There was an article circulating on social media that stated if we haven’t done anything to reverse our detrimental CO2 levels by 2030, we are doomed to go extinct. While this is a little over a decade away, with fossil fuel companies still dominating, gas emissions very slowly declining, there is no way to fix it without wake up calls such as the tragic events in Oregon. I love how O’Brien talks about his opinion of the average human being knowledgeable on the issue of climate change. There are people who are a lot more well-versed and intelligent when speaking on it, but every single person is effected, so every single person has a right to speak on their behalf on how to fix this life-threatening issue.
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