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Eco Players: Mike Lawler of ecoTheater This is the first in a series spotlighting individuals who are working to green the theatre.
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1. ecoTheater’s Mike Lawler
A prominent voice in the field of green theatre comes out of Madison, Wisconsin. Mike Lawler is the production manager of Children’s Theater of Madison and the author of Careers in Technical Theater. He has worked throughout the United States in technical theatre, but now that he is settled in Madison he is working on a book about sustainable theatre.
To that end, Mike writes a useful and informative blog ecoTheater that explores his ideas on theatre and the environment. He writes:
‘The ecoTheater project is concerned with how as theater artists we can strive to create theater without sacrificing the environment and the long term health of our communities. I believe this can be done without making compromises in our process, and hope to detail how (and why) both here and in my next book.’
Mike has looked at green theatre from many angles. His June 15, 2008 post concerns theatre policy — the best way to get consensus among a diverse group of individuals working together to produce theatre. He bases many of his ideas on Theresa May and Larry Fried’s book Greening Up Our Houses, and their idea of a ‘Habitat Committee’, which needs to be made up of the people who will end up implementing the changes.
Mike has also written about greening up the office at the theatre, and he gives ten suggestions for following through with that project.
There is a longer essay on theatre costumes, including the problems associated with the toxic tetracloroethylene chemicals used in dry-cleaning; how fabrics are ‘distressed’ with chemicals to achieve the right look; indoor chemical pollutants; and the use of water and energy in cleaning costumes. Mike gives suggestions on how to deal with each of these issues.
Greenlist details what various theatres in the US are doing to go green. He started the list in June 2007, and updated it a year later. It's a permanent feature of the blog, to which he will add as more theatres join in.
After starting the ecoTheater blog, Mike was diagnosed in late August 2007 with testicular cancer. He created another blog The C Word to document what he was going through. He admits it is hard for him to say now, 'I have cancer", as that doesn't feel right, but on the other hand he's still not ready to state, "I had cancer.'
Mike has become a strong voice for why and how to green up our theatres - as well as how to put a human and realistic face on what it is like to face cancer. We look forward to future postings.
In the meantime, the September 2008 issue of American Theatre will be running an essay by Mike on why theatre should be taken in a green direction.
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'My writing on ecoTheater has enabled me to work out my ideas about creating a more sustainable way to produce theater as I go along — and it’s been a rather bumpy path.'
'The trick is having the good fortune to work in an environment where the idea of sustainability in theater production goes beyond the seemingly common head nodding that goes along with most of the necessary steps toward a more eco-responsible model of production. What I mean is that most of us in the theatre are met with agreement when we bring up the idea of sustainability — it’s when we start taking the actual steps that we meet resistance.'
'Low tech simply means minimal tech. It does not mean poor tech.'
'The founding principles here are straightfoward: keep it simple, and change it minimally between productions.'
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