Where Have All The Glaciers Gone? Climate Change Theatre Action

Colin Waitt in Where Have All the Glaciers Gone?

New York, N.Y. Friday evening I walked into a New York University building, shed my scarf, and took a seat in a small white room set up for a lecture. At the front of the room, studiously ignoring the chatter of the audience finding their seats, a man stood behind a podium, silently rehearsing a speech. In the chair in front of me, an inflatable globe sat unacknowledged while bird song played over speakers. Soon the talk began in earnest, the man at the front of the room launching into statistics and anecdotes about what has become a very familiar topic: climate change. Familiar, that is, until a few minutes in he begins pulling the podium to the side so that two women can enter, dropping trash on the floor before the three of them begin listing all the reasons why they are not worried about it, scuttling, posing, and gesturing to illustrate their points.

Phoebe Rose Sandford, Catilin Goldie, and Colin Waitt

This, as you may have guessed, was not just any climate change lecture. Where Have All the Glaciers Gone?  is part of Climate Change Theatre Action, a joint venture between NoPassport, The Arctic Cycle, and Theatre Without Borders in support of the United Nations 2015 Paris Climate Conference (COP21). Having previously seen several of the involved artists' work in This Is Not A Theatre Company's  Versailles 2015 , I knew to expect an event as funny as it was poignant, with a healthy dose of audience participation and dance—yes, there was dance—that fit seamlessly into the cognitive world woven by the performers. On these points I was not disappointed.

One of the brilliant things about the team behind this event is their collaborative approach to creating the work. Though much of the writing is by director Erin B. Mee, Kendra Fanconi and August Schulenberg also contributed text as well as performers Caitlin Goldie and Colin Waitt. The third performer, Phoebe Rose Sandford, was responsible for most of the choreography, with Jonathan Matthews taking on the role of movement director for the evening. But every member of the audience becomes a collaborator as well; This Is Not A Theatre Company has a penchant for audience immersion, and this carried over here, asking them to answer questions and play games as prompted by the actors throughout the event.

Caitlin Goldie watches with members of the audience.

The text of Where Have All the Glaciers Gone? was both deftly handled and displayed an obvious love of language; the multiple authors allowed the hour-long performance to be easily chaptered and digestible and was performed in such a way that the event still felt cohesive. Matthews’ movement direction lent the actors the ability to become, when necessary, stereotyped individuals operating within a collective that seemed far more encompassing than only three people would typically suggest. “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” illustrated this most clearly, the actors assuming a tightly held posture—noses and hands up, elbows tucked in-as they scuttled around the room, dropping it only to try to avoid the garbage that had accumulated in the space over previous scenes.

Phoebe Rose Sandford

In what was for me the most poignant part of the evening, Phoebe Rose Sandford performed her “Dances With Our Planet I & II” in alternation with Caitlin Goldie singing “Lullaby I & II” as though to her unborn child. Sandford’s choreography is relatively simple and not particularly virtuosic in any traditional sense of the word. It is, however, highly specific, exceptionally legible, and thoughtful. She presents the movement—sudden, breathlessly held balances, full-bodied gestures, remnants of salsa—without commenting upon it. Goldie and Waitt take it in turns to insert the inflatable globe into her arms as she dances, filling a hole in the image that is only recognizable once it is complete, retrieving it and replacing it in panic when it slips away from her. Many of these steps return later in “Things We Will Miss” as though in answer to the question posed by the title, this time de-accumulated in the way that Goldie’s lullaby was progressively forgotten over the course of her performance of it.

Caitlin Goldie

After a few rounds of the “Climate Change Macarena” (which must be experienced to be believed) the performance is near the end. The finale is beautiful in its simplicity—Waitt slow dances with an audience member while having a conversation about saving the world a little bit at a time. The actor suggests that a marker of our species is the ability to hold onto things tightly—and perhaps that is the answer.

Where Have All the Glaciers Gone? will give its final performance this evening (December 13th)  at 7pm.

All images: Photo credit June Xie

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