Preface

The Environmental Stewardship in Theatre and Performance Education working group (Canadian Association of Theatre Research, 2021-2024) had a mission to re-imagine how we teach, document, and prepare students for sustainable practices in theatre and performance^[1]. Recognizing that funders increasingly require information on how arts projects and production companies address their carbon and ecological footprints, we identified the need for postsecondary educators to incorporate these important developments into our work, as we prepare our students to enter a field that is responding to the unfolding climate crisis.

In our first year, we identified resources for greening theatre and performance practices, and mapped broader epistemic shifts that reimagine performance makers as responsible environmental stewards. In our second year, we organized “Re-Imagining the Future: a teach-in on fostering Environmental Stewardship in Theatre and Performance Education,” a day of learning for CATR members, interested instructors, and production staff, with the support of a CATR grant. This event attracted more than 60 registrants across Canada, as well as through broader theatre and performance networks in the U.S. and Australia. It featured presentations by Tanya Kalmanovich, Ian Garrett and Julia McLellan, practitioners and educators deeply engaged in climate work. The event also featured five workshops led by working group members on ecologizing your syllabus. In May 2023, we shared a plenary session at the CATR conference in Halifax. Our goal was to make environmental stewardship and its attendant pedagogies and practices irresistible to CATR members who might not typically attend workshops or events centering ecological and climate themes. In our final year, we focused efforts on developing this resource guide to support curricular adjustments across theatre and performance training programs. While we found a wealth of resources documenting strategies–and sharing success stories–of increasing sustainability in professional practice, little research has been done to apply these insights to post-secondary education contexts, particularly in a systematic fashion. We hope this toolkit will contribute to supporting transformational change in the ways we work and produce theatre and performance in training institutions.