The Art of Climate Performance in Germany and the US
Recording coming soon.
As more and more people are beginning to feel the effects of climate change, the arts - and that includes theater and performance arts - have a particular role to play to help us learn to survive and imagine new futures in a climate changed world. Join our webinar to learn more about climate theater and performances in Germany and the US, and the role of (performance) arts in articulating what it means when humans undermine the very foundation of life on planet earth.
About the Speakers
Brendan O’Donnell (he/him) recently joined the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Washington, DC, where he leads the Climate & Environment program. Trained in the theoretical humanities, his work uses conceptual and creative frameworks to expand policy and movement discourses. Over the past decade, he has published widely in the field of environmental policy, including on the global energy transition, Arctic futures, and sustainable finance. In addition, Brendan has written about contemporary art practices in and of the Arctic, Australia, and continental Europe, and co-curated multiple exhibitions of Indigenous Australian and Torres Strait Islander art. He hosts a weekly interview show and the Sunday Opera Matinee, Baroque edition, for community radio station WTJU in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Kathleen Berube (she/her) is a scholar of Germanic Studies with a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota (2024). Her research focuses on 20th and 21st-century German literature, ecocriticism, ecofeminism, and more recently eco-poetry with particular attention to concepts of nature, non-human agency, and second language acquisition. She is currently working on a project that explores the rise of Climate Poetry Slams in Germany as a form of creative activism that bridges art and environmental engagement in response to the climate crisis. She has taught at the University of Minnesota, Wartburg College, and secondary schools in Germany.
Sam Collier (she/her) is a playwright and theater artist. She’s a PhD candidate in theatre and performance studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she studies theater about climate change. She is especially interested in multispecies performance practices. Her plays have been developed and presented by the BETC Playwrights Group, Dogteam Theatre Project, New College of Florida, Urbanite Theatre, UC Davis Ground and Field Festival, the Goodman Playwrights Unit, and others. She holds an MFA in playwriting from the University of Iowa and co-hosts the playwriting podcast Beckett’s Babies.