Global Networked Ecoscenography: Creating Sustainable Worlds for Theatre Through International Collaboration
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Garrett, Ian
Beer, Tanja
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Historian Yuval Harari refers to civilization as a fiction we agree to. Conversely, we can look at “fiction,” “narrative” or even performance” as an effort to (re)create and redesign civilization. In Performance and Ecology: What can Theatre Do? Carl Lavery highlights the ecological potential in the work of Karen Christopher and Sophie Grodin, which requires artists to be open to each other and more-than-human materials. We attempt to extend this approach through a Global Networked Learning initiative between York University (Canada), Griffith University (Australia) and Queensland University of Technology (Australia) which aims to train emerging ecoscenographers to explore more-than-human collaborations across vast distances. This visual essay documents the process and outcome of the design student responses to the plays of the 2021 Climate Change Theatre Action (CCTA) project, in partnership with a professional global EcoDesign Charrette focused on the 50 plays of the CCTA. The remote studio setting is structured as a series of collaborative workshops on EcoScenography, which invite the students to create seed design concept for exhibition at the World Stage Design Festival in Calgary in August 2022. As ecoscenographers, we are deeply committed to reducing the environmental harm of our field, both in academic and professional settings, including the creation of infrastructure to leverage the benefits of international cooperation without the significant impacts of travel. This is true both as an accessible opportunity for students and as an example to the global performance field to consider distance collaboration, particularly as it connects to touring and arts related travel. These are significant considerations regarding ecological impacts, costs and accessibility, as well as the more immediate considerations of the COVID-19 pandemic where Canada’s borders are limited to essential travel and Australia is not allowing travel in or out of the country while day-to-day life has returned to an almost pre-pandemic mode of social interaction. This course is an attempt to overcome these challenges to share our climate of attention, first with one another and then with the global design community.
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Critical Stages
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26
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© 2022 Tessa Rixon, Ian Garrett, Tanja Beer. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
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Design
Performing arts
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Rixon, T; Garrett, I; Beer, T, Global Networked Ecoscenography: Creating Sustainable worlds for Theatre Through International Collaboration, Critical Stages, 2022, (26)