How can circus engage with climate change? When we think of making climate focused circus it’s easy to imagine it in thematic terms: making circus about climate change. In my experience as an artist and speaking with other artists, I’ve noticed a tendency to imagine climate engagement as talking about CO2 in the atmosphere, or plastic, or the rising ocean. While these concrete challenges are important, and worth talking about, I’d like to propose a deeper, more fundamental way of engaging with climate change, one that embraces the full scope of its reach. I see climate change as a cultural problem that stems from our broken relationships with ourselves, each other and the land. In a way climate change is the mother of all intersectional issues, because at its core it’s about our values and the narrative of exploitation that we play out with ourselves, each other and the earth. With that in mind, what if instead of making circus that’s about being ecological, we make circus that is ecological in its very foundation? As Chantal Bilodeau writes in her piece In Search of a New Aesthetic, “if we want to be active participants in shaping our future, we need to move beyond writing plays about climate change to writing plays that are climate change – plays that embody, in form, content, and process, the essence of the issues we are facing.”
The framework I like to use to think about this, and which I offer you here, has three pillars: sustainable production, sustainable relationships and sustainable narratives. Each of these pillars is equally important and they all work together to create a holistic approach to embodied sustainability.
Sustainable Production
This pillar is what I think typically comes to mind for most people when we say, ‘sustainable circus’. These are the concrete, tangible actions that we can take when producing circus shows, managing circus spaces and when working with venues. In a lot of ways this is also the easiest category to grapple with. The solutions are often easy to understand, relatively straightforward to implement, and contrary to what many people may think, cost effective as well. Some of the central questions in this category could be: how do we reduce our emissions? How do we reduce our waste? How can we be more energy efficient? Where are we sourcing our raw materials from? What are we eating?
Sustainable Relationships
People are sometimes confused when I mention this as one of the pillars of creating sustainable circus. What do relationships have to do with making circus sustainable? A lot. Circus is so much about relationships. It’s about trust in our fellow performers and crew members, it’s about our relationship to our own bodies, it’s about our relationship to our props and materials and space, to our governments and communities, to our culture, and it’s about connecting with an audience. Ultimately, addressing climate change means creating a culture that is rooted in thoughtfulness, care, respect and a deep understanding of the connections and relationships that bind us all together. Our relationships to ourselves and to each other are just as important as our relationship to our environments. Creating a culture within circus that is just and equitable, in which people are treated fairly and with respect, and that’s grounded in care and respect for ourselves, each other and the spaces and materials we work with, must be at the foundation of creating sustainable circus.
Sustainable Narratives
Our role as artists and entertainers is to be storytellers and myth-makers. Whether we like it or not, everything we create as circus makers holds embedded cultural narratives. As human bodies on stage, we can never be totally abstract. We carry stories with us wherever we go. What we look like, how we hold ourselves, the sound of our voice. People will see these things and assign meaning to them based on their own ingrained understanding of the world. We can’t always choose the stories we inherently carry, but we can work with them, and in fact I believe it is our responsibility to do so. What we decide to do with those stories, which way we decide to direct them, and what other stories we wish to layer on top of them, are all choices that we get to make as artists. Everything we do makes a statement whether we want it to or not. A woman presenting as strong and powerful makes a statement. How we treat our apparatuses and our stage space makes a statement. If and how we address the audience makes a statement. The jokes we make and at whose expense they are made makes a statement. Taking charge of our narratives doesn’t have to mean making those narratives the central focus of the piece. We can still make work that stems from a place that is personal, emotional, fun, meant simply as entertainment. It doesn’t have to be difficult or complicated. It simply requires touching base with this question: what are the narratives embedded in this work, and do those narratives align with the values I want to perpetuate into the world?
I offer this framework to you with the invitation to take it, run with it and make it your own. There’s no one right answer to the challenges we face. As Alexis Frasz describes, we find ourselves in a liminal space of cultural transformation. We have left the shores of what has been, what’s comfortable and familiar, with no option of turning back, and we do not yet know what awaits us across the sea. Our role now is to keep the creative energy moving as we collectively manifest our destination into being. I hope you find this framework helpful, and would be happy for your thoughts, comments or feedback.