When Julia Levine, a senior at Butler University, had the opportunity to create anything she wanted for her senior honors thesis project, she decided to combine two of her greatest passions: theater and sustainability.
The result was “Gaia,” a short eco-theater play that makes audiences think about how their everyday actions contribute to the world as a whole.
Levine will share the play and its message with fellow college students from throughout Indiana at the third annual EcoSummit on Nov. 1. The conference will be from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Ball State's L.A. Pittenger Student Center. It will highlight sustainability and climate issues in a discussion-based setting.
The conference will offer a day of panel discussions and idea-sharing sessions aims to get students thinking about solutions to climate change and sustainability issues, said Jim Poyser, the executive director of Earth Charter Indiana and one of the organizers of the EcoSummit.
Levine said that’s what her play was intended to do: make people think.
“I wanted to create a play from the ground up,” Levine said. “I’ve always been interested in ecology and passionate about issues concerning global climate change, so I decided my play would address questions about how we as humans impact and are impacted by the natural environment.”
The name “Gaia” comes from the name of the Greek goddess of the Earth. Levine said she was inspired in part by the work of British scientist James Lovelock, who saw the Earth as a self-sustaining living organism. This theory is known as the Gaia theory, and it’s the basis for Levine’s play.
“I was immediately drawn to Gaia, both in the mythological and the scientific uses, so my play became about how life on Earth is interconnected – how the local is global,” Levine said.
Levine’s play is not the first to combine concepts of sustainability with theater. According to Dillon Slagle’s blog on HowlRound, an online community for theater ideas and discussion, eco-theater plays “put the natural world in conversation with human socio-economic concerns in the context of interpersonal relationships.”
Levine said her play does exactly that. She said she focused on sustainability issues in the Indianapolis area to give a local context to broader ideas.
“The play is about how our actions – our day-to-day, mundane actions – have consequences, whether immediate or not,” Levine said. “Each scene in the play poses specific questions that fit into those broader categories, so the play also becomes about how we communicate with one another, where we find entertainment and much more.”
Beyond that, Levine said the play isn’t actually about anything specific. She said the play’s purpose was not to impress one message or moral on the audience, but instead to start conversation and contemplation.
“Much of what the play is about is up to audience interpretation,” Levine said. “I had the initial concepts and questions that I started from, but the play was not complete until audience members contributed their own perspectives.”
Levine will show footage of the play, which was performed at Butler University in September, at the EcoSummit and lead a discussion about it. She said she’s excited to contribute to and learn more from the diverse crowd at the conference. Along with Levine’s presentation, discussions will take place on eco-activism, the role of policy in climate change, permaculture initiatives and mountaintop removal, and presenters will stage a game show about climate change.
“I’m interested in how other people address sustainability through their work, in whatever field it may be,” Levine said. “I’m looking forward to sharing ideas that we can apply to our own work and on our campuses to work toward positive change.”
Change is the ultimate goal for Levine, and she said that starts with changing the ways people think. She hopes that “Gaia” and other works of eco-theater can be catalysts for important conversations on climate issues.
“The arts are powerful in the way they creatively approach problems,” Levine said. “The way that artists create and the perceptions contributed by audiences open up a dialogue about issues facing our world.”
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