The Sustainable Production Toolkit: Sustainable Practices post-COVID

Our industry faces severe social and economic impacts of Covid-19. Theatre makers are also engaged in reckoning with systemic racism. Alongside the global pandemic and the legacy of white supremacy looms another destabilizing reality: climate change. These three crises are not a coincidence: they are deeply interconnected. Their confluence at this moment demands that we re-examine our “business as usual” and embrace new responsibilities — and opportunities — as we look forward.

The Sustainable Production Toolkit is a comprehensive guide, with concrete tools and best practices for prioritizing the intertwined needs for greater environmental, human, and financial sustainability in our industry. Modules include how to frame and facilitate these conversations with your colleagues; how to budget for reduced emissions from scenery, costumes and props; how to approach transitioning to LED lighting; air travel; and development opportunities.

Time: 7 p.m. EDT, Oct 12th, 2020

Price: FREE to members, $15 to non-members

Presenters: Sandra Goldmark is a set designer, teacher, and entrepreneur whose work focuses on circular economy solutions to overconsumption and climate change. She is a Professor and Director of Sustainability at Barnard College, and the author of the upcoming book Fixation: How to Have Stuff without Breaking the Planet.

Edward T. Morris is a set and projection designer and sustainability advocate. Along with Elizabeth Mak, Lauren Gaston, Sandra Goldmark and Michael Banta he co-authored the Sustainable Production Toolkit. He teaches design and dramaturgy at The New School and is a member of United Scenic Artists Local #829. He lectures on sustainable design and organizes panel discussions on many subjects for Wingspace Theatrical Design.

Lauren Gaston is a costume designer, illustrator, and entrepreneur. Her design work has been featured by The Juilliard School and most recently by Time Lapse Dance in NYC. Along with Michael Banta, Sandra Goldmark, Elizabeth Mak and Edward T. Morris she is a co-author of The Sustainable Production Toolkit. In exploring approaches to circular design and production, she has co-hosted panels on sustainability in theatre with fellow designer Megan Quarles at FABSCRAP and The Theatre Communications Group.  She is currently a member of The Creative Entrepreneur Project at The Actors Fund.

Michael Banta is Production Manager, Barnard College, Department of Theatre.

The UN has named this the Decade of Action, our last chance to create the transformation to a livable future. What does it mean to align our practices with a 1.5 degree Celsius global temperature rise?

This event focuses on the aesthetics of climate-friendly sustainable design in theatre, as a core design practice and as part of a larger equitable green recovery.

Panel members include Logan Raju Cracknell, Kendra Fanconi, Paul Fujimoto-Pihl, Lauren Gaston, Elia Kirby, Ken MacKenzie, and Edward T Morris. The moderator is Ian Garrett.

Video here:

BIOS

Ian Garrett (Moderator) is designer, producer, educator, and researcher in the field of sustainability in arts and culture. He is the director of the Centre for Sustainable Practice in the Arts; Associate Professor of Ecological Design for Performance at York University; and Producer for Toasterlab. He maintains a design practice focused on ecology, technology and scenography. Through Toasterlab’s Mixed Reality Performance Atelier, recent work includes The Stranger 2.0 with DLT Experience; Groundworks with Rulan Tangen and collaborating artists from Pomo, Wappo, and Ohlone communities; The locative audio project TrailOff with Philadelphia’s Swim Pony; and Transmission (FuturePlay/Edinburgh and Future of Storytelling Festival/New York). Notable projects include the set and energy systems for Zata Omm's Vox:Lumen at the Harbourfront Centre and Crimson Collective’s Ascension, a solar 150’ wide crane at Coachella. With Chantal Bilodeau, he co-directs the Climate Change Theatre Action. His writing includes Arts, the Environment, and Sustainability for Americans for the Arts; The Carbon Footprint of Theatrical Production in Readings in Performance and Ecology, and Theatre is No Place for a Plant in Landing Stages from the Ashden Directory. He serves on the Board of Directors for Associated Designers of Canada. He was the Curator for the US for the 2019 Prague Quadrennial, and is co-chair for World Stage Design 2021 in Calgary.

Logan Raju Cracknell is a Toronto based lighting designer and live stream artist who has been working across Canada in theatre, dance, opera, and live events. Recently he was an assistant lighting designer at both the Stratford and Shaw festivals, and with the recent pandemic has been branching out into more live streaming work. Portfolio: https://logancracknell.com .

Kendra Fanconi is the Artistic Director of The Only Animal, a fifteen year-old company that is uniquely dedicated to theatre that springs from a deep engagement with place. Our mandate reads, in part: "We act on huge stages; the forests, the ocean, human possibility. There we find enormous challenges of the times, including the climate challenges that threaten our existence as a species. We seek creative ways forward and solutionary actions. We love the impossible.” As a director, playwright and producer she has made over 30 plays including theatre of snow and ice, sand, in trees, on mountains, and on active waterways. Favourite projects include tinkers based on the Pulitzer-Prize winning novel by Paul Harding in an old- growth forest, and NiX, theatre of snow and ice was featured at Calgary’s Enbridge playRites Festival and the 2010 Cultural Olympiad. Projects in development include a rain theatre, and Year of the Typewriter, which creates pathways to translate the voice of the wilderness, and A 1000 Year Theatre. With David Suzuki Foundation she created a 1000 person piece called Sea of Hearts to support the kids suing the Canadian Government for the rights to a livable climate. Kendra is recognized nationally as a theatrical innovator and a nature-based artist. She has taught her unique creation style at University of British Columbia and Playwrights Theatre Centre. She lives on the land and is a farmer, forager and mother of two kids who are real characters. www.theonlyanimal.com.

Paul Fujimoto-Pihl is Project Manager at the Grand Theatre on the traditional lands of the Haudenosaunee, Attawandaron, Anishinaabeg, Lenape, and Wendat peoples on Treaty six lands in London, Ontario. He is  Chair of the Ontario Section of CITT and Director of TDArts. He enjoys spending time with his family, playing Kerbal Space Program,  and explaining the difference between watts and watt-hours to strangers on the internet. 

Lauren Gaston is a costume designer, illustrator and sustainability advocate. Her design work has been featured by The Juilliard School, The A.A. Bakruhshin State Theatre Museum in Russia and most recently by Time Lapse Dance in NYC. She relishes collaborations that approach the creative process through a lens of sustainability. Along with Elizabeth Mak, Edward T. Morris, Sandra Goldmark and Michael Banta, she is a co-author of The Sustainable Production Toolkit, which they presented recently as part of The Broadway Green Alliance's #Greenquaratine series. In exploring methodologies for circular design and production, she has co-hosted panels on sustainability with Megan Quarles at FABSCRAP and The Theatre Communications Group in NYC. While her work in entertainment is on pause, she volunteers with The Broadway Relief Project and is dreaming up what a thriving future may look like with her Sustainable Production Toolkit team and as part of the sixth cohort of The Creative Entrepreneur Project at The Actors Fund.

Elia Kirby founded and runs the Great Northern Way Scene Shop; and with that has worked on over 600 projects in all of the artistic disciplines (and some non-artistic as well).  Significant projects include: Rumble in the Bronx with Jackie Chan (1994); CODE Live at the Vancouver Olympics 2010; Westside Story for Vancouver Opera; A Thousand Unnumbered Stars for the 2014 TED Talks; international tours of Winners and Losers with Neworld Theatre and Theatre Replacement (2016~2018); and 18 years with the Caravan Stage Company touring by horse and wagon across North America.  He has a Master's Degree in Human Geography and BA in Cultural Studies from SFU.  He has two grown children and lives and breaths in on the unceded ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ / sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations.

Edward T. Morris is a set and projection designer and sustainability advocate. Along with Elizabeth Mak, Lauran Gaston, Sandra Goldmark and Michael Banta he's a co-author of the Sustainable Production Toolkit.  Edward is a member of United Scenic Artists Local #829, Wingspace Theatrical Design, and United Auto Workers  local 8092. He teaches design and dramaturgy at The New School in New York City. He has long been a participant in initiatives by the Broadway Green Alliance and incorporates sustainable practices into most of his designs. The Covid 'intermission' led him to co-create the Sustainable Production Toolkit to make a roadmap for theaters to re-open more sustainably.

Michelle Tracey is an eco-scenographer  and designer based in Toronto, Ontario. She specializes in set and costume design, but she also enjoys working with lighting and projections. Her work spans the fields of theatre, opera, dance, film, live events & installation art. Michelle is a founding member of Triga Creative, a collective of designers committed to artistic exchange and developing new sustainable working models.  Michelle is also a member of Associated Designers of Canada (ADC). Michelle has designed for such companies as Soulpepper Theatre, Canadian Stage, Tarragon Theatre, the Stratford Festival, Luminato Festival, Tapestry Opera, Theatre 20, U of T Opera, Theatre Smith-Gilmour, Binocular Theatre, the red light district, and Convergence Theatre. For more about Michelle's work please visit www.michelletraceydesign.com

Michelle is representing her company on the panel, so here is the bio of Triga Creative:

Triga Creative is Alexandra Lord, Michelle Tracey and Shannon Lea Doyle: three next-generation designers of space, bodies and light for events and performance. Triga Creative creates art experiences with an Ecoscenographic approach. Applying an autonomous, collaborative model that values the sustainability of people, planet and profit, Triga Creative is able to design for any scope, always at the human scale. Triga has been working to innovate sustainable approaches to design since establishing in 2017. Their work has included an ambitious month-long Eco-Design Charrette in 2019, a large outdoor event for Luminato 2019 called Maada’ookii Songlines, The 2018 Director’s Guild of Canada’s Awards Ceremony, and Dora-nominated scenic design for PARADIGM Production’s The Empire Trilogy by Susanna Fournier in 2018/2019. Triga’s upcoming collaborations include, Luminato Festival Toronto’s 2021 Opening Event; an ongoing design residency with YES Theatre in Sudbury, Ontario; and an exhibit design at the Gardiner Museum for visual artist Shary Boyle in January 2021. Due to the global pandemic Triga turned their rental clothing stock of vintage pieces into an online store and are also selling Michelle Tracey’s handmade non-medical masks. Check them out at www.trigacreative.com, @trigacreative or on Etsy at TrigaBoutique.

Hosts: Michael Banta, Lauren Gaston, Sandra Goldmark, Elizabeth Mak, and Edward T. Morris

Join us for the second session in this two-part discussion series focused on how Production Managers and theatre professionals  can seize on our collective ‘intermission’ to develop plans for a more sustainable theatre. The session will be hosted by sustainable theatre leaders and authors of the toolkit, Michael Banta, Lauren Gaston, Sandra Goldmark, Elizabeth Mak, and Edward T. Morris. Part Two will dive into lighting, sound, stage management, company management, and development.  We will have a conversation about actionable steps for each department, and how sustainable practices can help theaters be more people-centered and move closer to their mission after the pandemic.  Come prepared to participate and discuss!

View the recording below:

Hosts: Michael Banta, Lauren Gaston, Sandra Goldmark, Elizabeth Mak, and Edward T. Morris

Join us for the first session in a two-part discussion series focused on how Production Managers and theatre professionals can seize on our collective ‘intermission’ to develop plans for a more sustainable theatre. The session will be hosted by sustainable theatre leaders and authors of the Toolkit, Michael Banta, Lauren Gaston, Sandra Goldmark, Elizabeth Mak, and Edward T. Morris. Part One will center on materials sourcing and production budgets, with an emphasis on scenery, props, and costume departments. We’ll make the case for why the industry-wide pause caused by COVID-19 gives the opportunity and incentive to develop a more sustainable plan for the future. Come prepared to participate and discuss!

View the recording below!

Join Wingspace in conversation with theater artists who want to seize on our collective ‘intermission’ to develop plans for a more sustainable theater. From the costume shop to the development office, we will look at a ‘whole theater’ approach. Sustainable practices can help theaters be more people-centered and move closer to their mission after the pandemic. We’ll touch on each department, and make the case for why the industry-wide pause caused by COVID-19 gives the opportunity and incentive to develop a more sustainable plan for the future.

Presented by: Michael Banta, Lauren Gaston, Sandra Goldmark, and Edward T. Morris

Thursday, June 18th, 8-10pm EDT

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81702103694
Meeting ID: 817 0210 3694
Password: 863172

View the Facebook Live recording here: https://www.facebook.com/WingspaceTD/videos/554089842133438/