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A MATCH!
Dear Friends,
We are thrilled to announce that two staunch supporters, who believe that Extreme Whether is our most important play and project to date, have given a $5000 matching grant for our current Indiegogo campaign to mount a full production in 2014. Now your donation is worth double.
We’re Theater Three Collaborative!
George Bartenieff & Karen Malpede, Artistic Directors
www.theaterthreecollaborative.org
We know we cannot save the Earth until we change the stories people tell.
So we’re marrying art and science to create a new way to talk about climate change, our most compelling play yet, Extreme Whether. And we need you to help with the wedding!
Our newest play Extreme Whether is a powerful family drama that tells the truth about climate change and moves its audience to understand its own power so that, together, we can take action to save the Earth. This may be our most important play.
We use dramatic art to shift the paradigm away from violence toward resilience and from global warming to sustainability. “It is only when artists control their own work, as Malpede and Bartenieff do, that great socially relevant theater can be sustained,” Chris Hedges writes. Noam Chomsky says our work “is a remarkable contribution and I hope that many more people can see it.”We surround our plays with Festivals of Conscience: talks and talk-backs by major writers, activists and experts in the field.
The Play!
Here’s how The New York Times described Extreme Whether in The Scan column, April 1, 2013:
A new eco-drama about climate change is set in upstate New York during the record-hot summers of 2004 and 2012 will have two readings this month. The play pits brother against sister in a bitter debate about the future of the planet. In one corner is John Bjornson, a composite of famous climatologists. In the other is his twin sister, Jeanne, an energy spokeswoman married to a skeptical lobbyist. “The play poses this most difficult question of whether we can act in our own defense when faced with a global threat,” says the playwright, Karen Malpede.
Our Goal
Our goal is to produce a play that combines powerful art with a Festival of Conscience that will inspire the audience and offer a variety of opportunities and information to make change.
We will launch a full production of Extreme Whether at Theater for the New City in New York City, this March 20 - April 13, 2014.
Festival of Conscience
We host a Festival of Conscience after most performances. Important scientists, eco-writers, activists and renewable energy experts will dialogue with our audience about the many ways we can take action for a sustainable future.
Theater Three Collaborative will enlarge and strengthen the sustainable community through powerful storytelling and our Festival of Conscience. Our play opens hearts and minds. Our audience wants to talk and learn by engaging in dialogue with our distinguished Festival of Conscience speakers.
Track Record
Since 1995, we’ve been creating, producing and touring award-winning plays on crucial social topics and presenting Festivals of Conscience with major writers and thinkers. We have won an OBIE award for I Will Bear Witness, and toured this play to Germany and Austria with runs in New York, Washington, London and Berlin. The first play we produced, The Beekeeper’s Daughter is going to become a motion picture. Another Life, earned us support from the Open Society Institutes, and played New York City, Brooklyn, Pristina, Kosovo and London. “These are exceptional plays that bridge modernist realism with something older, more profound, more heroic,” writer Andrew Solomon says.
Already, we’ve had four highly applauded public readings of Extreme Whether. Each time we add more of Arthur Rosen’s musical score, and our acting company, led by the 4-time Obie-award winner George Bartenieff, gets fiercer and funnier. Each reading has been followed by one of our signature Festival of Conscience talks with renowned climate scientists, Dr. James Hansen and Arctic ice scientist Dr. Jennifer Francis, and Father Paul Mayer, founder of Interfaith Moral Action on Climate. Thousands of people know about us; hundreds have heard the readings. But we need to take this play to a far wider audience. The full production will feature Rosen's full musical score as well as video, lighting and costume design by our multi-award winning design team: Robert Eggers, Tony Giovannetti, Luba Lukova, and Sally Ann Parsons.
Artists, Activists and Scientists
Give Us the Thumbs Up
We have worked closely with climate scientists in order to best present their stories and the reality of the situation in Extreme Whether; clearly, this has met with much approval in the community:
Activist author David Swanson writes in The Humanist Magazine:
“A new play by the brilliant Karen Malpede. Climate change is almost impossible to comprehend, except, perhaps, with the aid of Malpede’s art. Extreme Whether adds drama and strangeness aplenty to the story of climate science.”
Jennifer Francis, Arctic ice scientist and author of a compelling theory explored in the play:
"Karen has done a masterful job of weaving together a gripping story about a family dealing with a variety of personal issues and interrelationships that are being stressed in various ways by the spectre of climate change.
The science discussed in the play is accurate and realistic, the personal conflicts are believable and highly relevant, and the dialogue is moving."
James Hansen, foremost American Climate Scientist who told Congress in 1988 Global Warming had begun:
“This play certainly resonates with me. Lots of Good Stuff. Would be good if more (people) could see it.”
Father Paul Mayer, Interfaith Moral Action Committee on Climate:
“Brilliant! Such a powerful vision. The youth must see this play.”
Thank you!
We can’t do it without you! Because our work sits on the cutting edge, we always need to turn to the public for support. We hope you’ll join us to tell the truth about climate change by becoming a Producing Partner of Extreme Whether, and by telling other people, too.
Join our mailing list at info@theaterthreecollaborative.org
