Using Theater to Address Natural Resource Challenges

or,

How to engage the public in dialogue about natural resource issues without getting hurt

 

October 2005
By Viviane Simon-Brown and Janean Creighton  

 

 

Scene 1: Behind the Barricades: The Payback 

A woman, Summer Autumn, enters; she wears a long green cape covered with bright flowers, glitter and stuffed birds. She dances on-stage doing an interpretative dance to a recording of bird songs. She is carrying a small chainsaw. She concludes her dance downstage in a pose reminiscent of the dying swan from Swan Lake. She stands up with difficulty, groaning as if her muscles are stiff and sore.  

Summer Autumn: There. I’m finished. That’s what you expected me to do, right? That’s what everybody expects me to do. It was fine a couple years ago, but now…well, it’s different now (indicating the chainsaw). That thing is heavy!  

(pause)  

I know how to use it, you know. I grew up using it. My Dad taught me. I would buck the limbs after my brothers dropped the trees. I got my first chainsaw for my 14th birthday…gave me a competitive edge in the logger sports competitions we had in my high school…. 

I love this town—Eden—but I have a very definite role here. I’m the timber girl who ran off to college and came back a bleeding environmentalist; a greenie, a loose cannon, a squirrel junkie, a tree-hugger. Actually, I’m a performance artist….

 

 

Introduction 

So begins Saving Eden Creek: A play about people and forests. In the next ten scenes, we meet: Carol, a concerned home remodeler; Jeremiah, an affable store clerk at Building Blox; Karen, a middle-aged logger’s widow; Trisha, an Eden resident whose Dad was the Woodland King three years in a row.; four picnickers (two of them human) along Eden Creek; Barbara, a successful developer of Eden Creek Estates; Jamie, a child whose family lives in a trailer in the wood; and. Mike, an insurance actuary whose evolving awareness connects him to Eden Creek—and to Summer Autumn.  

Storytelling is a rich tradition in societies around the world, helping communities to expand their social capacity. The intention of this play is not to teach the audience about forest management practices or to push one point of view. Rather, the function of the performance is to use different fictional characters to portray a variety of conservation ethics, and to illustrate the conflicts that surround natural resource management in the Pacific Northwest. The story is presented as a series of monologues and/or vignettes with characters representing a variety of viewpoints regarding forests and forest resources.   

Our objectives are to use theatrical performance to help audiences appreciate the complexity of forest resource issues, become aware of their own values and beliefs surrounding these issues, and understand the validity of differing points of view. 

Several years ago, Oregon State University Extension foresters experimented with using a traveling art exhibit, Seeing the Forest: Art about Forests & Forestry, to address natural resources issues(WiNR published our article about it in 2003 [http://www.cnr.uidaho.edu/winr/simonbr.htm]). Our experience convinced us that using the arts is a particularly effective strategy to:

bulletcommunicate with members of the general public
bulletexplore controversial and confrontational issues in a safe environment
bullethelp us listen to what people have to say
bulletincrease awareness of the validity of differing viewpoints, and
bulletrecognize how our choices affect resources.

 

 

The beginning

Scene: Two middle-aged women in a back of an airport shuttle. They are leaving a national conference.

            JC: I enjoyed your presentation about the art show. 

            VSB: Thanks. It was a great project. Now I’d love to try writing a play. 

            JC:  Did you know that before I became a wildlife extension specialist, I was a professional actor and director? 

            VSB: Hmmm. 

This serendipitous conversation in an airport shuttle led to a three-year-long collaboration between us; Janean Creighton from Washington State University, and Viviane Simon-Brown from Oregon State University. We brainstormed the concepts we wanted to cover. We sequestered writers and poets in a cozy cabin to elicit ideas. We tracked down other “plays with a point.” We hired a playwright. I learned about “through-lines” and how to develop an evaluation form to be used by audiences we may never see. Janean took over the script writing, spending hours in the local coffee shop gulping expressos. We sent the draft scripts out to natural resource professionals for comment (and the biggest controversy turned out to be, do you “fell” trees or “fall” them?)  We teamed up with an Oregon State University editor to polish the dialogue and format the play. We developed a discussion guide which doubles as a theater program.  

Two years after our fateful shuttle ride, we debuted Saving Eden Creek at the Association of Natural Resources Extension Professionals conference in West Virginia. Another year’s worth of tinkering brings us to the present with completed script, theater program and evaluation.

Sample Questions

Which scene was most thought-provoking to you?

Making intelligent consumer decisions is tough. For example, in the Building Blox scene, what diverging issues stood out?

What “right versus right” dilemmas did you observe in the play? These can be described as:

                        “On the one hand, it’s right to …

                         On the other hand, it’s right to ….”

 

Components 

Saving Eden Creek has two integrated parts: the script and a separate theater program. The 11-scene,one-act play script contains stage directions and costuming suggestions. The content can be adapted for local audiences. The theater program has background about the play, thought-provoking questions for conversation after a performance, a list of additional resources, and it also includes a blank centerfold (called a “double truck” in the parlance) for local presenters to add their information, such as actors’ names and sponsors.  A tear-off evaluation form with pre-paid postage completes the theater program. (For those of you “into” evaluation, it contains five Likert Scale questions and three demographics questions, plus room for comments.)  

 

Uses

Our target audience is the general public—adults and high school-aged youth—although both the script and the discussion guide can be adapted for younger people. Our target users are community organizations, not-for-profits groups, service clubs, community theaters, high school drama clubs, 4-H clubs, Extension professionals, professional natural resource organizations—and most importantly, the natural resources people who read this e-journal! 

Here are some ways to use Saving Eden Creek

Full production with lighting, costuming, stage sets and 4-14 real actors and a director (is Andrew Lloyd Webber available?). Youth, community and professional theater groups are logical venue examples. The play would take about 75 minutes to perform and allow a half hour for the follow-up facilitated dialogue. 

Reader theater. Several people “read” the characters’ parts with drama and emotion but without moving around the stage. No props or sets needed. A narrator creates the scene image by reading the stage directions. For example:

A single spotlight rises on a man, Mike. He wears a business suit and is writing at his desk, located stage right and facing diagonally toward stage left. He has a cell phone to his ear, but is not saying anything. He slowly lowers the phone, stands and walks downstage, still holding the phone in his hand. He begins to recite, almost as if in a trance.           

This method takes 5-15 readers, and about 60 minutes reading time with another half hour or more for facilitated discussion. This approach works well if it is the featured event at a community meeting, professional association, or service club. 

Excerpts. If you are working with a shorter timeframe (as at a conference, a community presentation, or in a classroom), you can choose to perform or read only selected scenes. Ask 1-5 people to practice their scenes ahead of time. With excerpts, the discussion aspect becomes more important; the readings provide the catalyst to delve into the issue.     

Reading. Saving Eden Creek is a 20-30 minute pleasant read. Book clubs can assign it and then use the theater program questions at their next meeting. I’ve used this technique in a classroom too.

 

 

Conclusion 

 Saving Eden Creek: A play about people and forests is more than just a worthy successor to the Seeing the Forest art show. As it says in the theater program, “Saving Eden Creek isn’t just a play about trees. It isn’t a story about who’s right and who’s wrong. It’s a story about ethical dilemmas….” Each fictional character in the play strongly believes in the rightness of her or his own viewpoint—just as we do. If audience members, upon seeing this play, examine their own values and beliefs about natural resources—and try to understand how they mesh or diverge from others’ viewpoints, then the play will have succeeded. 

 

The Hoecker Family provided funding for printing the script and the theater program. Send an email to Viviane at viviane.simon-brown@oregonstate.edu to receive one free copy of each.  

The play is downloadable for free at http://eesc.orst.edu/agcomwebfile/edmat/html/EM/EM8858-E/EM8858-E.html 

Click on View a Scene to see Janean perform Scene 5, “Trisha’s Dad.”

 

 

 

Viviane Simon-Brown is an Extension Forester and Associate Professor at Oregon State University.

 

Janean Creighton is currently an Assistant Professor, Human Dimensions, in the School of Forest Resources at the University of Arkansas at Monticello.