I am currently enrolled in a Production Management course where we have to create our own theatre company and then develop our season. So developing, developing, developing, thinking about the many shows I want to include in my season, thinking about the budget, about the set, costumes, props, staff, lights, and fog machines. In the beginning, I decided that I wanted my theatre space to mirror that of a theatre venue in cleveland, Cain Park. Cain Park’s main stage is a huge amphitheater which is a space I really really enjoy, but as I looked back at my mission statement, the description of my theatre, and the vision for Recess Theatre Company’s theatre space, I realized that I wasn’t in love with any of them, they had become stale and personally irrelevant. My idea didn’t fascinate me anymore and it wasn’t the type of theater I really would have wanted to create years down the road. So I began thinking again about what else was important to me in the world and how I could possibly incorporate that with my theater company. It struck me. I don’t remember how or why, but I shouldn’t have thought of it weeks ago. An sustainable theatre company. I realized that that was the kind of theater that I wanted, the one that would inspire me and challenge me. I thought the idea might be farfetched, so I started to do some research on it and I found so much information about green theatre projects and how to become a green theatre. One of the most interesting websites I found included this list about “50 Things You Can Do Towards Being a Green Theater”. Some of suggestions on the list were simple, like recycle bottles and cans, print on both sides of the paper, buy organic coffee for the lobby and so on and so forth. But some sounded more intricate like using soy ink when possible, installing light sensors, constructing the season around reusing the set, using non-toxic paint, and only using pump hairspray. A huge list of many options to start becoming more sustainable. They even had a Carbon Calculator to determine the carbon footprint of your own theatre company. I also found this Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts that totally amazed me. I never knew there were so many efforts out there working towards a more environmentally friendly way of producing art.
On EcoTheater’s website, it had a break down of each element of the world of theater starting with the building. It began stating that “the buildings that house the performing arts may be the most detrimental to the environment of all. According to the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), commercial buildings are responsible for 70% of the electricity load in the United States. Furthermore, the USGBC estimates that ‘if half of new commercial buildings were built to use 50% less energy, it would save over 6 million metric tons of CO2 annually for the life of the buildings—the equivalent of taking more than 1 million cars off the road every year.’” WOAH!!! This then raised the questions of how can we start to really spread the word and get this hypothesis about commercial buildings activated more worldwide? The article mentions later that a lot of these efforts towards sustainability are being put on hold because of the technology. How can we, the world, not be a detriment to our earth and begin trying to enforce these ecological ground-plans in our art? I’m beginning to understand that companies aiming towards becoming more sustainable have to go through a lot of trial and error in figuring out what is realistic and what is completely unfathomable. I’m not saying I want everyone and every theatre to drop everything and grab a flag to join the green revolution, but to start taking baby steps towards a better future: a future of our art and of our world.
