Theatre Pedagogy in the Era of Climate Crisis

Conrad Alexandrowicz, MFA, is an associate professor in the Department of Theatre at the University of Victoria, where he teaches movement for actors. He had a lengthy career as a performer and creator of physical theatre, and has been a dancer, choreographer, playwright, director and producer. His first book, Acting Queer: Gender Dissidence and the Subversion of Realism, was published in February 2020. David Fancy, PhD, is full professor and chair in the Department of Dramatic Arts in the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts at Brock University. He publishes on philosophy, technology, environmentalism, disability and performance and has a creative practice as a playwright and director of theatre, opera, and circus. He is editor of a website on the subject of diversities and actor training.

"This collection is an important contribution to the urgent conversations concerning the climate crisis and how theatre artists and scholars can address these pressing topics through activism, Indigenous knowledge systems, performance pedagogies, and performance." -- Rachel Bowditch, Professor, Director of Graduate Studies for Theatre and Dance, Arizona State University, USA"I am overwhelmed by a deep and personal gratitude for this book. The collection succeeds in employing performance to address the failure of imagination that is the root cause of the climate crisis. It offers a healing pedagogy to dress the wounds of individuality, and the consumer/dominator culture, towards a human/nature, mind/body unity, dissolving into a great wide belonging. Deeply philosophical and refreshingly practical, this is an essential book for enacting an equitable, survivable and thrive-able future for all life." -- Beth Osnes, Associate Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies, University of Colorado, USA

• Introduction Part 1: Applied Theatre/Drama in Education 1. Nurturing Hopeful Agency: Applied theatre pedagogy in collaboration with social movements 2. Strategies for Climate Crisis Adaptation: Bringing Indigenous and Western knowledge systems together through theatre 3. Voices We Carry within Us: A trialogue about climate change, Indigenous ways of knowing and activism 4. Voicing Student Perspectives in the Transformation of Theatre Pedagogy for Climate Justice Part 2: Playwriting and Collective Storytelling 5. Conrad Alexandrowicz and David Fancy in Conversation with Caridad Svich 6. Devising in the Era of Climate Crisis: Staging the “ecoperformative” 7. Anthropogenic Anxiety and the Pedagogy of Climate Crisis in Wake Up Everyone 8. "Can We Talk?" Forum Theatre as Rehearsal for Climate Change Interventions Part 3: Actor Training 9. "Eco-Atonement": Performing the Nonhuman 10. The Actor as Geoartist Part 4: Theatre and Performance Studies/Praxis 11. Drawing What You Can’t See: Meditations on theatre and derangement 12. Coproducing Mimesis Part 5: Design and Production 13. Eco-Scenography and Sustainable Theatre Production Epilogue: Theatre Pedagogy and the Climate Crisis--a Manifesto