Everything We Need is Already Here
Eco-creative strategies for a climate changed future.
A discussion and exchange led by Tanja Beer and Lisa Woynarski
Friday, February 21, 2025 – 6-7:30 PM, Barnard Design Center
Sponsored by the Barnard College Department of Theatre and made possible by the Dasha Amsterdam Epstein fund for visiting scholars and artists. Co-sponsored by the Barnard Office of Sustainability and the Barnard Design Center.
This event will focus on how creativity can be mobilized as an agent of change to support social and ecological justice in a time of crisis. There will be an emphasis on how case studies from theatre and performance can have wider applications in climate justice work, for example how the principles of place-based, circular, and regenerative practice can be applied to theatre making as well as in non-theatrical climate contexts.
Tanja Beer (Australia) will discuss her work in bringing theatre and ecology together through The Living Stage — a global initiative that combines stage design, horticulture and community engagement to create recyclable, biodegradable, edible and biodiverse performance spaces. Part theatre, part garden and part food growing demonstration, The Living Stage engages people in developing a greater understanding and appreciation of the living world. The co-created community grown spaces become the setting for performing and celebrating ecological stories, before being circulated back into the communities that helped grow them: physical structures become garden beds and community spaces; plants become food; and waste becomes compost. A central focus of The Living Stage is to bring a regenerative focus to theatre making that creates opportunities for thrive-ability across more-than-human systems.
Lisa Woynarski (Canada/UK) will discuss case studies from her forthcoming book Performing Urban Ecologies (Cambridge). Pervasive future ecological visions of cities are often built on representations on apocalypse, natural disasters destroying urban environments. These representations of apocalypse can foreclose the possibilities of other imagined futures. In this presentation, Woynarski looks at performances that ask: what happens if we reject the apocalyptic future of the city in favour of different stories? How can we live together in more just and ecological ways? This presentation focuses on how performances can imagine the urban futures in hopeful and optimistic ways based on community action, climate justice and regeneration.
Bios:
Tanja Beer is an ecological designer and community artist who is passionate about co-creating social spaces that accentuate the interconnectedness of the more-than-human world. She is a Senior Lecturer at the Queensland College of Art and Design and the Co-Director of the Performance and Ecology Research Lab (P+ERL) at Griffith University, Australia. Tanja’s extensive career is based on over 20 years of theatre practice in Australia, Europe and the UK. Her concept of Ecoscenography has been featured in numerous programs, exhibitions, articles and platforms around the world. She is the author of Ecoscenography: An Introduction to Ecological Design for Performance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021) and the Lead Investigator on the Australian Research Council Linkage Project, Culture for Climate: Harnessing Eco-Creativity to Transition Australia’s Performing Arts to Environmental Sustainability (2023-2027).
Lisa Woynarski (she/her) was born on traditional Anishinabewaki territory in Ontario, Canada. She is of white European settler/immigrant ancestry. She is now an immigrant herself as well as Associate Professor in Theatre in the Department of Film, Theatre & Television at the University of Reading, UK. As a performance-maker and scholar, her work connects performance and ecology, from an intersectional lens, foregrounding decolonisation. She is the author of Ecodramaturgies: Theatre, Performance and Climate Change (Palgrave, 2020) and the forthcoming Performing Urban Ecologies (Cambridge). She is the co-lead on the Arts Council England funded Work in Progress, working with artists on developing work on themes of decolonisation, ecology and landscape.
Note to attendees: Barnard College's campus security policy requires pre-registration for all non-ID holders. Photo ID and registration confirmation must be presented to security guards for entrance.