Making Theatre More Eco-Friendly

I see the Royal Court has now done this - maybe Stephen floated the idea or they were going to do it anyway! Where the cast lists were is a large poster with the cast list, saying they are available on request and suggesting you take a photo of the poster if you want to refer to it. Good move!

Today, the National Theatre has declared Climate Emergency


The planet is on track to reach a global temperature rise of 3˚C before the end of the century. The evidence of catastrophic environmental collapse is growing ever clearer, from extreme weather events to widespread extinction of species.

Theatre, like all industries, has an impact: we create work that is inherently temporary; that makes use of raw materials, of heat, light and sound; that asks people to travel to a particular location at a particular time.

However, we believe theatre can be part of the solution – we tell stories, shape culture and encourage empathy and understanding. Our industry is made up of creative and inspiring people who are motivated to make change.

We have already made significant progress towards reducing the carbon impact of the National Theatre; you can read more about that work here. The scale of the change required means we are already scrutinizing every part of the way we operate. We are on track to achieve our goals set in alignment with the Paris Agreement, taking us to carbon neutrality by 2050. But we believe this is a climate emergency - and it is our responsibility to aim for a carbon neutral National Theatre faster.

To achieve this, key areas of focus are:

Our building – we have made significant improvements to the efficiency of our 1970s building, reducing energy, waste and water carbon impact by 25% since 2016. We will continue to set ambitious targets to move towards net carbon zero on site.

Our programme – as part of our mission to tell resonant stories and to galvanise positive change, climate and ecological concerns will be reflected prominently in our programme.

Making theatre – we are working with production teams to examine every step of the process of bringing shows to the stage and understand how to reduce their environmental impact. We will share what we learn with the theatre sector and encourage the exchange of ideas.

Transport – as the National Theatre we believe it is very important to tour across the UK and around the world. We’re actively assessing the impact of our touring and will work to minimise carbon impact; however, the truth is that radical changes to national and international transport infrastructure are needed to reach carbon neutrality.

Audiences and staff – we want staff to feel empowered to examine their own practice and decision making, with ideas for change filtering throughout the National Theatre. We must enable audiences and visitors to understand and minimize their pollution and carbon footprint when visiting us.

I know you are jesting (and have a particular dislike of the National Theatre), but now it's been built, it's probably more environmentally friendly for it to remain. As a concrete building, the cement used in its construction will have released huge amounts of CO2. Even if producers switched fully to non-fossil fuels, the chemical reaction is responsible for 60% of the carbon footprint.

Any mention in the press release of closing the underground car park?

I know you’re being facetious, but…

This discussion comes up EVERY TIME a political issue comes up. The assumption is that the play can be about AND ONLY ABOUT that issue. Personally that strikes me as a lack of imagination. One of the best shows I saw tackling climate change (albeit indirectly, through tribal displacement) was The Encounter, and so imaginative was it that I honestly don’t know what was real, what was illusion, and what was imagination. Another great show tackling the climate crisis is An Enemy of the People – and that was written 200 years ago.

There's only one bad climate play I've seen - but it, um, wasn't a play. One of the dullest shows I’ve ever seen was 2071. I’ve actually reread it a number of times – it became the centrepiece of my university dissertation 100 years ago – but I fell asleep in the theatre, due it being, well, not theatre.  I 100% understand why Billers gave it five stars, and politically I was chuffed that climate science was given this push, but it just was not theatre. I’d urge to Royal Court and Katie Mitchell to go back and complete her trilogy of science plays. I’d just urge her to make it a play this time.

Lungs is about to be on. Lungs is 100% a climate crisis play, written before we used the words climate crisis. It’s also a deeply human play. I wept at the end of it. It’s that perfect thing – unapologetically political, but deeply human. With his insistence on humanising issues, Ibsen could have written it.

Worry ye not, mind.  99% of shows at the Nash will be as is. When they next revive Twelfth Night, will Malvolio’s garters be flooded by melting ice caps? Yes, if they do put one ‘issue play’ on every year, there is also the issue of, you know, the plays being good – will we gets Lungs, or will we get 2071? Sir David Hare’s probably writing something extremely tedious as we speak, and given his fame we’ll have to endure it; it’ll be dull not because of its topic, but because it’ll be I’m Not Running Water. Rufus does have a duty to commission committed people to write his issue plays.

However, not only has theatre always been political, but, as with the Ibsen, it has the rare power to put a human face on issues that otherwise are beyond us.  Climate plays?  People vs Oil is David vs Goliath. The tragedies of air pollution outside schools are intimate stories of family loss. Simon McBurney should adventurously adapt Merchants of Doubt (that’s a gift Simon - ed: no, do The Lost Words).

At the moment immediate crises are happening to tribespeople in Siberia and in the Amazon.  I want to see those stories.  Crises are also happening in London schools.  I want to see those stories.  Crises are happening by indigenous tribes trodden on by big oil, and by middle-Americans being trodden on by big oil.  I want to see those stories.  If Katie Mitchell can do something half-decent this time, I want to see actual scientists telling stories too.

But nonetheless, this'll probably be one play, via allusion, every two years.  If you're going to boycott, that's only £7.50 a year you're saving!

If you’re worried about how climate science will ruin theatre, go to the Old Vic. Is A Very Expensive Poison unnecessary political sloganeering, or a challenging piece of (admittedly messy) theatre? Go back. Watch Lungs. When you come out weeping and in love, you tell us that plays shouldn’t tackle the climate crisis.

P.S. Having said 2071 was that dull, I’m nonetheless still haunted by its closing words – the only point the play becomes theatrical, implicating us as theatregoers. Actually, it does imply the breadth of stories theatre can and should tell on this issue.  More importantly, it does remind us that we have a duty when we go to the theatre, and theatremakers have a duty when they inspire us:

By being here tonight - by travelling to this theatre, by using these lights, the heating, the amplification of my voice - we have contributed to the amount of CO2 in the Atmosphere.
There will be carbon atoms that were generated by this event that will still be in the air in 2071, in the air that my granddaughter will breathe.
That’s our legacy.
Science can’t say what is right and what is wrong.
Science can inform, but it cannot arbitrate, it cannot decide.
Science can say that if we burn another half-trillion tons of carbon the atmospheric content of CO2 will go up by another 100 parts per million, and that will almost certainly lead to a warming of the planet greater than two degrees, with major disruption of the climate system, and huge risks for the natural world and human wellbeing.
But it can’t answer moral questions, value questions.
Do we care about the world’s poor? Do we care about future generations? Do we see the environment as part of the economy, or the economy as part of the environment?
The whole point about climate change is that, despite having been revealed by science, it is not really an issue about science, it is an issue about what sort of world we want to live in.
What kind of future do we want to create?

Oh, and also, stupid of me to miss - Uncle Vanya! Character and ecology, beautifully at one.
You can burn peat in your stoves and build your sheds of stone. Oh, I don't object, of course, to cutting wood from necessity, but why destroy the forests? The woods of Russia are trembling under the blows of the axe. Millions of trees have perished. The homes of the wild animals and birds have been desolated; the rivers are shrinking, and many beautiful landscapes are gone forever. And why? Because men are too lazy and stupid to stoop down and pick up their fuel from the ground. [To HELENA] Am I not right, Madame? Who but a stupid barbarian could burn so much beauty in his stove and destroy that which he cannot make? Man is endowed with reason and the power to create, so that he may increase that which has been given him, but until now he has not created, but demolished. The forests are disappearing, the rivers are running dry, the game is exterminated, the climate is spoiled, and the earth becomes poorer and uglier every day. [To VOITSKI] I read irony in your eye; you do not take what I am saying seriously, and—and—after all, it may very well be nonsense. But when I pass peasant-forests that I have preserved from the axe, or hear the rustling of the young plantations set out with my own hands, I feel as if I had had some small share in improving the climate, and that if mankind is happy a thousand years from now I will have been a little bit responsible for their happiness. When I plant a little birch tree and then see it budding into young green and swaying in the wind, my heart swells with pride and I—[Sees the WORKMAN, who is bringing him a glass of vodka on a tray] however—[He drinks] I must be off. Probably it is all nonsense, anyway. Good-bye.

Everyone, in everything they do, must be made to think about climate change.

People having sex must be made to think about whether their energy could be harnessed to save the planet.

Has the national done away with it's water whatsit on the bar as they have decided people were taking too much free water away so now it's just jugs and glasses? There is one in the kitchen I know but it's smaller and you don't waste a load of water trying to fill your bottle up there and in my defence I was actually going to see a show there.

Much harder to fill a bottle from but I take your point, I expect it probably did just break or something.

Agree with the principle of reducing the use of these but I'm not sure how this will work ...

Royal Court to ban visitors from bringing single-use bottles





Translation: "We are nannying people"

So - if I turn up at the Royal Court and happen to have a single use bottle of water (which actually I may have already refilled several times, but anyway ...) Vicky will search me for this contraband and make me throw it away. But it's fine for me to buy another one as soon as I leave the theatre. So that'll help!

I wonder if the RC will be selling a reusable bottle in exchange for your single use bottle

Yes I saw that about the tickets. I usually like a proper ticket but I suppose I'll get used to having the tic on my phone. I’m wondering about when I give the tickets away though or when I return them. How will that work? And they used to make you actually return the ticket before a refund or a change. What will they do now? Presumably you will still have the original booking on your phone? I’m a bit lacking in the techie ( ask fellow mods) so it might just be simples.

Maybe if they're electronic they can just cancel and re-issue so it won't matter that people have the e-ticket as it wouldn't let them in?
I did wonder today if it will mean more people wandering around lost in the auditorium, the e-tickets I've had they just scan them, they aren't looking to see what they say (that would be difficult due to size) and directing people. I joined in and started directing people today, the usher seemed to take an age with people and the stage seating at the Old Vic had people thrown.

I think the introduction of e tickets is over the top. Why not just print on recycled paper if they are that concerned? Paper tickets are nice to keep as a memento, especially when I don't have the money to spend on an overpriced programme. Damn, I would even pay 50p to a £1 for a printed ticket. I think it's utterly ridiculous.