Towards a Green Theatre*

Leaning my head back to "rest my eyes" Monday night on the long Blue Line trip to the Gift Theatre, I found myself looking up at one of the many ads promoting Chicago's valiant effort in this Saturday's Earth Hour, otherwise known as the "shut off the lights from 8pm–9pm" campaign. Thanks to primary sponsor Leo Burnett's world headquarters here, Chicago is the lead city in the U.S.; the ad agency recruited the Chicago cast of Blue Man Group to film a TV spot showing them shutting off power to the Briar Street Theatre.

It occurred to me that I haven't heard from any of the many theaters with productions running this weekend—including Blue Man Group—that they'd be cancelling performances (or even just pushing them back to 9pm to match the letter if not the spirit of the campaign).

Knowing nearly as well as every TD who's maxed out a storefront venue's capacity that theatrical lighting takes a lot of juice (as do other technical aspects of many productions), I did a quick search for info on greening our theaters. I remembered Patrick at backstagejobs.com recently mentioning the prospects of LED lighting, and through Patrick I found Mike Lawler's ecoTheater blog, which looks to be an invaluable resource for information on initiatives toward sustainable theater. Mike also links to the Green Theater Initiative, which seems to be mostly a placeholder at this point.

What can you tell me, theater makers? What are your companies doing to conserve energy? What more could they be doing? And in the shorter term, are any theaters out there participating in Earth Hour this week?

UPDATE: All three Broadway in Chicago theaters will darken their marquees for an hour Saturday night, kicked off by an Elphaba appearance outside the Oriental (though Wicked and Jersey Boys will still go on inside). Nice start. Who else?

*I had to break two AP Stylebook rules to make the Grotowski reference work. It buuuurrrrns.

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Elsewhere, my reviews of Bailiwick's A Man of No Importance and Theater Wit's Feydeau-si-Deau, along with six other new reviews, are posted at the TOC website.

Comments

[Nick Keenan]

I think a much more urgent problem than lighting or paper waste (not they're not a problem that needs to be tackled) is the waste of sets being summarily dumped in the trash. The amount of painted material and potentially toxic material being dumped in landfills is alarming.

There's obviously no clear cut green solution to that problem other than not building sets anymore, but we're working on that here, see project # 2:

http://theaterforthefuture.com/we-have-ignition/

The problem in many ways does rest on designers and producers more heavily than others. There needs to be a will to find not only a good design but a good green design will be helped by increasing the dialog in each process about designing green. On a storefront level, designing green usually also translates to designing cheap. It adds further challenge to designing a compelling look on a budget, but challenge usually yields greater creativity.

[Ian Garrett]

Mike Lawler and I have discussed it a number of times, but the fact that you mention the AP style guide underscores that most people in theater have some education. And if this education included ecological sustainability and maximizing resources or finding new resources for everyone including designers, it would be a big help. It seems rudimentary to those who have constructed a set, but there are designers who don't think about the second sheet of ply when something is 9 feet as opposed to 8. It comes up in my class at calarts:

http://2wiki.theatercalarts.com/index.php?title=Sustainable_Theater

[F.C.]

Kris...I put my journalism degree away for good nine years ago. Then I read the line about the A.P. Stylebook and I had a 'Nam-style flashback. Thanks. Thanks a lot.