AMERICAN THEATRE: Around the world, hurricanes have grown in intensity and heat records are being hit on an annual basis. These extreme weather events, powered by climate change, has not spared theatres. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival had to cancel numerous shows and lost $2 million worth of revenue because of local wildfires, which get worse every year. The Alley Theatre suffered $18 million worth of damages from Hurricane Harvey.
13 comments:
I absolutely love the idea of making theatre eco-friendlier. It always saddens me to see the piles of lumber sent to the trash after the strike of a production. I began to notice this in high school, so I asked my shop teacher why we don’t reuse or donate set pieces. He explained that storage is limited and expensive, but he began to look more into donations. It turned out that another high school in the state was doing the same musical as us, so we donated a large chunk of our set, which in turn saved them a great deal of money. This article showed other creative ways designers are delving into the environmentally-friendly sector. Many states have reuse centers, just like the Pittsburgh Center for Creative Reuse, which the design and production students really take advantage of. Even the cluttered cabinets of 33 serve the department well, as we strive to take full advantage of our materials.
I think this article lays out some great starting points for theaters to begin having a more eco friendly process. I often think about how wasteful our industry can be. I understand how the lack of time and money has forced us into a system where we just throw things into a dumpster because we don't have the time to sort out everything that can be reused or even the storage space to keep everything that might be useful to us in the future. I think looking for more earth friendly materials is a great way to start, but I can understand how buying these materials can be more expensive in cost to use them. Perhaps easier is the idea that we can start to budget a little time to sort materials out at the end of strike and make sure that we keep the materials that we can use and hand off the materials that others can use to them.
I am very glad that there are articles like this one and people in this industry helping to push the world of theatre to be eco-friendlier. Something that I have really appreciated that theatres do especially those that are in close proximity to each other is share sets and props and costumes when they are in need of something they don’t have instead of buying new. Often times during strike, I think about how much supplies are wasted because we use them and then don’t know where to store them or don’t think they will be used again so they are just thrown away. I would love to see more theatres implement eco-friendly practices. I am glad that the theatrical lighting industry is taking these measures, and I would love to see more major theatres using the eco-friendly lights. I think having more reuse centers around the country and the world will be a good step forward for the theatre industry to become greener and less wasteful.
Wastefulness has always been my biggest struggle with theater. One of the first things I asked in Paints was were everything goes after the show closes, and I was disappointed but not surprised to hear that it goes to the landfill for the most part.
Though, as the article states, the theater community will not stop climate change or deforestation on our own, but everything counts. And it’s good to hear that others in the community are looking for and finding viable creative solutions. The most interesting being the example of Peter and the Starcatcher. Oftentimes I feel that reuse, recycling, thrifting, and other things of that nature are associated with less professional looking results, but that clearly doesn’t have to be the case.
There are so many things that need fixing in the world, and the combination of those things can be very overwhelming. But if we choose to tackle one issue at a time, or to make baby steps toward solving a problem, we will be moving forward. It’s not about stopping climate change over-night, the first step is moving toward not perpetuating the problem.
One thing I’m noticing in this article is that the most notable ways that scenery is being made more environmentally friendly comes from the initial design. The production of The Little Mermaid described in this article sounds like a really interesting way to reuse materials, but it is at the core of the designer’s vision. Similarly, stock doesn’t lend itself to all designs, so if a theater decides to maximize stock use, designers will have to work within a world that lends itself to stock. That isn’t to say these would be a bad thing, but I think it is important to remember that we can’t get something for nothing. I think when it comes to the environment, people want to reduce their environmental impact without substantially changing their way of life, but our way of life is environmentally unsustainable. When it comes to making theater more environmentally sustainable, we have to be willing to allow our process, scope, or both to change if we really want to reduce our waste.
Every industry in the world has the ability to start implementing green practices, thus lightening their load on the environment as a whole. One of the benefits of theatre is that with so many skill sets and departments, there are numerous ways this can be done. As the article explains, there are new energy efficient versions of equipment being created to help with energy consumption from things like lighting fixtures. There are also newer efforts to recycle construction materials, namely wood, and organizations such as the Forest Stewardship Council that can ensure their products have less of an environmental impact. I admire the recent use of recycled materials in scenic and costume designs. This is a great way to keep garbage out of landfills, make a statement on the consumption of materials by society, and add an interesting flair to designs overall. I particularly think the usage of these materials in the Little Mermaid is clever, as the ocean is one of the most polluted natural bodies on the planet. The more we do to combat environmental destruction, the better our Earth will become over time.
I think the way in which companies choose to produce or manufacture their pieces says a lot about who they are as a company. With hurricanes being very frequent and dangerous, many shows and even theaters had to shut down due to the damage that these natural disasters have cause. Theater is meant to enlighten moments like these but when their resources are taken there isn’t much they are left with either. Many theater companies, as action to save the planet, have started using eco-friendly materials. With these materials comes more work because recycled products are not as easy manipulate. The properties of the product are going to be different. Theaters are starting to be more and more considerate of the planet by taking the environment into account even though they are more time consuming. There are ways to incorporate eco friendly materials within the workplace and theaters are starting to recognize this. I think this is a big step for the theater community considering the fact that there is a lot of waste that is happening and can easily be fixed, but the first step is awareness.
I think the way in which companies choose to produce or manufacture their pieces says a lot about who they are as a company. With hurricanes being very frequent and dangerous, many shows and even theaters had to shut down due to the damage that these natural disasters have cause. Theater is meant to enlighten moments like these but when their resources are taken there isn’t much they are left with either. Many theater companies, as action to save the planet, have started using eco-friendly materials. With these materials comes more work because recycled products are not as easy manipulate. The properties of the product are going to be different. Theaters are starting to be more and more considerate of the planet by taking the environment into account even though they are more time consuming. There are ways to incorporate eco friendly materials within the workplace and theaters are starting to recognize this. I think this is a big step for the theater community considering the fact that there is a lot of waste that is happening and can easily be fixed, but the first step is awareness.
The thing that I love most about this article is that it not only identifies the issue, but provides solutions and resources to address the issue. I agree that while this is not the main thing, or even a large thing, affecting the environment globally, it is still something that can have a large effect on sustainability if it became common practice instead of an individual, theatre-by-theatre specific mission. Beginning by “buying green” materials and using items already on their way to being recycled is a fantastic step, but theatres will, understandably, consider how much it will cost them to have the materials shipped, processed (if differently than usual, it could also require more time), and stored/reused after the production ends. This is a big undertaking for a fairly established theatre, much less a smaller, less economically stable theatre. However, using it to fuel designs and create innovative types of theatrical productions, is really a wonderful start and what can get audiences excited about what they’re going to see and how it is impacting the environment. Finding ways to reduce the waste you’ll be creating overall (by beginning the process with sustainably-purchased material, by making sketches, groundplans, and even Stage Management call books, completely digital, etc.), reusing what you have already created (by renting pieces out to other theatres or venues after the show comes down), and recycling what you can from the sustainable materials you used, can greatly increase the chance that these best practices will become common practices used throughout the industry to make our work more environmentally friendly.
If using materials that would’ve ended up in the ocean to create the Little Mermaid isn’t a statement, I don’t know what is. I’m always of two minds of how to make theatre green. On the one hand we are getting more calls for spectacle, but on the other there’s a demand for being conscious in how we use our materials. Sometimes those two goals conflict with each other in a huge way. Using materials in the way that the Little Mermaid production did perhaps finds a way to reconcile the two in that the advertising can include an “eco-friendly” push to draw audiences, but there has to be more. I also believe just thinking about what materials we are using and changing them to be greener is narrow minded. How can we start to incorporate media more fully to fill the stage or change what we have into something else?
Environmental sustainability in the arts is something that I’ve grappled with in my mind for a while, both in my own work and in others’. There is a certain magic about making art that is singular and ephemeral, and the world of theater is so unique in its inability to be preserved. However, the cost of making something new and original doesn’t have to come at the cost of new materials, nor do efforts to recycle necessarily inhibit creativity. This article points out many ways in which the theater community can make small changes that come at no cost to the artists, including purchasing from organizations who reclaim and resell raw materials, sketching designs digitally rather than on paper, and planning storage methods to minimize what reusable aspects will end up in landfills. From my experience, small scale theater already finds more eco-friendly ways of using materials in order to be economical. I hate to centralize trends and importance in theater around Broadway, but I think that if more major companies and theaters took the initiative to be more eco-friendly, it would create an effective and necessary change to the industry.
Theatre needs to become more environmentally friendly overall, especially when it comes to energy consumption. Sound and especially lights are guilty of this. Lighting is difficult due to the fact that incandescent lights are not very environmentally friendly, however, Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) are anything but cheap. Economically, standard incandescent fixtures make much more sense. However, advances have been made in the field of LED technology which makes them more economically efficient than they have been in the past. However, more steps still need to be taken in order to make them viable by themselves. As well as the fact that they produce different types of light. Incandescent fixtures are often warmer, and must use gels (which themselves are not very economically friendly) to correct and change color, while LEDs are able to do it with signal instead, and not a separate piece of plastic.
Going green is something that we talk about a lot in the School of Drama but it has proven very hard to implement and maintain. We used to have green captains for shows (I'm not sure if this is a still a thing or not), but I'm not sure how much of an impact they actually have. A minor thing that I think would be an effective way to make change from an SM end would be to eliminate physical callboards. Since we have the website it seems silly that everyday we print out a daily call that no one is even going to read anyway. I know that on a personal level I've tried to be more aware of the amount of trash I produce, and I've tried to make small personal changes that make a difference. Unfortunately the reality is that until major corporations and companies also decide to make changes the positive effects will be minimal.
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