coming back at life

It’s been three months since I had major surgery to remove half of the lymph nodes in my abdomen (about twenty) to clear out the final vestiges of my cancer — a thing that no longer lurks within me, but has forever changed me physically, emotionally, and psychologically. Some for the better, some for the worse.

I’m back in my life now, and I’ve been thinking a lot about ecoTheater and how it might come back, how it might fit itself into the new life I’m trying to forge for myself. Many times over the last several months I’ve thought about writing a post about this or that, and aside from a couple that I couldn’t let lie (such as the passing of Rosemary Ingham), I just couldn’t figure out what to write. Then the stories, the news, the ideas kept piling up, and I couldn’t figure out how to get myself back into the room of green theater — the door to which I like to think I helped pry open a bit. And then, the other day I read this:

White Way Gets ‘Green’ Theater

Henry Miller’s Theater, the first newly built Broadway house in more than 20 years — and the first so-called green theater on the Great White Way — has completed major construction and is set to open in September with Roundabout Theater Company’s revival of the musical “Bye Bye Birdie.”

Now, this was not exactly news to me. I’d heard about this project last year, and probably wrote about it on ecoTheater at the time. But it answered the question of ecoTheater for me. This green theater movement has moved beyond me — it’s moved into a realm of theater business that I think is fundamentally flawed, for I do not believe there can be such a thing as a “green” theater on Broadway. Not the Broadway that exists now. No way. You can use all the recycled materials and nifty LED lobby lighting you want, but it won’t change the underlying mode of production (I mean, seriously, Bye Bye Birdie?? As a friend noted on Facebook, reviving a fifty year old musical does not count as recycling). That is what needs to be fixed. Not just because it’s environmentally unsustainable, but rather because it is also financially unsound, utterly lacking in community interaction, culturally numb, and creatively depraved.

Whoa, Mike — them’s fightin’ words, you say? Well, maybe so. And believe me, I recognize that we live in an imperfect world, and the steps that Roundabout has taken are good ones. It’s better than doing nothing, that’s for sure. But I don’t think I can continue to expand my greenList by adding Roundabout’s name, or other similar organizations that meet one very narrow definition of eco-responsible theater. You simply cannot put Mo’olelo and Roundabout in the same basket. It doesn’t work, because one company is operating on a much smaller but infinitely broader scale, while the other is a borderline case of greenwashing.

The scope of ecoTheater was always meant to be wide and inclusive. But now, I must focus my energy more directly on what I think matters — what I think works. I believe my time will be better spent on my own efforts here in the little old Midwest, and leaving the up to the minute reportage of the major happenings in the “movement” to others. As I let ecoTheater continue to rust, I will instead be working on these projects…

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Wisconsin Story Project

As some of you may recall, I started on the path to putting my creativity where my mouth is with the Cancer Stories Project — a connection between my life with cancer and my passion for creating a better model of theater production. Eventually CSP morphed into something much bigger that my co-founders and I have dubbed Wisconsin Story Project. It is a company that aims to follow the path of “solving for pattern,” a Wendell Berry idea that I first wrote about here on ecoTheater many moons ago when describing Mo’olelo in California. WSP hopes to solve for pattern because it is about more than just creating green theater, it’s about creating theater in a way that addresses all of the pressing issues and concerns of our community. It’s about connecting on a local level. And I’d like to think it is a company that will someday be worthy of someone’s greenList somewhere.

Madison Arts Production Cooperative

Recently, a very sad but telling thing happened here in Madison, Wisconsin: the forty year old LORT theater, Madison Repertory Theatre, closed it’s doors for good, laying off it’s entire staff and leaving truckloads of equipment and theatrical inventory in a handful of locations throughout town. When the company I work for, Children’s Theater of Madison, got wind of the impending auction and the apparent failure of the hired auctioneer to understand the value of the Rep’s stock, we set to work on a proposal to raise funds to keep the equipment and inventory in Madison in a way that would continue to make it available to arts organizations in the area.

One day my boss, Producing Artistic Director Roseann Sheridan, called me and said, “Remember when we were talking about what might happen to the Rep’s shop and you said you thought a co-op facility would be great? Can you write that idea up in a proposal and have it for me tomorrow morning?”

I took a deep breath, and started writing. I called my idea the Madison Arts Production Cooperative. The proposal sounded good to both the sellers (Madison Rep) and the people who could make it happen financially. Thanks to a generous (anonymous) donation, we were able to purchase the entire production inventory of the decades-old company, keeping it together, and giving us the opportunity to make it all available to the Madison arts community in a way that it has never been before.

The (Book) Project

Writing a book is not easy. Selling a book is even more difficult. I know this from experience. But that has not yet deterred me from my plans to write (or co-write) the next book about green theater. I have spoken to several people about this project, and soon I hope to have a more complete understanding of how this project may take shape. It is certainly a topic that will bring me back to ecoTheater to share news.

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I’ll also continue to write on the subject of green theater for print publications whenever I can. I recently published articles on the subject in Theatre Bay Area and DramaBiz. And I will probably poke my head back in the ecoTheater door from time to time to rant or point out something I find particularly interesting to the topic.

Later this month, I will be attending the University of Oregon’s Ecodrama Festival and Symposium (at least the first weekend), and will write about the event for Dramatics. Ecodrama is hosted by Theresa May, a hero of green theater that I have had the privelige of interviewing for ecoTheater before, and co-author of Greening Up Our Houses.

And staying up to date on the green theater movement won’t be hard, as I’m sure most of you know by now. Since ecoTheater first showed up on the world wide web nearly three years ago, a lot has happened — and I was fortunate to have a hand in some of it. The best resources for staying up to date, and learning more about greening the theater are:

The Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts

The Green Theater Initiative

The Ashden Directory

And check out the ecoLinks over on the right hand side of this page too.

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Oh, and one last thing…

Thanks to all of you who have supported me and ecoTheater over the last few years — especially in my most difficult times. Your kind words were always sincere, heartfelt, and more appreciated than you can ever know or understand.

Thank you to Ian Garrett, Gideon Banner, Robert Butler, Kellie Gutman, Seema Sueko, Scott Walters, Michael Casselli (who helped provide ecoTheater with its most popular day ever!) and so many more of you for continually encouraging the debate and information I tried to provide on ecoTheater. With folks like you out there, hope remains.

Green Touring

a note

First a note on my absence from ecoTheater for the past month: I had no idea how crazy this summer was going to be. Between my work at CTM and our Summer Drama School, purchasing a new home in Madison (it’s a tiny 860 square feet, so you can be assured that my wife and I are dedicated to sustainability), and trying to stay on top of various other writing (and some non-writing) projects, I’ve simply been swamped…

So much has happened in the last month that concerns ecoTheater too! Soon I hope to have a q & a with Scott Georgeson (a participant at NATEAC’s green panel and theater designer), a how-to on scenery, and other good stuff.

My “opinion” piece on green theater will appear in the September pages of American Theatre (a surreal experience for me, I admit), and I’m working on another piece that will focus on Gideon Banner and his Green Theater Inititive (GTI) for Stage Directions (if you’re reading Gideon, I promise I’ll be in touch soon!).

Okay, one more thing, then I’ll get to the real post: The Ashden Directory has written up something very nice about ecoTheater (and me), and I’m flattered to say the least. Thanks Kellie and Robert.

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the real post

While revising my essay for American Theatre recently their were lots of ideas tossed around about what to include and what to omit. In the end, we opted for less examples of ecoTheater champions so that I could focus on getting the idea of sustainable theater across to readers (I hope). One of the things that ended up never making it in was the Touring Green Initiative (TGI) of Clark Transfer, the transportation company that specializes in the entertainment industry — in other words, a major player in the game that is moving sets, lights, and all other show-related equipment and paraphernalia from town to town, country to country, on tours of all kinds.

With TGI, Clark Transfer has set up a way for its customers to offset the greenhouse gases emitted during touring. In partnership with NativeEnergy, Clarkoffers tours the ability to offset emissions resulting from transportation for $0.015 per mile. Clark states on their web site that the charge for offsetting appears seperately on the final bill and is remitted in full to NativeEnergy, which invests the funds “in a blend of projects to reduce both current and future emissions” that include new wind turbine construction, methane digesters, and gas-capture projects.

According to Clark, the projects are “intended to more than offset current year emissions over a multi-year period and be better than ‘carbon-netural.’” They claim that the combination of projects being funded by TGI is estimated to offset 64% of current year emissions, 95% over ten years, and well beyond 100% over twenty years.

What might be the most encouraging thing about this story is the long list of companies and shows that have participated in Clark’s program, including American Ballet Theater, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, The New York Philharmonic, Roundabout Theatre Company (tours of Les Liaisons Dangereuses and Twelve Angry Men), [title of show], The Lion King, Spamalot, Mamma Mia, among others.

For more information on this program, please visit Clark Transfer’s web site.

GTI Reports on Broadway Event

In a recently posted article on the Green Theater Initiative (GTI) web site, Michael Crowley reports on the event sponsored by Wicked producer David Stone entitled “It’s Easy Being Green.”

The keynote speaker at the event was Allen Hershkowitz, a true force in the environmental movement.

Some of the highlights from Crowley’s report:

• “Hershkowitz explained that the theatre community ‘needs to mimic the biological process in [our] approach to theatre.’”

• “Hershkowitz noted that we must review the supply chain for any of our company’s procurement or operations decisions and analyze how the choices we make can affect our production’s overall carbon footprint. By purchasing green versions of the products required for theatrical production, we can send a collective signal to the marketplace that Broadway has joined in fighting our global crisis.”

• “Mark Overton, Wicked’s Head Carpenter, discussed how the crew has been reclaiming about 28 lamps a month that would otherwise head to the landfill. He also noted that the design team has switch to LED lights where possible. The carpentry team has switched to using recycled oils, low-VOC paints, and natural cleaning products.”

• “Charlotte St. Martin, Executive Director of the Broadway League, announced that Nina Lannan, the Board Chair for the League, is developing an ad hoc committee to disseminate information and best practices for Broadway to go green. The committee will include producers, general managers, and theatrical designers. Melissa Wright of the Mayor’s Office announced that the city was in the process of putting together carbon inventories and energy analysis of the Broadway community.”

The article goes on to explain how many different areas of Broadway theatrical productions, from advertising to set builders are exploring ways to go green, as they dip their toes in the water of sustainability. It’s really quite encouraging to see this kind of effort on the part of Broadway — undoubtedly the leader in unsustainbility simply by virtue of its scope.