On September 3, 202, we held a panel entitled Sustainability in Design.
The UN has named this the Decade of Action, our last chance to create the transformation to a livable future. What does it mean to align our practices with a 1.5 degree Celsius global temperature rise?
This event focuses on the aesthetics of climate-friendly sustainable design in theatre, as a core design practice and as part of a larger equitable green recovery.
Panel members include Logan Raju Cracknell, Kendra Fanconi, Paul Fujimoto-Pihl, Lauren Gaston, Elia Kirby, Ken MacKenzie, and Edward T Morris. The moderator is Ian Garrett.
Bios
Ian Garrett (Moderator) is designer, producer, educator, and researcher in the field of sustainability in arts and culture. He is the director of the Centre for Sustainable Practice in the Arts; Associate Professor of Ecological Design for Performance at York University; and Producer for Toasterlab. He maintains a design practice focused on ecology, technology and scenography. Through Toasterlab’s Mixed Reality Performance Atelier, recent work includes The Stranger 2.0 with DLT Experience; Groundworks with Rulan Tangen and collaborating artists from Pomo, Wappo, and Ohlone communities; The locative audio project TrailOff with Philadelphia’s Swim Pony; and Transmission (FuturePlay/Edinburgh and Future of Storytelling Festival/New York). Notable projects include the set and energy systems for Zata Omm's Vox:Lumen at the Harbourfront Centre and Crimson Collective’s Ascension, a solar 150’ wide crane at Coachella. With Chantal Bilodeau, he co-directs the Climate Change Theatre Action. His writing includes Arts, the Environment, and Sustainability for Americans for the Arts; The Carbon Footprint of Theatrical Production in Readings in Performance and Ecology, and Theatre is No Place for a Plant in Landing Stages from the Ashden Directory. He serves on the Board of Directors for Associated Designers of Canada. He was the Curator for the US for the 2019 Prague Quadrennial, and is co-chair for World Stage Design 2021 in Calgary.
Logan Raju Cracknell is a Toronto based lighting designer and live stream artist who has been working across Canada in theatre, dance, opera, and live events. Recently he was an assistant lighting designer at both the Stratford and Shaw festivals, and with the recent pandemic has been branching out into more live streaming work. Portfolio: https://logancracknell.com .
Kendra Fanconi is the Artistic Director of The Only Animal, a fifteen year-old company that is uniquely dedicated to theatre that springs from a deep engagement with place. Our mandate reads, in part: "We act on huge stages; the forests, the ocean, human possibility. There we find enormous challenges of the times, including the climate challenges that threaten our existence as a species. We seek creative ways forward and solutionary actions. We love the impossible.” As a director, playwright and producer she has made over 30 plays including theatre of snow and ice, sand, in trees, on mountains, and on active waterways. Favourite projects include tinkers based on the Pulitzer-Prize winning novel by Paul Harding in an old- growth forest, and NiX, theatre of snow and ice was featured at Calgary’s Enbridge playRites Festival and the 2010 Cultural Olympiad. Projects in development include a rain theatre, and Year of the Typewriter, which creates pathways to translate the voice of the wilderness, and A 1000 Year Theatre. With David Suzuki Foundation she created a 1000 person piece called Sea of Hearts to support the kids suing the Canadian Government for the rights to a livable climate. Kendra is recognized nationally as a theatrical innovator and a nature-based artist. She has taught her unique creation style at University of British Columbia and Playwrights Theatre Centre. She lives on the land and is a farmer, forager and mother of two kids who are real characters. www.theonlyanimal.com.
Paul Fujimoto-Pihl is Project Manager at the Grand Theatre on the traditional lands of the Haudenosaunee, Attawandaron, Anishinaabeg, Lenape, and Wendat peoples on Treaty six lands in London, Ontario. He is Chair of the Ontario Section of CITT and Director of TDArts. He enjoys spending time with his family, playing Kerbal Space Program, and explaining the difference between watts and watt-hours to strangers on the internet.
Lauren Gaston is a costume designer, illustrator and sustainability advocate. Her design work has been featured by The Juilliard School, The A.A. Bakruhshin State Theatre Museum in Russia and most recently by Time Lapse Dance in NYC. She relishes collaborations that approach the creative process through a lens of sustainability. Along with Elizabeth Mak, Edward T. Morris, Sandra Goldmark and Michael Banta, she is a co-author of The Sustainable Production Toolkit, which they presented recently as part of The Broadway Green Alliance's #Greenquaratine series. In exploring methodologies for circular design and production, she has co-hosted panels on sustainability with Megan Quarles at FABSCRAP and The Theatre Communications Group in NYC. While her work in entertainment is on pause, she volunteers with The Broadway Relief Project and is dreaming up what a thriving future may look like with her Sustainable Production Toolkit team and as part of the sixth cohort of The Creative Entrepreneur Project at The Actors Fund.
Elia Kirby founded and runs the Great Northern Way Scene Shop; and with that has worked on over 600 projects in all of the artistic disciplines (and some non-artistic as well). Significant projects include: Rumble in the Bronx with Jackie Chan (1994); CODE Live at the Vancouver Olympics 2010; Westside Story for Vancouver Opera; A Thousand Unnumbered Stars for the 2014 TED Talks; international tours of Winners and Losers with Neworld Theatre and Theatre Replacement (2016~2018); and 18 years with the Caravan Stage Company touring by horse and wagon across North America. He has a Master's Degree in Human Geography and BA in Cultural Studies from SFU. He has two grown children and lives and breaths in on the unceded ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ / sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations.
Edward T. Morris is a set and projection designer and sustainability advocate. Along with Elizabeth Mak, Lauran Gaston, Sandra Goldmark and Michael Banta he's a co-author of the Sustainable Production Toolkit. Edward is a member of United Scenic Artists Local #829, Wingspace Theatrical Design, and United Auto Workers local 8092. He teaches design and dramaturgy at The New School in New York City. He has long been a participant in initiatives by the Broadway Green Alliance and incorporates sustainable practices into most of his designs. The Covid 'intermission' led him to co-create the Sustainable Production Toolkit to make a roadmap for theaters to re-open more sustainably.
Michelle Tracey is an eco-scenographer and designer based in Toronto, Ontario. She specializes in set and costume design, but she also enjoys working with lighting and projections. Her work spans the fields of theatre, opera, dance, film, live events & installation art. Michelle is a founding member of Triga Creative, a collective of designers committed to artistic exchange and developing new sustainable working models. Michelle is also a member of Associated Designers of Canada (ADC). Michelle has designed for such companies as Soulpepper Theatre, Canadian Stage, Tarragon Theatre, the Stratford Festival, Luminato Festival, Tapestry Opera, Theatre 20, U of T Opera, Theatre Smith-Gilmour, Binocular Theatre, the red light district, and Convergence Theatre. For more about Michelle's work please visit www.michelletraceydesign.com
Michelle is representing her company on the panel, so here is the bio of Triga Creative:
Triga Creative is Alexandra Lord, Michelle Tracey and Shannon Lea Doyle: three next-generation designers of space, bodies and light for events and performance. Triga Creative creates art experiences with an Ecoscenographic approach. Applying an autonomous, collaborative model that values the sustainability of people, planet and profit, Triga Creative is able to design for any scope, always at the human scale. Triga has been working to innovate sustainable approaches to design since establishing in 2017. Their work has included an ambitious month-long Eco-Design Charrette in 2019, a large outdoor event for Luminato 2019 called Maada’ookii Songlines, The 2018 Director’s Guild of Canada’s Awards Ceremony, and Dora-nominated scenic design for PARADIGM Production’s The Empire Trilogy by Susanna Fournier in 2018/2019. Triga’s upcoming collaborations include, Luminato Festival Toronto’s 2021 Opening Event; an ongoing design residency with YES Theatre in Sudbury, Ontario; and an exhibit design at the Gardiner Museum for visual artist Shary Boyle in January 2021. Due to the global pandemic Triga turned their rental clothing stock of vintage pieces into an online store and are also selling Michelle Tracey’s handmade non-medical masks. Check them out at www.trigacreative.com, @trigacreative or on Etsy at TrigaBoutique.