SUSTAINABILITY WORKSHOP at the THEATRE festival in Pilsen

A two-day SUSTAINABILITY workshop based on the Theatre Green Book will take place under the leadership of Mikko Laamanen from Technology and Sustainability Consumption Research Norway (SIFO) Oslo Metropolitan University on September 12-13, 2024 as part of the accompanying program of the International Theatre Festival in Pilsen.

Theatre Green Book is an international initiative of theatre professionals and sustainability experts, connecting theatres across Europe with the aim of creating common practices for achieving theatre sustainability. The three volumes of Theatre Green Book are now available in a shortened beta version in the Czech language.

The Theatre Green Book divides theatre operations from a sustainability perspective into three areas: productions, buildings and operations. Detailed and, above all, practical recommendations have been developed for each of these areas. The Theatre Green Book divides a large, seemingly unattainable task into smaller, manageable steps and clearly assigns their fulfillment to the responsible sections. For example, the first part, Sustainable Productions, sets a basic goal of making 50% of the sets, props and costumes of a production from recycled or sustainable materials. To achieve such a goal, cooperation between directors, set designers and production is necessary.

But theatre sustainability is far from just about the materials that are visible on stage during a performance. It includes everything from the transportation of staff, performers and audiences to energy consumption in buildings, stage technology, waste management and, for example, consumption in the theatre café. The Theatre Green Book offers various tools and guidelines to cover and coordinate all of these areas. Perhaps the most important tool is the materials inventory, which allows you to map where the individual materials used in a production come from, what their carbon footprint is and what their future life will be after the end of the production.