While certified green theatre may still be an anomaly, the live entertainment design community is discussing its environmental impact, as well as broader notions of sustainability, both online and in person. Yesterday, Live Design magazine published a blog post (the first in a series) from lighting designer and theatre consultant Curtis Kasefang on the concept of “sustainable theatres.” Kasefang’s notion of a sustainable performance space can be summed in up in one word: reuse.

READ MORE >>

Chita Rivera onstage at New York City’s Birdland Jazz Club – October 13, 2009.

Saxophone giant Charlie “Bird” Parker called it the “crossroads of the world.” New York City’s famed jazz club, Birdland, was just that on Tuesday for the launch of beloved Broadway star Chita Rivera’s new album, And Now I Swing.

READ MORE >>

If you take a look at the current season for Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre Company, none of the plays should strike you as particularly “green.” Yet on September 29, Aurora became the first professional residential theater company in the Bay Area to be certified as a green business by the Alameda County Green Business Program and the Bay Area Green Business Program. The Company accomplished this not by staging plays on climate change and recycling, but by implementing some major changes in operations, including:

READ MORE >>

I’m not sure that a depressing play about money lending is the most appropriate choice for the times, and though the adept and talented Propeller company did not manage to make The Merchant Venice the comedy it is forever miscategorized as, they did do many things right. Merchant is one of my least favorite of Shakespeare’s plays, which is maybe why I’m always so keen to see it performed. This time it’s set not in Venice but in a prison with a sort of come-and-go-as-you-please attitude.

READ MORE >>

Lots of activities all over the US this week in celebration of Earth Day, but if you’re in New York, and looking for something to do after the recycling demonstrations and green product pitches, you may want to check out Swimming with the Polar Bears. In this one-man show, veteran stage actor Mel England (Israel Horowitz’s 3 Weeks after Paradise, his own Navajo Memoirs, and others) juxtaposes threats to his own survival (child abuse, HIV, and cancer) with environmental challenges such as species extinction and climate change.

Described as a “funny, poignant, and devastatingly personal look” at global environmental issues, the show combines England’s performance with music by Thomas Silcott, and video and photographs by by National Geographic’s Tristan Bayer.

A three-night run begins tonight at the Bleecker Street Theatre. All three performances will benefit The Climate Project, which will also have one of its trained presenters on hand to deliver Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth slide show.