Wednesday, October 20th at 8:30pm Toronto time (GMT-4)
Thursday, October 21st at 10:30 am Brisbane time (AEST)
Our second session was held virtually on October 20th at 8:30pm Toronto time (GMT-4) / October 21st at 10:30 am Brisbane time (AEST) through our Zoom Webinar platform hosted by The Queensland University of Technology. Our October Reading Group included three texts selected from the Climate Change Theatre Action’s (CCTA) 2021 call-out that addressed the central themes of Transformation and Imagination. We were joined by guest live performance designer panellists, Alexandra Lord (Toronto, CAD), Xiao Ting (Singapore) and Tessa Rixon (Brisbane, AUS). Our discussion explored ecoscenographic responses to the plays, particularly how designers and theatre makers can create sustainable, unique and provocative spatial experiences that forefront ecological issues.
Our selected CCTA plays for the October Ecoscenography Reading Group were:
- Dream/Remember by Hanna Cormick (Australia, Finnish/Sámi)
An invitation to observe, reflect and connect with ourselves and the story of our surroundings – an exploration into the moments we yearn for most.
- Listen to Vanessa Nakate by Aleya Kassam (Kenya)
Vanessa Najade is a young climate activist whose voice was silenced at the 2020 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The play is captivating because of its inclusive audience engagement.
- DreamSong by Heidi Kraay (US)
Envisioning a Global Green New Deal through the lens of a child. The mystical powers of our connection to nature in a folklore world.
Guest panellists for our October edition:
Alexandra Lord (Canada) is a co-founder of Triga Creative with Shannon Lea Doyle and Michelle Tracey: three next-generation designers of space, bodies and light for events and performance. She works towards sustainability in theatre and film, most recently in the costume department for the FX television series Y: The Last Man.
Xiao Ting (Singapore) is a Singapore-based performance-maker, actor, dramaturg and interdisciplinary collaborator. She is an Associate Artist with The Theatre Practice and Programmer for Practice Tuckshop. Her work is informed by the intersection of theatre with practice-led research to advocate for social change. ‘Recess Time’ was shortlisted out of 700 applications to be featured in the 2021 Social Art Award Book (Berlin). In 2021, she is a co-recipient of the Experimental Micro-Fellowship (Performance Space) and was also selected for the Asian Performing Arts Camp (Tokyo Festival). She is now working on a digital theatre commission spotlighting a South-East Asian food staple – fish!
Tessa Rixon (Australia) is a practitioner-researcher in intermedial performance, digital scenography, and Australian design. As Lecturer in Scenography at the Queensland University of Technology, Tessa’s work promotes new modes of integrating established and emergent technologies into live performance, exploring the potentiality of authenticity within digital scenography, and showcasing Australian performance design practice and histories.
ecoscenography.com 