Opening night at the theater and the stage is awash with color and spectacle, an awe-inspiring display of set and costume extravagance. Fast-forward eighteen months: this wondrous design has transformed itself into a mountainous ruin, oozing from a skip deep in the bowels of the building. These contemporary “theater ruins’” begin relatively harmlessly, hidden behind dusty staircases and at the back of storage units, crowding corridors and littering dressing rooms. But sooner or later, what doesn’t make it into the recycle bin is cast off to the land of “away,” where skips overflow into leaching landfills, and, inevitably, into our fragile ecosystems. It is here that we encounter the unsettling reality that our arts practices have consequences.