If theater is your thing, here's a great short review of the new play The Boycott -- by Kathryn Blume -- that challenges assumptions about what environmental activism should look like. A humorous and serious one-woman show, it's a contemporary take on Aristophanes' comedy Lysistrata, in which women from Athens and Sparta refuse to sleep with their husbands until they stop the war. Blume's schedule brings the show to Alaska and Vermont this month, and New Hampshire and Missouri this spring.
Sex, wives, and climate change
A new play with historical and environmental roots 8
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Posted 1:03 PM on 9 Jan 2008
by Erik Hoffner -
Posted in
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Erik Hoffner is the coordinator of the Orion Grassroots Network which supports the work of hundreds of grassroots groups and which connects the green leaders of tomorrow with good work today via the Grassroots Jobsource. Based in Massachusetts, he is also a freelance photographer.
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Pangolin Posted 8:39 am
09 Jan 2008
In the first place it would take your average husband several weeks to a month to notice. Then would come the feeling of relief........
But seriously. Drive down to your local elementary school. Arrive at 7:50 and stay till 8:30 out front. I have yet to see a kid delivered in a tractor trailer but everything under that size is used. Giant SUV's and quad cab diesel pick-ups abound.
When the pope is a bear and all catholics carp in the woods this will happen.
Put the Carbon Back
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Erik Hoffner Posted 5:48 am
10 Jan 2008
This play is noteworthy for the same reason that making a movie about climate change is, ie, make a movie and reach all those people who don't want to attend a conference about climate change (and win an Oscar).
Make a play and maybe you'll reach some of those people who don't watch movies but will see performance pieces like this one.
And while you're at it, bend the definitions of the words "activism" and "radical" in new ways.
Erik
The Orion Grassroots Network: 1,100+ grassroots groups working for conservation & more
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kablume Posted 5:46 pm
10 Jan 2008
Thanks for the shout-out and for deflecting the missed point.
To continue the clarification, the show is a farce. The uber-message is not about an eco-sex strike. It's about the wild, hairy, creative solutions we each need to undertake to inch ourselves a little farther back from the brink.
Also ongoing thanks to all the great guys and gals at Grist for the fantastic, world-saving work!
- Kathy
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caniscandida Posted 8:13 pm
10 Jan 2008
Whether or not by accident, the heroine's first name, "Lyssa," is a real ancient Greek noun. In the Iliad, it means violent rage. As a proper noun, it is the name for the hellish goddess who personifies that emotion. In Euripides' "Heracles," she is sent by Hera to madden the title hero, who murders his wife and children under her influence.
The red-eyed tree frog (from what I can tell) as animal spirit guide (if that is what it is) is an excellent choice. Polar bears are beginning to be over-used as mascots.
Did you see Nathan Lane's "The Frogs," here in NYC at Alice Tully Hall, the summer of 2004? We loved it, not least its anti-Bush subtext. Unfortunately it had little or no effect on the Republican National Convention -- when the delegates came to town, they did indeed see lots of theatre, but usually the friendly stuff.
Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.
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amazingdrx Posted 10:22 pm
10 Jan 2008
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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314159265 Posted 12:07 am
11 Jan 2008
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eriqa Posted 1:52 am
11 Jan 2008
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kablume Posted 6:44 am
15 Jan 2008
While many of the people who come to the show already sensitized to the realities of climate change, in many cases, there is still a rather large gap between knowing that action needs to be taken, and actually taking action.
That gap is usually a product of some combination of overwhelm, inertia, and despair.
The purpose of the show isn't to alert people to the realities of climate change or convince them that it's real. Al Gore and the media (finally) have done a pretty good job of that.
The goal of the show is to help folks across that gap into a place where they feel inspired to actually go out and take action.
I can't tell you how many people have come up to me after the show and said some combination of A) Thank you for articulating what I've been feeling - I thought I was the only one who felt that way; B) I've known about what was going on, but I haven't done anything yet and now I'm going to; C) I'm going to come back with friends.
I've also had people tell me some time after seeing the show that they finally got around to toting re-usable shopping bags and coffee mugs with them everywhere they go.
Or, as a friend of mine put it when I told her I'd been accused of preaching to the choir, "Even the choir needs a good hymn."
- Kathy
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