Introduction
The climate crisis is here.
Where once we might have pretended it was happening somewhere else or was only going to hit us some time further down the line, it’s now clear that this human-made breakdown is having devastating impacts in Aotearoa New Zealand today.
New Year’s Day of 2020 dawned to a sky eerie red from the bushfires over the Tasman. Since then, wildfires have ripped through our own landscapes, and floods and cyclones have wreaked havoc across the North Island. Meanwhile, our neighbours in the Pacific shout for the world’s attention as islands disappear under the waves.
But the start of the decade was also defined by an entirely different crisis, with the Covid-19 pandemic disrupting day-to-day life across the world. In many ways, this was an agonising setback to the climate response – in 2019 a million students in 125 countries took to the streets in protest; the next year they were stuck inside – but there were some silver linings. We were forced to stop and take stock of our usual routines, we found new ways to operate, and we witnessed a world less dominated by a carbon-intensive economy. It proved that we can make changes on a global level quickly. In the face of the climate crisis, this kind of urgent action must be taken once again.
“I’m starting to think that the stuff that I do – writing scientific papers, writing articles, everything that I try to do to get the word across – is just not working, and that’s where one artwork can really hit the spot… Art seems to me to be a way of getting through to people.”
Dr Mike Joy – freshwater ecologist,
environmental science researcher,
and activist.
Scenes From The Climate Era. Photo Credit: Toaki Okano
Even in our theatres we’re not cut off from the outside world. Some have experienced this directly– after cancelling twice due to Covid, the Festival of Live Arts (F.O.L.A.) found themselves third time unlucky when Cyclone Gabrielle took out the power at Basement Theatre and forced them to cancel yet again. But even when it’s a step removed, art is most engaging when it connects with the context around it. We know that participating in the arts has a positive impact on well-being, and as we found throughout the pandemic, storytelling is vital, and community is all. The carbon impact of the arts might be minimal compared to other sectors (such as agriculture and transport), but the moment demands that we all play a part, and as storytellers and communicators, we can have an outsized impact. Amidst the climate crisis, the performing arts have a crucial role: to provide escape or call to action, to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable
But for the performing arts to continue, we have to change the way we’re doing business. This means making and touring our work in a way that walks the walk as well as talking the talk – making it sustainable, or even climate positive. This doesn’t mean all our art should be about the environment – we can make sustainable theatre without making theatre about sustainability.
Responding to the climate crisis isn’t just aspirational – it is also pragmatic, good business. Environmental reporting is commonplace in other industries, and green measures are increasingly expected in the arts in other countries. Since 2012, Arts Council England has required organisations they fund to report their environmental data and provide an annual environmental action plan and policy. Some 46 major theatres in the European Theatre Convention network have pledged to become climate neutral by 2030.
In the near future, practices like this seem likely to become the norm the world over. Whilst they have made no specific commitments, in their Statement of Intent Creative New Zealand signalled that the arts can “play a role in the culture change required to address environmental challenges such as climate change”.
Artists Leading the charge
Whilst the government in 2024 is going backwards on the environment, artists are leading the charge. We surveyed over 70 practitioners from across the industry about their green theatre practices. Many were taking some action already – particularly in waste management, designing for disassembly, and making use of green technology. Every one expressed a desire to do more, but more than half cited a lack of knowledge as a major obstacle. (Around a third also cited a lack of time, and over two-thirds a lack of money.)
Lee Woodman’s set design at Nelson Arts Festival, designed for easy disassembly. Photo: Steve Hussey
There are a number of excellent resources around the world that can help with this lack of knowledge, demonstrating how theatre can be made and toured in a more sustainable way, but these come from contexts far removed from our own. The Theatre Green Book in the UK is geared towards productions on a West End scale, reference tools from Julie’s Bicycle assume materials are coming from Europe and that travel by train is an option. Guides from countries with large population centres often sideline touring. Even closer to home, Arts on Tour’s Green Touring Toolkit (Australia) refers to an average national tour covering more than 10,000km on the road, and is predicated on audiences from multiple cities with populations in their millions.
Aotearoa is different. We have a small population, scattered across several islands. Touring nationally inevitably involves a trip across the Cook Strait. Making a living from theatre often means touring overseas, and this inevitably involves at least one long-haul flight (taking a train to Edinburgh isn’t an option).
Murray Edmond performing as Rufus on the Cook Strait Ferry (Town and Country Players, 1979). Photo: Peter Black. Photo courtesy of Paul Maunder.
What is this?
So. This is a guidebook and toolkit for theatre artists touring in and from Aotearoa. It’s tailored to our context, both geographically and culturally, drawing from a mātauranga and te ao Māori perspective that must be central to kaitiakitanga. Our hope is that the guide is both user-friendly and widely applicable, and brings together the mahi that is already happening around the country.
Who we are
We run an independent company that has been working to integrate green kaupapa into our touring practice. We don’t claim to be experts; we don’t claim to be perfect – we’re on this journey ourselves, and we balance environmental aspirations with the realities of making work in an under-resourced sector. But we have road-tested many of these ideas over a decade of touring, and have sought the expertise of people far more knowledgeable than us. The Guidebook builds on content generously licenced from Arts On Tour’s Green Touring Toolkit (Australia), but is also inspired by Julie’s Bicycle: Touring Guide, Sustainable Theatres Australia, and Canada Green Alliance’s Sustainable Theatre Guidebook. It uses the principles and standards from the Theatre Green Book series, with particular reference to the recently published Australian edition. Our intention is to build on best practice and enable practitioners to work within a common framework with colleagues across the world, whilst speaking specifically to the unique context of Aotearoa.
The Nitty Gritty
Before we get down to the nitty-gritty, remember this: you’re a theatremaker from the ends of the earth. You’re used to making extraordinary work with scant resources (and using those resources again and again). On a global scale, shows from Aotearoa are already compact and nimble, and because our population centres are small, we’ve worked out how to tour. But we can do more. Some of the stuff in this guide will be things you are doing already, the rest of it will build on skills that you already have. Rest assured: you’ve got this.
Touring The Bookbinder with Arts On Tour NZ. Photo: Trick of the Light Theatre.
What do we mean by green?
We use ‘green’ and ‘sustainable’ as catch-all terms to cover reducing emissions, reducing waste and eliminating environmentally harmful practices. Whilst sustainability in terms of finances and hauora is crucial, and intersects with environmental action, generally we use the word sustainability in the environmental sense unless otherwise specified.
Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge the following people for their invaluable contributions: Tānemahuta Gray, and Toa Waaka for advising on tīkanga and mātauranga Māori; Antonia Seymour of Arts On Tour (Australia) and Aimee Smith for their environmental expertise; Andrew Malmo and the Upu touring company for gamely tracking their data on tour; practitioners around the country for completing our survey and sharing images, ideas, and perspectives; Murray Lynch, Theresa Crewdson, Fié Neo, and Rebekah De Roo for their work on the guidebook and accompanying resources; Brent Dickens of Pola Design for their work on the website; and Playmarket, Tour Makers, and Manatū Taonga Ministry for Culture & Heritage for making this all possible.
Touring The Bookbinder with Arts On Tour NZ. Photo: Trick of the Light Theatre.
Te Wao Nui a Tāne
A framework for green touring
In Te Ao Māori, everything is interconnected. Humans are part of, not outside, Te Wao Nui a Tāne – the great forest of Tāne. We’re all kaitiaki of the whenua we live on, and have a responsibility to preserve the mauri and taonga of Papa-tū-ā-nuku.
Mātauranga Māori is the knowledge of the natural world that’s been passed down through generations, and it can inform our kaitiakitanga through both direct, specific guidance, and a broader philosophical approach:
Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua ko au.
I am the land and the land is me.
Think of our theatre industry as the ngahere. We have diverse institutions and resources – from mighty tōtara to fresh young saplings, all with roots in the earth, all reaching for the sky. They share nutrients and are nurtured by the sun, rain, and soil. As touring artists, we might think of ourselves as trees, or as birds flitting from tree to tree, or as people drawing on these resources to build waka, venture out in the world, and then return to replenish the earth. Our theatre industry is built from and is part of the natural world. No matter our place in the ngahere, we have a collective interest in and responsibility for its abundance, beauty, and sustainability.
This guidebook will get down into the weeds of sustainable action, but throughout it we’ll come back to this framework to take inspiration from the bigger picture of Te Wao Nui a Tāne.
Photo Credit: Fié Neo
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