Climate Festival 2026 - Ness: Displaced - Climate Dramaturgy Workshop
When:
—
Venue:
Birkbeck Central
This workshop on climate dramaturgy will be for theatre makers, story-tellers and anyone else who creates/organises events, and/or is involved in telling stories.
- How can we develop practices that centre artistic process while attending to the rapidly changing world around us, ecologically, socially and politically?
- What can we do to take positive climate action in our work, from the questions we ask of a play text, to the buildings we are working in?
We will use the example of Ness: Displaced to explore different forms of story-telling/dramaturgy for different ways of sharing stories in troubled times. Ness: Displaced is an immersive, geo-spatial audio performance that invites you to imagine yourself on Orford Ness as you wander a natural landscape of your choosing. All you need are headphones and a smartphone. Adapted from Robert Macfarlane and Stanley Donwood’s poem, this immersive sonic performance responds in real-time to the environmental conditions on Orford Ness, a former nuclear test site off the Suffolk coastline, as five forms of nature converge on the Ness to see off the threat of nuclear annihilation, at the ‘Green Chapel’, a.k.a. Atomic Research Weapons Establishment, lab one.
Zoë Svendsen (zoë/her) is a director, dramaturg, writer, and researcher making participatory theatre performances and installations exploring ecological crisis and capitalism, including: Ness, a digital/sonic immersive landscape performance adapted from the poem by Robert Macfarlane (HighTide/Metal Culture); Wild Dress by Kate Fletcher (Hawkwood Centre for Future Thinking); Love Letters to a Liveable Future (Cambridge Junction); video installation Factory of the Future (Oslo Architecture Triennale); Artsadmin Green Commission, WE KNOW NOT WHAT WE MAY BE (Barbican); Tipping Point commission, 3rd Ring Out. Zoë is Associate Artist at Cambridge Junction and lectures on dramaturgy and performance at the University of Cambridge, undertaking practice-led research. Through Artistic Associateships with HighTide and the Donmar Warehouse, Zoë developed the concept/ethos of climate dramaturgy, running workshops nationally/internationally. Zoë is a founding member of the pan-European network, the Naked Theatre.
Running order:
Participants can access Ness here: https://hightide.org.uk/event/ness-displaced/
Please allow time to download prior to experiencing it. You will be invited to select a landscape and a time and place to go there to start listening to Ness. For access information see here: https://metisarts.co.uk/ness-displaced/access
After completing the app-based audio performance on their own, the participants will attend the in-person workshop which will draw on their experience.
Contact name: External Relations Events
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