Fostering environmental stewardship
How do we foster environmental stewardship in theatre and performance training programs?
There already exist many fantastic resources on greening theatrical production[1] and pivoting performance pedagogy towards ecological concerns in the Canadian context and beyond.[2] Herein we consolidate this literature to identify seven key strategies for implementing environmental stewardship at a curricular level: articulate a departmental mission statement, conduct an environmental audit, build internal buy-in, connect with external environmental stewards, ecologize course syllabi, expand course offerings, and adjust departmental production practices. Drawing on three years of resource review and dialogue, we offer this guide to share good practices in the hope it will help to build capacity amongst theatre and performance educators, offer direction to move forward with pedagogical and curricular shifts, and troubleshoot through some of the implementation barriers that hinder transformation.
Key insights and strategies:
- Start with embedding sustainability in your department’s mission.
- Conduct an environmental audit and authorize a green committee.
- Build buy-in and sense of ownership of the project with colleagues.
- Connect to other initiatives on and off campus advancing sustainability, climate justice, decolonization.
- Ecologize your syllabi.
- Expand course offerings and community engagement opportunities.
- Rethink design and production practices.
- Scholarly examples include Tanja Beer’s Ecoscenography (2021) and Larry Fried and Teresa May’s Greening Up our Houses (1994); professional guides include the Theatre Green Book, Canadian Green Alliance’s Sustainable Theatre Guidebook (available with free membership to CGA), and the Sustainable Production Toolkit. Linda Hassall and Stephen Rowan’s chapter “Greening Theatre Landscapes: Developing Sustainable Practice Futures in Theatre Graduates,” in University Initiatives in Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation (Springer, 2019), 143-58 speaks to the university context in Australia. ↵
- See for example: Una Chaudhuri and Shonni Enelow’s Research Theatre, Climate Change, and the Ecocide Project (2014), Sheila Christie’s “Theatrical Calls to Climate Action: Excerpts of a Conversation” (2022), Stephani Etheridge Woodson and Tamara Underiner’s Theatre, Performance and Change (2018), David Fancy and Conrad Alexandrowicz’s Theatre Pedagogy in the Era of Climate Crisis (2021), Petra Kupper’s Ecosoma (2021), and Theresa May’s Salmon in Everything (2014). ↵