Downstage’s third go-around on climate theatre offers imagination, inspiration on stage

So frequently, the discussion of climate change is focused on the negatives. After all, it is only existence as we know it at stake if the worst-case climate change scenarios come to pass.

And while those discussions are important, the focus on the negative has frequently crowded out the narratives of hope and adaptation amongst those climate change narratives.

Now in its third iteration, Downstage’s climate theatre series is hosting two days of never-before-seen plays that ask audiences to imagine how things can be different and better in the future in Dreaming Climate Consciousness.

It asks audiences what we could build as a society if collaboration, resilience, and imagination became instinctive.

“It’s so exciting,” Clare Preuss, artistic director of Downstage, told On Cue Calgary.

“The idea with this project is to focus on the potential of human creative possibility, what we what we could create as our future, and what what we could imagine as something that would that would allow us and the environment and animals and everything to thrive. The goal is to is to imagine global futures that we would want to inhabit,” she said.

Dreaming Climate Consciousness, she said, has become part of a long-running series of climate-focused works by Downstage that have also become incredibly popular with audiences.

“I just feel that there’s an ongoing and growing responsibility for us to continue discuss it,” said Preuss.

“I mean we’re in the midst of a global water emergency, and we’re also in the midst of a hyper growth of this AI reality, which is changing our lives in so many ways, but certainly also has a real impact on the environment and water in particular.”

But, said Preuss, that wasn’t always the expected result of the initial experiment of putting climate-focused theatre on stage in a city known primarily for its resource extraction firms.

“I didn’t know if it was going to fly when we did our very first one. It was in collaboration with Climate Change Theatre Action out of New York, and when we did it, I was like, ‘oh, maybe no one will show up, I don’t know it’s pretty new still to Calgary,’ and we sold out immediately,” she said.

“Then in the subsequent one, the same thing. People just really want to engage with this conversation here.”

Thought provoking and conversation starting

The four 15-minute plays that make up Dreaming Climate Consciousness, said Preuss, were developed over a two-month collaborative process by playwrights Cristhian Poblete Hernández, Miranda Martini, Camille Pavlenko, and Ashay Vaidya, with world-building facilitated by Evan Medd.

“I had always wanted to find a way to incorporate my lifelong love for science fiction into my theatre work,” said Medd.

“Part of what’s thrilling about this kind of process is that the world-building phase will be deeply collaborative, and then each of these uniquely talented artists will spend some time independently in that world, bringing their specific creative voice and vision to that exploration,” he said.

The four plays share a single speculative world, said Preuss, though at the time she spoke to On Cue Calgary even she yet know where each playwright would take that shared world. That world ranges from a high-tech, gambling-focused city with its own mega-church island to an underground polymer cave where people remake old technology, a mountain community of step farmers, and an urban arts hub where people live and create together, almost like a commune.

The process to stage those worlds was also about as fresh as it gets when it comes to staging new works.

“The world building is really looking at less of a global connection. Things are much more hyper local,” said Preuss.

“The first act will be those plays, and it’ll be like a stage reading so the actors will still have scripts in their hands, but they’ll be blocking. And then the second act is a long table discussion, which if you’ve ever experienced one… it’s almost like a performance dinner party vibe,” she said.

Part of the reason for the continued partnership between Downstage and the Immigrant Council for Arts Innovation, said Preuss, was that climate is a global concern that often affects people’s decisions to immigrate.

The script-in-hand format also gives newcomer actors working in an additional language a safety net, removing one of their biggest barriers in memorizing text she said.

“I love working with Immigrant Council for Arts Innovation. Their focus on really finding ways for newcomer artists, professional newcomer artists, to integrate with community is so great, and it’s a learning all around,” said Preuss.

“Because when people come from a different place, they’ve got different processes, different worldviews, it’s super nourishing to the people who are longer term local artists. And then it’s so great when newcomer artists come in and they they get to just meet folks and get to know the professional arts community,” she said.

One of the best examples of that, said Preuss, is Mera Reyes and Javier Vilalta.

Vilalta, now an established local artist originally from Mexico, and Reyes, then a newcomer artist, were paired up through Downstage’s 2023 Climate Change Theatre Action project.

The pair collaborated on The Strategy of War, which earned six Betty Mitchell Award nominations and won the Audience Choice Award said Preuss. The show has since toured to Ottawa, and the pair are now working on a new project together.

“That’s like a great example of one of many examples of like the longer term effects of these kinds of like co-creative interactions. You’re not just meeting for coffee or meeting at an opening night. You’re actually getting to know each other as creators,” said Preuss.

Dreaming Climate Consciousness is being performed by newcomer performers Snizhana Bora and Raffi Minas, as well as established local actors Valerie Planche and Chris Clare.

The plays are being directed by Preuss and Javier Vilalta.

Dreaming Climate Consciousness runs at the Motel Theatre on Oct. 23 and 24. For tickets and more information, see downstage.ca.