Green Facilities

We briefly touched on the issues of 'green' building and facilities during class. I received the following email that I thought you might find interesting and might bookmark or share for your future lives in the theatre :-) Enjoy the read (it is a marketing email -- do note this). Let me know what you think!

Dear Theater Professional,

Theaters are building energy-efficient buildings. Lighting designers are finding innovative ways to illuminate productions with far less wattage. Playwrights are turning their pens toward the looming threat of climate change. Shops are switching to less-toxic paints and chemicals. Foundations are making sustainability a factor in grant awards.

In short, "green" is in, and it has become a vital groundswell sweeping through the American theater community. A committed group of individuals and organizations have begun to see that there is a connection between their work in the theater and the health and sustainability of their local and global environments. They are acting on the belief that in the current social and economic climate, those theaters that take steps to go green will find themselves ahead of the curve strategically financially, organizationally, and within their communities. Rather than being a drag on theaters' operations and finances, and rather than simply being efforts we should make for the good of the planet, green initiatives will lead to greater prosperity, more committed employees, lower costs, and a more profound connection to audiences and communities. Those theaters that have already taken up this challenge have seen real, tangible benefits from their actions, and are working toward sustainable futures for their organizations and their communities.

All very well, you may say, but where to begin? What are the steps we can take to go green, and what steps are other theaters taking? How are we to get our staff on board? How can we best publicize our efforts? Where can we find financing and sponsorship, and what tax breaks and incentives are available to us?

This is the Green Theater Initiative's primary purpose - to provide a space in which these questions can be asked, explored, and answered. In the hectic day-to-day that we all face as theater professionals, we have little time to search around for advice, and when we do, the amount of it devoted to environmental topics can be overwhelming. The Green Theater Initiative aims to be a one-stop-shop where information can be distilled down to its simplest components, and where advice and insight can be easily found.

We encourage you to visit the Initiative at www.greentheaters.org to find out more - from interviews with theater professionals who are working to go green, to how-to guides for your theater, to reporting from panels at conferences across the country, to articles about plays that address climate change and the environment, and more. Most importantly, we encourage you to sign up for GTI's e-mail newsletter, which will be sent out regularly with summaries of and links back to updated content on the website. It's a simple and unobtrusive way of staying in touch with these issues and tracking what other theaters are doing to work toward a sustainable future. The newsletter will be sent out approximately once a month, and your information will by no means be shared with any other organizations, so you need not worry about inbox clutter.

Signing up for the newsletter will allow you to take part in the movement to go green by keeping you appraised of your colleagues' actions and giving you guidance to follow in their footsteps. Because going green can be an opportunity to articulate a vision of a future in which theaters, as they have so often in the past, serve as leaders in their communities, encouraging debate about, and finding solutions to, one of humanity's most pressing challenges.

Yours,

Gideon Banner
Founder and Chief Editor
Green Theater Initiative
www.greentheaters.org