11/08/2023
I hold tight to my cherished Obama campaign button from a time which seems so long ago, but as I read the visionary and remarkable book, What We Owe The Future by William MacAskill, I realize the fate of the future is in our hands. I hear the news about two wars waging, many innocent civilians dying every day, the possibility of a planet where the smartest beings are digital, our Congress in turmoil and a new House Speaker who is a climate denialist, whose anti-science views are a clear and present danger to our environment and our democracy- I am shaken by the present circumstances of our world.
I ask myself how does one address this world, and can Serious Play Theatre Ensemble make even a small difference with the artistic work we choose to pour our energies into creating?
Are new ideas getting harder to find? Are solutions to the challenges before us becoming impossible to find, and is progress harder to visualize? Are we more bureaucratic and thus less efficient as a society?
I must believe, as MacAskill suggests, that there are real things we can do to predictably affect our long-term future. We can steer civilization into a better trajectory by improving the values that will guide the future, and we can ensure we have a future by reducing the risks of extinction, collapse and technical stagnation…Values and morality are about putting ourselves in others’ shoes and treating their interests as we do our own.
MacAskill goes on to say, “Longtermism” is about taking seriously just how big the future could be and how high the stakes are in shaping it. What we do now will affect untold numbers of future people. We need to act wisely. Positively influencing the long-term future is a key moral priority of our time.
Influencing values and morality is about putting ourselves in others’ shoes and treating their interests as we do our own. Here is where I stop and take pause, because theatrical story, created visually, and through text and character, can encourage audiences to feel and think as others do, and ask them to begin to understand the challenges and decisions others make.
Here, I find a foothold in longtermism, where theatre-making and performance can play a role. Since 2019, Serious Play has been devising MOVING WATER with writer Eric Henry Sanders, composer, Jonny Rodgers, Roz Driscoll, several actors, designers, all collaborating with myself as director. We have travelled through many phases with the writing, choreographing and designing of this piece, always working to find the most effective way to tell the story. A way that will move audiences to take real action and join the movement to find solutions for rising waters and climate change. To help people realize that climate change promises a stormy future for us all, and we must seek innovative ways to live with water and to reverse the climate chaos. Serious Play is dedicating the new work, MOVING WATER, toward building a vital earth for everyone.
We are presently working with our Booking/Tour Coordinator for MOVING WATER seeking venues throughout New England who will host our production and the climate change discussions for 2024-25. As with all touring, the hosts cover our costs.
However, it has been our long-term goal to bring the revised and complete production of MOVING WATER back to Northampton for Valley audiences. We have been invited by APE to present MOVING WATER in the new Workroom Theater at 33 Hawley St. this June 20 thru 23. We are excited to make this happen--but we need your help.
Serious Play will need to raise the funds to support the production. The Workroom Theater is now a cooperative space, and costs for space rental, box office, actors and designers are paid for by the Ensemble itself. Though an associate artist with APE, Serious Play will still need to pay for all our major costs for mounting the production. With this in mind, we ask you our loyal supporters to help us raise the funds to bring MOVING WATER home.
PLEASE GIVE GENEROUSLY ON GIVING TUESDAY, NOV 28th and help us reach our goal to make this production a reality in the Workroom this summer. We are also talking with water and climate change experts to hold a panel discussion about our Valley, water, and climate change on June 22 following the Saturday matinee.
If your company or you yourself would like to become a SPONSOR for these June 2024 MOVING WATER Workroom performances, please contact us at: [email protected] or phone us at 413-588-7439.
Thank You so much for your continued support!
