Raising the Curtain on Climate Action

When asked what appealed to her about acting onstage, the late, great Dame Maggie Smith once said, “I like the ephemeral thing about theater, every performance is like a ghost — it’s there, and then it’s gone.”

It’s a sentiment that’s been echoed by theater practitioners of all ages, including myself. In a time when nearly all new content is immediately uploaded to the digital archive, there’s something extraordinary about gathering together to witness a performance meant to disappear into the ether. However, for those of us with an eye on sustainability, the traditional “build it up, tear it down” production mindset raises some immediate red flags.

Take Some Hero, a theater piece written and performed by Barnard College students in 2016. Led by Professor Sandra Goldmark, an educator and theater designer whose work focuses on the circular economy and interdisciplinary climate strategies, Barnard commissioned a study from innovative energy solutions company Gotham 360 to better understand the greenhouse gas emissions of various production design methods they were considering. By using all new materials for the show’s props, costumes, and set, the production would have had a carbon footprint of 9.90 MT eCO₂ — the same amount of CO₂ emissions produced by an average home in a year. 

And that’s for a smaller, academic production. When it comes to big-budget Broadway musicals, the environmental impact can be mind-boggling. Luckily, over the past few years, groups across the theater world have stepped up, committed to making wide-scale change and cleaning up the industry’s act. 

One of the largest of these is the Broadway Green Alliance, originally started in 2008 as an ad hoc committee of The Broadway League, the field’s national trade association.

“The BGA came about because a town hall was called at the Gershwin Theatre [in NYC], where Wicked plays,” says Molly Braverman, BGA’s director and a former Broadway stage manager. “A lot of different folks in the community were doing incredible sustainability work… This was an opportunity for folks to come together and share what they were doing, and highlight the challenges and the progress.”

Over time, the offerings of the BGA expanded. For example, I first encountered the group through their Binder Project — a sprawling effort that has kept over 10,000 script binders out of landfills since 2008. Shows are invited to borrow binders from the BGA at the beginning of rehearsals, and return them once they’re done, all free of charge.

But it’s BGA’s signature Green Captain program that continues to have the largest impact, with 100% participation across all Broadway shows, as well as many touring, Off-Broadway, and regional college productions. At a given production’s first rehearsal, an individual volunteers for the Green Captain role, taking on the responsibility for guiding the company towards more environmentally-friendly practices. 

Such practices may vary widely from one show to another, explains Braverman. “The needs of a Wicked and an Our Town are going to be very different… But also, it’s up to the Green Captains to decide, ‘Where do we want to start? Is my passion composting? Is my passion renewable energy? Is my passion pollution reduction?’”

Throughout the process, the BGA supports Green Captains with toolkits and custom guides, as well as “a slew of free services and opportunities” to help individually support each show, and each Captain’s goals. To prevent Captains from getting overwhelmed with the scale of the problem, the BGA encourages productions to start with one, easily-accomplishable goal — advice Braverman says applies to any industry. “Pick the easiest thing. So much of what stops us is the inertia [of not knowing where to start]. Pick one thing that excites you, that you can check off the list in a day, that’s not going to cost money — and might even save us money!”

This last point can be a major asset in helping theater producers buy into a sustainable vision for a show, says Edward T. Morris, a set and projection designer who has worked in theaters across the country. Inspired in part by the work of the BGA, Morris partnered with fellow designers Sandra Goldmark (of Barnard College), Michael Banta, and Lauren Gaston to highlight the synergies between the economic and the environmental, producing The Sustainable Production Toolkit — a free, 100-page packet of resources covering all areas of theater design.

“One of the main things I ask a theater when I get a contract,” he says, “is ‘What did you get too much of last year and not use? What do you already have in your inventory?’”

For example, when Morris was hired to design the set for Passion Play at the Atlantic Acting School, the organization had recently invested in a new triscuit (a type of wooden panel used in building stage platforms) deck system, which it had not yet assembled. Morris convinced the school to let him borrow the unfinished wood to use in the set: “And so, we had a whole super sustainable show. It was all new plywood, but it was purchased by the theater for a different reason, and was going to have a different use after the production.”

The savings resulting from sustainable construction can even lead theaters to invest in other green practices, like paying a costumer for an extra week of work to responsibly sort unused fabric scraps, instead of tossing them all in the trash. In an industry composed of freelance workers, extended contracts go a long way toward preventing burnout and maintaining a strong creative workforce.

This idea of “social sustainability” is the third fundamental pillar of the Toolkit, equal to environmental and economic sustainability. Luckily, says Morris, theaters are already making efforts to better support the people they rely on, both as workers and as individuals. “A lot of theaters have added equity, diversity, and anti-racism language to their missions. In the toolkit, we help connect the dots between how working more sustainably can be a way to support that exact mission.”

To some, though, it’s going to take more than changing mission statements for the industry to confront the underlying causes of the climate crisis. Founded in 2018 by artists Annalisa Dias, Anna Lathrop, Tara Moses (Seminole/Mvskoke), and Ronee Penoi (Laguna Pueblo/Cherokee), Groundwater Arts is an organization that seeks to “braid together new ideas, living knowledge, and immediate strategies to bring the arts and culture field to the decolonized and climate-just future faster.” 

Speaking over Zoom, Moses told me, “The climate crisis didn’t exist until colonization did. In the couple hundred years, when a small section of the planet decided to colonize everybody else, is when all this began to happen.” Now, the group seeks to build connections between decolonization, the racial justice movement, and the environmental justice movement.

Over time, and in conversation with artists across the country, they came up with six principles for a Green New Theatre: Community Accountability, Publicly Transparent Budgeting, Decolonized Leadership Practices, Sustainable Resources, Right Relationship to Land & History, and Immediate Divestment From Fossil Fuel Interests & Sponsorships.

During the Pandemic, working with partners such as the Theatre Communications Group, they organized a series of Zoom calls around these principals — reaching over 20,000 people in the process. 

While the members of Groundwater Arts recognize it’s not possible to create change without buy-in from those in authority they encourage people to figure out what they are able to do.  (When asked what advice they had for individuals looking to make change when they don’t have institutional power, Moses’s advice was “Sometimes you just need an exit strategy, and go work with people who are like-minded and [working towards solutions]”),

“What’s your sphere of influence?” Dias asks. “What can you start to advocate for? How do you build power with other people who are like-minded?”

As in any industry, overcoming the inertia of how things have always been done can be challenging. Moreover, shrinking audience sizes and tighter post-Pandemic budgets have made many producers hesitant to stray from the “tried-and-true” methods they’ve relied on in the past. Still, Molly Braverman of the Broadway Green Alliance charges us to push on anyways. “Theater is such a hopeful industry. We are all so good at lifting each other up, and applauding at the end of the show. Climate change is terrifying … but the solutions are here. The hope is here. Start somewhere.”