7. Rethink design and production practices.

A sustainable approach to production stems from a department’s commitment to shared values. Decisions made about the artistic content as well as those made about the processes by directors, designers, and the marketing team should be informed by a shared set of sustainability goals. “[b]eing ‘ecological’ means integrating an awareness that no decision stands on its own: every design choice is intertwined with social, environmental, economic and political consequences that are far reaching and capable of having long-term effects and, ultimately, benefits.” Clear sustainability commitments ease transparent decision making about the shift away from a production model rooted in a culture of extraction (which typically includes exhausting labour expectations). This is why Garrett frames the evolution of theatrical production’s intersection with environmentally sustainable priorities from “the practical approach of improving conventional technical production materials and methods to examining theatre’s role in the creation of a sustainable society” as “an ethical turn.”^[1] Productions are an opportunity to demonstrate how “[b]eing ‘ecological’ means integrating an awareness that no decision stands on its own: every design choice is intertwined with social, environmental, economic and political consequences that are far reaching and capable of having long-term effects and, ultimately, benefits.”^[2]

Resources for production, buildings, and operations are plentiful; the UK’s Theatre Green Book, Canadian Green Alliance’s Sustainable Theatre Guidebook (available with free membership to CGA), and this Sustainable Production Toolkit produced by Michael Banta, Lauren Gaston, Sandra Goldmark, and Edward T. Morris through a collaboration with Barnard College are excellent guides. We strongly encourage you to follow the developments of Old Dogs New Tricks, PACT’s initiative on sustainable design practices for additional examples of Canadian companies undergoing this process.