#outdoor performance

[nathanielbellows]

[rjzimmerman]

Too Darn Hot: How Summer Stages Are Threatened by Climate Change

In the West, wildfires are stopping shows. Extreme heat has led to cancellations in the South. And changing weather patterns are hobbling performances in the Northeast.

Excerpt from this story from the New York Times:

Smoke from a raging wildfire in California prompted the Oregon Shakespeare Festival to cancel a recent performance of “The Tempest” at its open-air theater. Record flooding in St. Louis forced the cancellation of an outdoor performance of “Legally Blonde.” And after heat and smoke at an outdoor Pearl Jam concert in France damaged the throat of its lead singer, Eddie Vedder, the band canceled several shows.

Around the world, rising temperatures, raging wildfires and extreme weather are imperiling whole communities. This summer, climate change is also endangering a treasured pastime: outdoor performance.

Here in the Rogue Valley, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival is seeing an existential threat from ever-more-common wildfires. In 2018 it canceled 25 performances because of wildfire smoke. In 2020, while the theater was shut down by the pandemic, a massive fire destroyed 2,600 local homes, including those of several staffers. When the festival reopened last year with a one-woman show about the civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, wildfire smoke forced it to cancel almost every performance in August.

Ashland is not the only outdoor theater canceling performances because of wildfires. Smoke or fire conditions have also prompted cancellations in recent years at the Butterfly Effect Theater of Colorado; the California Shakespeare Theater, known as Cal Shakes; the Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival in Nevada and the Getty Villa in Malibu, Calif., among others.

“We are one giant ecosystem, and what happens in one place affects everywhere,” said Robert K. Meya, the general director of the Santa Fe Opera, which stages open-air productions against a striking desert backdrop each summer, and which, in an era of massive wildfires near and far, has installed sensors to gauge whether it is safe to perform.

The reports of worsening conditions come from wide swaths of the country. “Last summer was the hardest summer I’ve experienced out here, because fires came early, and coupled with that were pretty severe heat indexes,” said Kevin Asselin, executive artistic director of Montana Shakespeare in the Parks, which stages free performances in rural communities in five Rocky Mountain West states, and has increasingly been forced indoors. “And the hailstorms this year have been out of control.”

[shakespearenews]

A crowd takes in Commonwealth Shakespeare Company's "Love's Labour's Lost" on Boston Common in 2016. ARAM BOGHOSIAN FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE/FILE

[ocgopf]

Beth Heinly Wiccan Circles 2017

South Park Block, Portland, OR

Photo Chris Freeman

[ocgopf]

Beth Heinly Guerrilla Advertising > Guerrilla Performance Art 2016

For OCGOPF Lunch Series Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia, PA

[ocgopf]

Maura Campbell-Balkits Blind Portrait Drawing 2017

Get your lovely face drawn by a professional amateur portrait artist. Grinning, pouting, emotionless: you choose the face pose you want to be captured on paper. No money required. Just donate a piece of interesting trash in exchange for a portrait. Each portrait only costs 1 trash, so bring multiple trashes and get multiple portraits! North Park Blocks, Portland, OR

[wbworkout]

Lindsey Stirling - Master of Tides (Official Music Video)

[afieldofcrowns]

Moments of joy from 2020, pt. iii

Moments of joy from 2020, pt. iii

Continuing the series of posts detailing some of my projects from 2020. Because of the nature of the projects and the Big Shift that happened last year, I wasn’t very advertisey in the moment. While many planned things dropped, I was still able to be part of a bunch of interesting and inspiring projects. Over the next little bit, I’m planning on detailing each and sharing some lessons learned…

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