“Writing Plays That Are Climate Change”
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Nassim Winnie Balestrini
Abstract
Montreal-born playwright, translator, and climate change theater activist Chantal Bilodeau is currently based in New York City. As a co-founder of the biennial Climate Change Theatre Action (CCTA), which is a growing international initiative to foster climate change awareness through the performance of very short plays commissioned from playwrights in dozens of countries, she has been dividing her time between coordinating theater-based activism, publishing, and curating a blog series on HowlRound.com, and writing short plays as well as an eight-part series of full-length dramas. As she argues in her 2015 article “In Search of a New Aesthetic,” it is necessary “to move beyond writing plays about climate change to writing plays that are climate change – plays that embody, in form, content, and process, the essence of the issues we are facing. Plays where the concept of climate change is so integral to the work that the term doesn’t even need to be uttered. New problems cannot be solved with old solutions. A new consciousness requires new artistic constructs.”
On the eve of the CDE conference, Chantal Bilodeau spoke about her research-based creative process at a public event in downtown Graz. At the conference, she presented a keynote on how her work in climate change theater addresses crisis as an ongoing condition. This interview provides detailed insights into Bilodeau’s artistic concepts, theater practices, and climate change activism.
Works Cited
Baumbach, Sibylle. “The Fascination with Crisis and the Crisis of Perception in Contemporary British Drama.” Theatre (of) Crisis: Aesthetic Responses to a Cross-Sectional Condition. 28th Annual CDE Conference. Graz, 23 June 2019. Keynote.Search in Google Scholar
Bilodeau, Chantal. “In Search of a New Aesthetic.” HowlRound: Theatre Commons. 19 Apr. 2015. Web. 29 Dec. 2019. <https://howlround.com/search-new-aesthetic>. Search in Google Scholar
–-. Forward. The Arctic Cycle 2. Vancouver: Talon, 2017. Print.Search in Google Scholar
–-. Sila. The Arctic Cycle 1. Vancouver: Talon, 2015. Print.Search in Google Scholar
Pearl, Katie. “Appreciation.” Where Is the Hope? An Anthology of Short Climate Change Plays. Ed. Chantal Bilodeau. Toronto: Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts, 2018. 247–251. Print.Search in Google Scholar
Tannahill, Jordan. “Nocturne.” Where Is the Hope? An Anthology of Short Climate Change Plays. Ed. Chantal Bilodeau. Toronto: Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts, 2018. 281. Print.Search in Google Scholar
© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Acknowledgments
- Articles
- Theater of Crisis: Contemporary Aesthetic Responses to a Cross-Sectional Condition – An Introduction
- Tragedies of the Capitalocene
- “Writing Plays That Are Climate Change”
- The Fascination with Crisis and the Crisis of Perception in Contemporary British Drama
- Small Stories, Local Places: A Place-Oriented Approach to Rural Crises
- A Slow Unfolding “Fault Sequence”: Risk and Responsibility in Lucy Kirkwood’s The Children
- The Crisis of Becoming-Nature in Howard Barker’s Recent Dramas
- Looking at “Experiences on the Edge of the Edge”
- Radical Gesture and the Politics of Postdramatic Tragedy: Reza Abdoh’s The Law of Remains
- Fifteen-Minute Moments: Black Women’s Short Plays as a Political Aesthetic of Crisis
- The “Ordinary” Cruelty and the Theatre as Witness in Four South African Plays
- Reviews
- Marilena Zaroulia and Philip Hager, eds. Performances of Capitalism, Crises and Resistance: Inside/Outside Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2015, xiii + 265 pp., €103.99 (hardback), €83.29 (PDF ebook).
- Konstantinos Thomaidis. Theatre & Voice. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2017, xiii + 89 pp., £6.99 (paperback), £6.72 (PDF ebook). Lynne Kendrick. Theatre Aurality. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2017, xxviii + 164 pp., £89.99 (hardback), £71.50 (PDF ebook).
- Alyson Campbell and Stephen Farrier, eds. Queer Dramaturgies: International Perspectives on Where Performance Leads Queer. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2016, 353 pp., €85.59 (hardback), €48.14 (paperback), €35.69 (PDF ebook).
- Anne Etienne and Thierry Dubost, eds. Perspectives on Contemporary Irish Theatre: Populating the Stage. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, xv + 301 pp., €106.99 (hardback), €83.29 (PDF ebook).
- Eamonn Jordan and Eric Weitz, eds. The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Irish Theatre and Performance. London: Palgrave, 2018, xxxiii + 866 pp., €245.03 (hardback), €190.39 (PDF ebook).
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Acknowledgments
- Articles
- Theater of Crisis: Contemporary Aesthetic Responses to a Cross-Sectional Condition – An Introduction
- Tragedies of the Capitalocene
- “Writing Plays That Are Climate Change”
- The Fascination with Crisis and the Crisis of Perception in Contemporary British Drama
- Small Stories, Local Places: A Place-Oriented Approach to Rural Crises
- A Slow Unfolding “Fault Sequence”: Risk and Responsibility in Lucy Kirkwood’s The Children
- The Crisis of Becoming-Nature in Howard Barker’s Recent Dramas
- Looking at “Experiences on the Edge of the Edge”
- Radical Gesture and the Politics of Postdramatic Tragedy: Reza Abdoh’s The Law of Remains
- Fifteen-Minute Moments: Black Women’s Short Plays as a Political Aesthetic of Crisis
- The “Ordinary” Cruelty and the Theatre as Witness in Four South African Plays
- Reviews
- Marilena Zaroulia and Philip Hager, eds. Performances of Capitalism, Crises and Resistance: Inside/Outside Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2015, xiii + 265 pp., €103.99 (hardback), €83.29 (PDF ebook).
- Konstantinos Thomaidis. Theatre & Voice. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2017, xiii + 89 pp., £6.99 (paperback), £6.72 (PDF ebook). Lynne Kendrick. Theatre Aurality. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2017, xxviii + 164 pp., £89.99 (hardback), £71.50 (PDF ebook).
- Alyson Campbell and Stephen Farrier, eds. Queer Dramaturgies: International Perspectives on Where Performance Leads Queer. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2016, 353 pp., €85.59 (hardback), €48.14 (paperback), €35.69 (PDF ebook).
- Anne Etienne and Thierry Dubost, eds. Perspectives on Contemporary Irish Theatre: Populating the Stage. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, xv + 301 pp., €106.99 (hardback), €83.29 (PDF ebook).
- Eamonn Jordan and Eric Weitz, eds. The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Irish Theatre and Performance. London: Palgrave, 2018, xxxiii + 866 pp., €245.03 (hardback), €190.39 (PDF ebook).
