By Keri Luise
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writer
Towson University’s Theater Department joined in a worldwide movement called Climate Change Theatre Action with a series of short plays that educate audiences about climate change and what people can do to help the issue.
The event last Saturday, called “What Can We Do,” presented 10 plays selected from 50 plays in the CCTA series with the theme “Lighting the way.”
“These events take shape in many different ways, but our event specifically was something we call a ‘slam,’ which means that each of the plays was put together in less than a day,” said Hannah Faircloth, the producer.
“What We Can Do” had 10 directors, one for each play, and, “from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., they were in rehearsals creating their performances, so that by the time our event started, we had 10 fully realized plays to perform to our audience,” said Faircloth
Anna Steurman, a Towson senior, was an actor in “Canary,” one of the plays created by Hanna Cormick.
“[I enjoyed] how everyone came together to really make the event happen and were so passionate and excited,” Steurman said. “A 12-hour play festival is no easy feat, and everyone put their heart into it. It was very special.”
CCTA is an international series that was founded in 2015 by theatre artist and activist Chantal Bilodeau alongside Elaine Ávila, Roberta Levitow, and Caridad Svich.
The series includes readings and performances of short plays about climate change that occur biennially to coincide with the United Nations COP meetings on climate change. This year, the series has had a window of events from Sept. 15 until Dec. 20.
“I think that it is awesome that the university is taking action in helping with climate change and environmental issues,” said Kaitlyn Salapong, an attendee. “And it is really interesting to see it being done in this unique way with short plays.”
Faircloth strongly favors the world’s emphasis on climate change.
“We held the event because we recognize that our planet is in crisis-mode right now, and every single one of us needs to do what we can to try to help,” said Faircloth. “As theatre artists, we may not be able to make scientific breakthroughs, or directly affect environmental policy, but we can empower audiences to think, research, and act.”
Many of Towson’s actors and audiences took action to make meaningful steps toward helping climate change.
“One of my favorite parts of the event was that we actually all (as well as our audience members) donated to teamtrees.org to plant trees to offset the carbon footprint we made to produce the event by printing scripts and such,” Steurman said.
Team Trees is an organization working to plant 20 million trees around the globe by the start of the year 2020. Faircloth said the event donated close to 100 trees to the organization.
“This event definitely has encouraged me to make some kind of lifestyle change, like making sure I recycle more or something to help reduce my footprint and better the world we live in,” she said.