Climate Action

TCG has included climate change in our Conference and other event programming for many years. Most recently, at our last in-person National Conference in Miami before the world was plunged into a pandemic, we worked with a Conference Committee on Climate to curate a robust track of climate action programming and featured a renowned climate artist-activist, Xavier Cortada, as our first Conference Artist in Residence. 

Since then, TCG has undergone a strategic planning process and emerged with a new mission: to lead for a just and thriving theatre ecology. With the toll our field has taken from a pandemic directly caused and worsened by extractive economies and human disregard for animal habitats, and with theatres everywhere sustaining increased damage and destruction from severe weather events, even as many are contending with unprecedented fiscal challenges – it is clear that we must reinforce our commitment to climate action and provide more resources for the field on environmental justice and sustainable practices of producing our art form. The theatre field cannot thrive on a finite planet, and theatre people cannot find justice with the persistence of environmental racism as a pillar of white supremacy. What’s more, there are imaginative opportunities that abound in climate justice-driven models of regenerative practices, decolonized movement-building, and renewable resources. TCG will explore these opportunities in partnership with organizations like Groundwater Arts and Broadway Green Alliance, who provide valuable knowledge and host discussions with theatre-makers everywhere on these very ideas, and we are committed to centering the leadership of Black and indigenous activists and thought leaders in this exploration. 

Join us on Earth Day, April 22, 2021 for our inaugural Summit on Climate Action and Environmental Justice, and stay tuned for further information and offerings from TCG as we work toward bringing the field together around these critical issues.

Read more about TCG's upcoming Summit on Climate Action and Environmental Justice, here.

Videos

Ripple Effect: A Primer on Presenting, Producing, and Creating Performance in the Era of Climate Change
Confronting climate change through theater and in our theaters requires all hands on deck. In this session at the 2019 Miami Conference, our Conference Committee on Climate introduced the field to producers and artmakers who are revolutionizing the way the international performing arts community thinks, talks, and acts on climate justice, from ecological production practices to cli-fi playwriting. Attendees learned about performances to program into their next season, tools to shift the culture of their theater, ways to prepare for climate disasters, and how to include hope and even humor as we all work together to face the greatest challenge of our time.

From Aesthetics To Action: Green Theatre Now—25th Annual TCG Conference—Cleveland, OH
George Bartenieff, Karen Malpede, MFA, and Alison Carey

Refugee Nation: Activating Art from a Borderless Perspective
This session is for those who call more than one nation home or have had to leave a country or culture behind to assimilate into the mainstream. This includes transnational, international, and nation-less identities. Specifically artists or administrators who are themselves, working with, or want to work with immigrant, refugee, migrant, or indigenous communities. This session will be interactive and will include a short performance, a variation on cultural mapping, a quick slide show, writing exercise, and group story sharing. Participants will have the opportunity to learn and practice TeAda’s methodology within the session. The artists will also be sharing stories from their latest work in development, Masters of the Currents, a project on the experiences of recent environmental refugees from Pacific Islands of Micronesia.

Led by Leilani Chan and Ova Saopeng the creators of Refugee Nation, the 1st nationally touring play about the Lao American experience and founding members of L.A. based TeAda Productions. With over a decade of doing this work, Leilani & Ova have developed strategies for working with refugee and immigrant communities. They will share the TeAda Methodology the transformative nature of theatre to unite people from all types of backgrounds, ethnicities.