EDINBURGH FRINGE: Climate Storytelling for Theatre at the Lyceum Studio*****
While thousands of people sit sweating on buses stuck in traffic jams, quaff pints of beer in plastic glasses or down another burger, a group of theatre professionals this week got together to discuss how theatre in general can be sustainable in our changing world. For the climate crisis isn’t just something that’s a myth or happening to someone else. It’s here.
Climate Storytelling for Theatre was an open forum for theatregoers and theatre professionals working to get the theatre industry and its audiences address the climate crisis.
It was heart-warming to see so many feeling so passionate and to know that organisations are indeed in place to help our ailing planet. People like Amber Massie-Blomfield, founder of Fern Culture, a UK-based arts enterprise that supports climate-focussed theatre and helps the creative community act on the climate crisis, who co-hosted the event with director and dramaturg Guy Jones; Pentabus which is studying the lack of professional theatre in rural communities; Finlay Carroll of Pollinate, who combines musical theatre with climate change, and Relish Theatre, whose Fringe production Acid’s Reign, about drag artists talking about the climate, is getting rave reviews. Incidentally, there’s a drag queen in America called Pattie Gonia who blends performance art with climate activism and has raised millions for climate causes, so they’re not all banner waving protesters!
The trouble with climate change is that people don’t want to know, and as the theatre is somewhere they go to be entertained, they are not going to be best pleased to find productions telling them to stop using plastic or taking a five second shower. But that wasn’t what this forum was about.
Sometimes climate activists can be a bit preachy, but those at the forum didn’t want people being judged. They want things that look for answers not problems. On the subject of individual carbon footprint they say people are made to feel guilty but we are trapped in a system which is not being made climate friendly by people who could choose to make it so. Climate is in every part of our lives so we need to make it OK for people to care about it.
Suggestions included getting involved as a community; after show discussions, workshops and asking the public to come up with ideas of what they’d like to see. Artists could look at how they can change the buildings they are working in, producers could normalise a sustainability rider, and theatre could respond to climate productions. They are not, said one. It’s not a sexy ticket! Someone needs to write a big show so that it normalises the climate; maybe a series like EastEnders could have a sustainability storyline. People will not listen, they said, so we need to find a way to get into people’s hearts and homes.
They did have one request – they urged everyone to demand the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society stop the use of plastic glasses!
It is encouraging to see people like those at the forum with so many ideas, I worry that it just may be too late.
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