A meeting of minds at the National Theatre showed ways to stage drama along environmentally sound lines. But is everyone on board?
‘Theatre will be measured by its response to the climate emergency.” Those were the words of Paddy Dillon at the end of a daylong conference on Monday at the National Theatre entitled Making Theatre Green. Since Dillon, an architect and writer, initiated the online Theatre Green Book, a secular bible for the industry that offers guidance on how to achieve sustainability, he knows whereof he speaks. Coming to the conference as an outsider, I half expected a day of bland pieties: what I actually found was a mixture of creative fervour and practical solutions to the challenges posed.
The day kicked off with a mission statement by Rufus Norris, the National’s director, that among other things advocated additional payments to artists working to achieve cuts in carbon emissions. Norris was followed by Alison Tickell, founder of the environmental NGO Julie’s Bicycle, who passionately argued that the climate crisis was inseparable from social justice. Her ideas were endorsed by Simmone Ahiaku, a climate justice campaigner, who made the point that not enough theatre shows tackled the cause to which she was committed. She had a point. Steve Waters’s The Contingency Plan in 2009 at the Bush and 2071 by Duncan Macmillan and Chris Rapley at the Royal Court in 2014 showed how these things could be done. But the ill-fated, multi-authored Greenland at the National in 2011 was a reminder that good intentions are not enough.
