Climate tales tap emotions; Gloucester Stage looking to next year's festival - Gloucester Daily Times

Climate tales tap emotions; Gloucester Stage looking to next year's festival | Lifestyle | gloucestertimes.com

Residents of Cape Ann, a community surrounded by water, warmed up to the idea of a play festival focused on climate.

The recent inaugural event, “Water’s Rising: Festival of New Climate Action Plays,” attracted more than 100 audience members for the three-day event’s opening night. Each staged reading was followed by a talkback session, which also attracted a number of theater-goers.

The results surpassed expectations, Gloucester Stage Co. Artistic Director Rebecca Bradshaw said.

“We had a great turnout, and you can tell that people wanted to hear emotional stories about this topic,” she said. “If you have a good story, you don’t need full staging and it’s a great way to display a different version of what theater is — which is storytelling. Plays come from words on the page and are meant to be heard. So this is a way for us to share a story without a huge production investment.”

The works of three playwrights were presented in staged readings. Each was followed by a talk-back with the playwright and a panel of residents involved in climate action and sustainability.

Up first was “A Few Fun Facts About Greenland,” by Maximillian Gill, from India, and now based in New York City.

“This was my first time to be in Gloucester, and the second I arrived, I was instantly welcomed,” he said. “I had a great set of actors and the director was great, and the rehearsal ended up being like a workshop. Everyone had such good questions. I took a lot of notes that I will use for revisions. That was immensely helpful. It’s a very new play so this was the first real opportunity to see it live.”

Gill said the staged reading was equally memorable, and said the engaged audience had a lot of great questions during the question-and-answer period.

The play, set at an isolated research station in Greenland, focuses on two scientists with different objectives but both dependent on a wealthy tech entrepreneur financing the station. One was looking for proof of extraterrestrials by searching for an alien fragment while the other was a pure glaciologist.

The audience wanted to know how he came up with the idea. They received an interesting reply.

Gill had read about about a real-life astrophysicist searching the South Pacific for proof of extraterrestrials, and the playwright imagined a similar character could emerge in a play.

“I read his blog and he’s extremely controversial in the scientific community, where there are strong personalities and strong drives and that is inherently dramatic,” Gill said.

“He was looking for meteor in the South Pacific, and I had just been to Iceland and I thought about why not a set a play in Greenland with its glaciers — and then involve elements of climate change. The idea came to me of having these two scientists fighting to save the world but who come into conflict. That drives the play and brings in the ideas about humanity. The play kind of wrote itself,” Gill said.

The other two works unveiled were “Cincinnati By the Sea,” by Hannah Vaughn; and “If Nobody Does Remarkable Things,” by Emma Gibson.

Bradshaw said she sought to bring in a mix of topics, though all related to climate action in a broad sense, with the idea to create conversation within the community and tie the arts to one of today’s most pressing issues.

“As only art does, the ‘Waters Rising’ brought critically important issues about climate change to the surface, made us laugh, cry — and care, with the hope that we will respond,” Karen Ristuben of Gloucester said.

During discussion the second night, the talk turned to the reality that climate migration is already happening; one has to only think of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina when many residents fled and never returned to New Orleans.

“We had a great talk about that and the realities of Gloucester and rising waters,” Bradshaw said. “And on the last night, there was a good discussion about climate activism. Looking ahead, I am excited about next year. We are receiving feedback and we will look to improve upon it.”

Gail McCarthy may be contacted at 978-675-2706, or gmccarthy@northofboston.com.