et cetera...: For anyone who has ever worked in live theatre, you understand the massive amount of time, energy, and materials required to put up a single show. The costumes, lighting, scenery, marketing materials, and travel considerations for audience after audience each night add up quickly and have a shockingly negative impact on the environment.
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More recently, I've been thinking about the impact I am having on the environment. I am buying more second-hand, I try to use thrifted clothing for fabric instead of buying a roll if I can, and am eating less beef. Every so often I think about how wasteful theater design must be, but rarely do I have the time to dwell on it. Many of the sets, materials, and costumes are rather particular, and the technology uses a ton of energy I'm sure. I really do hope that anything that can possibly be salvaged is donated to shops to be used as rental for regional shows, and any small pieces of wood are composted. It is nice to hear that this is something that has been thought about by large organizations like the National Theater, and I see some effects taking place in Broadway theaters, like encouraging the purchase of souvenir cups. Absolutely no shade to ETC, but giving people arts and crafts ideas to make out of parts does not feel like they are living up to what the National Theater and the BGA is doing, but it's a nice gesture.
Theatre is inherently an industry that is made up of other industries. Our set crew are essentially carpenters, our costume designers are clothing makers, our sound designers are musicians and so on. Unfortunately for most technical aspects of a production, these other industries will have to improve too. There has to be more carbon neutral ways for costumes designers to create clothing and sound designers to run equipment. These problems are great to think about in the theatre as likely our solutions will slightly differ from the native industry, but we will likely need them to move first so we can ‘riff’ off of it. I do think there is a lot that we can do now. For example, we can try to reuse lumbar whenever possible and try to ensure that less of our waste ends up in a landfill, but we will also have to wait for larger industries to make moves.
It has long since been known that theatre and film are two very wasteful industries. On the theatre side of things, as mentioned in the article, we utilize a lot of fresh material for every show. At the end of a show, we haul in a dumpster and throw away everything that we custom made mere weeks ago. Not to mention the electricity consumption. It is imperative that we work on finding better ways to go about what we do and see how we can reduce the toll we are taking on our poor, very mortal planet. It is nice to see that the National Theatre is making an effort to become carbon neutral – if such a major company is able to achieve this goal, it may prompt others to follow suit. Theatre makers are creative – we are constantly using our collective minds to find solutions to problems we face in a production. It is time to shift some of our attention to finding ways to make our industry more environmentally friendly. This article has a handful of excellent suggestions to begin the process, but with all of the other climate issues we are facing in the world, it is high time that we do our part to solve this global issue.
One thing that has always astounded me about theatre is the sheer amount of waste that comes out of every production. The first time I ever struck a show it was insane how little got reused. Before this article, I had never really considered the waste beyond scenic elements. The strides being made by the National Theatre are truly impressive and it's wonderful to see such a high profile organization making big steps towards not only the use of sustainable materials but operational sustainability. If I'm going to be honest, once I got to the stateside section I anticipated being disappointed in American systems for not doing enough and while it may not yet be widespread it looks like they're doing good. I had also never heard of the Broadway Green Alliance and now I know that a title I would like to hold one day is Green Captain of a theatre.
Okay, so I now have a lot of thoughts about this after working through David's green theatre project for TD3. While this is in no way trying to advocate against using greener practices in our industry, a lot of these efforts are more for show than actually impactful. In fact, there is so much more going into the environmental impact for certain materials than just end of life (EOL). For example, paper cups actually have a worse environmental impact than Styrofoam cups (https://recyclenation.com/2010/03/styrofoam-paper-cups/), which seems pretty counterintuitive. In scenery, while we do fill up dumpsters with wood, something that we often don't consider is that the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by the tree that wood came from counteracts the carbon used in production (although, to be fair, no carbon would have been produced if that tree wasn't cut down). In lighting, people often boast the use of LED lights for their efficiency, but many designers use then not for their energy rating but for their versatility. In fact, many designers still use incandescents because they preferred the warmer glow and dimming profile (though LEDs are getting there). Here, the environmental benefit was a side effect, not the reason.
Once again I do NOT want to shrug off efforts to improve our processes. There are a lot of great initiatives going on, for example the National Theatre's goal to go carbon neutral by 2050. That is a concrete goal that relies on everyone contributing to the cause. Reusing an ETC backplate for a paper towel holder? Not so much. Instead, I think we need to do a lot more research into this objective and how our entire process affects it, otherwise we run the risk of putting up a green façade without actually making a meaningful positive impact. For example, we can unscrew all the platforms we want, but that won't solve the fact that every other room in Purnell has a mini-fridge running 24/7 (dozens of which ran through the lockdown last spring). One thing we can start doing is instituting carbon budget lines to buy carbon offsets for all productions. I know that every little bit helps, but we need to be well informed about our choices and make sure they really have an impact.
I think theatre is a super wasteful industry and we should do anything possible to help it not be so. I do agree with posts above that we should be conscious of the choices we make because something we think we are doing is good but we are actually doing harm. I think this is a good step towards keeping companies accountable, not the people or the consumer. I wish our society started putting big companies like amazon or the lumber companies responsible for the environmental impact they are creating. I think that as a TD I should hold myself responsible and do the best I can to make the right choice when it comes to the decisions I am in charge of but the better thing I should do on top of that is to advocate for the higher ups within the company to make strides within the environment. I think that theatre and theatre companies can definitely cut down on the waste and the only way that can happen is to hold each other accountable and make sure we are making educated decisions.
First of all, I think it is great that people are even considering how to make theater more environmentally friendly and sustainable. It is extremely important that there is a very serious evaluation of how resources are being used for shows and theaters at large. I agree with Elliot’s comment that we need to not just be considering End of Life impact, but the entire process and consumption of materials as a whole. I am glad to see that the National Theater has set a very clear goal about being carbon neutral by 2050. This is the type of action it is going to take to make theater more sustainable. While small changes are certainly good, and any step in the right direction is better than nothing, theaters need to start looking at the whole of their organization and how it can be made more environmentally friendly in every aspect, not just reusing wood and switching to LED fixtures. While this is certainly important, it means nothing if other factors are not also considered. Perhaps give a drink discount if patrons bring their own reusable cup, or have a QR code to scan for a playbill instead of printing an absurd amount. I think it is very possible that the theater industry can become more sustainable, but it will be necessary to look at the whole, not just some parts.
Theater and entertainment have a large environmental impact: I think a lot of us are well aware of this, and the fact that we need to be actively doing something about this. Though, this article felt a little like a quick fix after the fact (for example, upcycling ETC products is great but does that have any impact on the energy we are using when using products in the first place?). Like others have talked about, The National Theater’s goal to be carbon-neutral by 2050 is a good, concrete goal in my mind. I do understand that some places simply don’t have the budget or resources for that, but I think that the industry as a whole needs to re-evaluate the entire production system to determine ways to reduce environmental impact. This holistic approach could uncover some great steps forward that even smaller theaters can adopt to reduce their impact on the environment.
I guess in the back of my mind, I always considered the detrimental impact that a big industry like theatre has on the environment, yet it now comes to light just how resource-consuming it is. I have always been one to reduce my carbon footprint, even if I am unconsciously doing it. Simple things like biking or eating less meat are or were part of my daily normal but I never stopped to weigh in that the craft I am going into, like many others in the entertainment industry, eat up the natural environment with no remorse or even pay back. If we think about the deforestation alone, that is mass amounts of a slow to return renewable resource being eaten up for set building, prop making, and many other things. What The National is doing to reduce their harmful impact is inspiring and I hope that many other theatres follow suit in the future.
Is it surprising to me that theatre has a detrimental impact on our environment? No. Is it sad? Obviously. Everything humans have done is somehow detrimental to the community and the earth. That’s why global warming is now becoming some sort of political issues despite it simply being science.
However, the big wigs of the theatre community need to start making these changes. These conversations are good to have, but seeing some actual change that has been approved by scientists and studies will be what will give me some peace of mind.
These concrete goals are good to have, though, but seeing the actions will be what will make me happy.
Throughout my years working in theater and in the city I have always been blown away by the amount of waste that gets produced by our industry. People will spend tens of thousands of dollars on scenery and other disposable things and after a show runs for a weekend or two everything goes straight to the trash. In my old school I would try to implement a recycling service for most of our used would but after wood has been painted and treated it cannot be recycled in a traditional manner. It really is tied to the nature of the work that we do and one way to look at it is the finite nature of the work is what gives it value. As an industry I feel like we have to start keeping sustainability and ecological justice in mind during the design phase and all other phases of producing work. One thing I want to explore as a Scenic designer is looking for sustainable secondhand mediums to design with that are created from used or waste material. I really hope that we can change the way that we work to keep in mind that we only have one planet and we must Do everything we can to protect it and keep it beautiful. I always thought that scenery was the only wasteful branch of production but this article really showed me how it’s all branches of production that need to deal with this including costumes.
I absolutely hated how much got thrown away from my high school productions. But even then, we were pretty diligent about taking apart and reusing all of our wood. Our costumes all got reused or we sent to another school who needed them. But this is more common in schools, where budgets are nonexistent and you rely on other schools for your materials. We share everything. I think this article brings up an important problem, but doesn’t necessarily offer any new solutions. (Bringing a reusable water bottle to rehearsal? Really? As if we don’t already do that?) The higher cost options it suggested still don’t seem to do much to solve the massive amount of waste left behind from every production, or the power consumption needed to put on one performance. Using recyclable materials is a start, but often we warp our materials to a point where they’re no longer able to be recycled. I’m harping on the article, but I also can’t think of other solutions. Hopefully, sooner rather than later, we’ll know what we can do to make big changes.
It is so easy in theatre to feel exempt from the fight against climate change because what we consume we do for “the sake of art.” I have definitely fallen victim to this mentality before, even very recently. So I am really thrilled that artists are starting to wake up and talk to each other about this issue in our industry.
Being ignorant as I am about set construction, lighting, and really almost all aspects of technical theatre, I am struggling to come up with or even evaluate different methods of making theatre more green. But what I do know is that theatre as a whole isn't really overflowing with cash. I wonder what kind of incentives it will take for theatres to go green, assuming it comes with an extra cost. Luckily LEDs proved to be extremely versatile in addition to saving energy. But recycled wood likely won't have as many benefits. So what will it take for theatres who may not have money to spare to start factoring the environment into their decision making process?
Figuring out what battles to fight with respect the environment is an ever-evolving interesting discussion that no one really knows the answer to. The article makes the point that it’s challenging to successfully mount any of these large scale eco projects at your facility. I would definitely appreciate it if CMU invested in water recycling infrastructure on the roofs of the various buildings because we have so many modern-looking flat-topped roofs. The article specifically made suggestions about what the scenic department can do to be better for the environment. The most efficient environmental-saving thing we can do is reusing. That is incredibly difficult because we’re trying to give technical direction and scenic a realistic expectation of what working in the professional world is like with single use scenery. That being said, just like anything else, the school has the opportunity to set the expectation of reusing stock scenery with the hopes that people leaving this program will continue to do that even once they leave.
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