Greening Up Their Act

The Magazine: What sparked your interest in sustainable theatre?

Garrett: I’m from the States and grew up in Los Angeles and had parents in the entertainment industry. At one time, I thought I wanted to be an architect, so I went to architecture school at Rice University and during that time I became interested in theatre design. In my architectural courses, I got a lot of training designing sustainable buildings and a background in sustainability in general. So my interest began independently as I researched these topics. While I was working on a Thomas Gibbon play in 2006, I found myself thinking about how much energy our lights were using and whether they could be powered by a solar array and, if so, how large would it have to be and what would it cost. I gradually became more and more interested in theatre’s role as a space for public debate on environmental issues, theatre’s ecological impact and how we could mitigate that – if we could.

McKernan: Before I started at York, my wife and I were taking a pretty serious look at the environment and what we should and shouldn’t be eating. The more we looked into it, the more other environmental issues also popped up, and when I started at York it seemed like a natural process to get into the whole issue of sustainable theatre.

The Magazine: What is meant by “greening the arts”?

Garrett: I think theatre probably seems, to most ­people, an unlikely place to start thinking about ideas around sustainability. But that’s what makes it interesting to me. In performance we’re dealing with time, with impermanence, as opposed to a building which is standing for a long time. A play usually runs for several weeks.

McKernan: If you only look at the performance in terms of time in a particular space, you’re not wrong, but if you look at the building in the same way, you are wrong. Buildings are long-term, plays are not. The building itself uses 80 per cent of the power. It’s the biggest [energy] consumer, not the performance.

The Magazine: Can advertising the fact that a performance is sustainable help draw an audience?

Garrett: To some degree. There are theatre companies that have taken this approach and made it a selling point. It’s marketing toward an audience that might be interested in the experiment … but what does that mean? How does it change [the production]? An important aspect of all this is addressing the question of how does a work or performance communicate the message of sustainability to an audience, either in form or function?

McKernan: I think absolutely, sustainability can be a draw, but it can also be a turnoff. I’m completely cynical about the whole thing – hopefully in a good way. [Laugh.] If you choose to stand up and say, “I’m part of this!” that’s great, but not everyone will buy into it.

The Magazine: What kind of steps can we take to be greener on stage?

Garrett: There are a number of different things producers can do to reduce their impacts environmentally: there are energy-efficient lights and fixtures; different ways of bringing less toxicity into the construction environment, such as dyes, paints and fixatives; alternatives to some adhesives; certified sustainable-growth lumber and organic fabrics; even printed versus non-printed publicity materials. One of the things I advocate most is that companies produce work that brings in a full house because it is highly energy efficient. Why? That’s what heating and cooling systems are designed for – a full house. It’s the most efficient way to “green” your theatre right away: maximize your audience.

McKernan: You can cut your operating budget by thousands of dollars through building changes. Many green technologies are just not there [yet] for performances, but they are for buildings.

The Magazine: When and where did the green theatre ­movement start?

Garrett: While eco-drama and eco-theatre can be traced back to the start of the modern environmental movement, the greening of production is more recent. One could argue that it’s about eight years old, and in the English-speaking world I think you could say it kicked off in the U.K. – a lot of it with [not-for-profit organization] Julie’s Bicycle, which started in the music industry. The U.K. government then invited [Julie’s Bicycle] to look at other kinds of arts organizations. [Julie’s Bicycle is a global charity bridging the gap between environmental sustainability and creative industries, working with more than 2,000 arts organizations internationally to help them measure, manage and reduce their environmental impact.

McKernan: We all take our thoughts ultimately from Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring – at least in the Western world. But the greening-the-theatre movement, the theory side, started with Theresa May’s book Greening Up Our Houses.

The Magazine: Every ­discipline has its own unique logistics. Is it hard to create an all-encompassing standard for “greenness” in the arts?

Garrett: You’re not wrong there. Once you start ­getting granular it becomes difficult. We deal with time in a different way and deal with materials in a different way. It’s much different from planning for a sustainable building that is going to be standing for a long time. By comparison, a performance is short, but it’s important to figure out where we can have the most impact for productions, audiences and our people.

McKernan: Most productions have a metaphorical rehearsal and an opening night, but other than that it’s different for every theatre company. They’ll all have their own particular demands and constraints. Job titles can be similar, but what the people with those titles do can be quite different. What works in Austin, Texas, will not necessarily work in Montreal or somewhere in Italy, and vice versa.

The Magazine: What is York doing, specifically?

Garrett: In the theatre department, I teach both graduate and undergraduate courses that are about building and ­sustainable staging techniques.

McKernan: We do a bunch of things. For example, we reuse materials as much as possible, but every theatre does that. We try to build things a certain way so they can go into stock because we have space, but not every theatre can do that. We kicked out caustic chemicals for health and safety reasons as much as sustainable ones.

The Magazine: How can we educate the public more about greening theatre?

Garrett: I’ve been doing work with Harbourfront ­[Centre] and I know there is certainly interest in what exactly being sustainable means and their part of the larger Toronto community. It’s valuable to them because they are also telling human stories. I know there are smaller companies that are also doing interesting things in this area but don’t really tell anybody about it, which is too bad. But yes, there’s marketability to it. It’s also important to share the information … everyone benefits from it, not just the marketing department. In theatre, there are some things we’ve been doing the same way for decades – and for hundreds of years – because we’re under tight deadlines, so we go with what works. Sometimes performance can be very risk averse.

McKernan: There’s always more to be done. We have sustainability managers on our shows now and they are responsible for studying the show’s environmental impact. Then, if you want to, you can put publicity information in the lobby explaining what the carbon footprint of a show was.

The Magazine: What does the future hold for sustainable theatre?

Garrett: I think we’ll see companies minimizing their environmental impact and maximizing their social impact more and more.