Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 2013 - 28

Sustainability frameworks
A common comment heard among those advocating for more
sustainable theatre practices is that we are many years behind
other industries in these endeavors. While there are published
sources specific to theatre, several books about sustainability from other perspectives helped us frame this investigation.
What follows are compressed summaries of each.
In their book Cradle to Cradle, architect William McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart advocate designing
for circular life cycles, not linear manufacturing models that
take raw materials, turn them into products, and then dispose
of those products and any byproducts. Although the authors
recognize that the current practice of recycling beats doing
nothing, they point out that recycling takes a great amount of
energy, it may use harmful chemicals, it usually generates some
waste, and it only postpones a product's trip to the landfill by
one or two uses.
Most important, McDonough and Braungart differentiate
between eco-efficiency and eco-effectiveness. The former has
its roots in the industrial revolution and its combative relationship with nature. Eco-efficiency focuses on making the most
with the least. In contrast, eco-effectiveness looks to nature as
something to be engaged, not controlled; eco-effective design
"replenishes, restores, and nourishes the rest of the world"
(McDonough and Braungart 2002, 78).
Much of the greening work in theatre has followed the ecoefficiency model, which is an easy transition since designers and
technicians have long prided themselves on making magic with
limited resources. But that does not mean that those interested
in greening theatre cannot think eco-effectively. Based on the
principle that "design is a signal of intention," that it "is based
on the attempt to fulfill human needs in an evolving technical
and cultural context," McDonough and Braungart promote and
model "products and systems that celebrate an abundance of
human creativity, culture, and productivity" (McDonough and
Braungart 2002, 16).
They conclude by offering five guiding principles for design and manufacturing:
* Signal your intention: commit to a new paradigm.
* Restore: aim for positive cultural, material, spiritual,
ecological, and economic growth.
* Innovate further: be open to feedforward, not just
feedback.
* Understand and prepare for the learning curve: enable
change by allocating money, space, and time.
* Exert intergenerational responsibility: do not saddle
future generations with this generation's problems.
(McConough and Braungart 2002, 182-186)
Andres Edwards's Thriving Beyond Sustainability contains fewer practical examples than Cradle to Cradle, but what
it calls the SPIRALS framework overtly integrates sustainabil-

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ity with cultural structures. Sustainability for Edwards is not
simply a task of effective product design. He introduces seven
principles that define the interconnection between social and
environmental responsibility.
* Scalable: find solutions that can work in a variety of
circumstances (local to global).
* Place-making: understand the historical, cultural, and
biological aspects of a community in order to bring
individuals together to effect change.
* Intergenerational: emphasize long-term benefits.
* Resilient: create a system that can absorb disturbance
and reorganize so as to retain essentially the same
function, structure, identity, and feedbacks.
* Accessible: enable social and environmental justice for all.
* Life-affirming: create long-term and regenerative systems.
* Self-Care: replenish ourselves and our spirits. (Edwards
2010, 151-164)
Although Edwards does not completely ignore economic
structures, he does not address them directly either. The reality is that all production-for-profit and not-for-profit theatres
and other arts organizations-is part of business operations.
As such, it is important to consider the interconnection between
economic structures and sustainability in contemporary life.
In a recent article in Nature + Culture (vol. 7 no. 3),
Wendy Lynne Lee asserts that several writers on sustainability
(including Edwards) have all but given up on making serious
change because none of them calls into question the socioeconomic structures-particularly globalized capitalism-that
contribute to corporate and individual decisions that privilege
a positive economic balance over positive ecological stewardship. Although we do not agree with all its points, we do agree
with the author that to make serious sustainable change, we
need to question common practices, economic or otherwise.
Most every design and production choice we encountered during our research did not challenge the standard
modes of theatre operations. Perhaps the only radical change
we discovered was Tanja Beer's The Living Stage at the Castlemaine Festival in Australia, where the outdoor stage environment was made up of edible plants grown of, by, and for
the local community. Any proposal for green practice should
question underlying socioeconomic structures, but a more
radical approach to production (not just theatrical production) is not always viable in current socioeconomic circumstances. There is no identifiable single choice that led to the
increasing dangers we have created in our world; there will
not be a single step that turns around our circumstances. We
cannot dismantle the system within which we work, but we
can attempt to alter that system a bit at a time.
As a leading consultant to major corporations that operate at the top of the current economic paradigm, Carol
Sanford argues that businesses must be ecologically and socially responsible and that such "responsibility is a practical
skill, not a utopian ideal espoused by others" (Sanford 2011,
xxxix). She puts forth that businesses are like all living things

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