Interview of Chantal Bilodeau, Artistic Director of The Arctic Cycle, New York.
Chantal Bilodeau is the Artistic Director of the Arctic Cycle, organization that was founded in 2008 with the mission to use theatre to foster dialogue about the global climate crisis, inspiring people and creating a new and empowering vision of the future. Through diverse initiatives, the Arctic Cycle works with artists from many disciplines -from art to science- and within different countries. As an organization, they have been able to adapt to the context of COVID-19, working remotely and switching some of their programs online.
In the framework of the campaign of ECP-FG "Art and Sustainability" we interviewed Chantal where we delved into the importance of art to generate awareness about the care of the environment, among other things.
Could you please tell us a bit of yourself: where do you come from, your studies, how long have you been working on The Arctic Cycle?
I was born and raised in Montreal, Canada and moved to the U.S. in my late 20s to pursue a Master’s Degree in Playwriting. After a few years of writing about different topics, and after a memorable trip to Alaska, I decided to write a play about the impact of climate change on the Canadian Arctic. (That play became Sila.) In the process, I became so fascinated with the research and the people I was encountering that I realized one play wasn’t enough; I wanted to write a whole cycle of play, eight to be exact, one for each country in the Arctic. The Arctic Cycle was created in 2008, initially to support this effort, but throughout the years, it expanded into the organization that it is now.
How do you understand “sustainability” and its relation with art in diverse forms?
Sustainability takes many shapes. It can relate to how we do the work: the amount of energy and the materials we use, the carbon we emit, the waste we create, etc. It can relate to the structures of our institutions: who gets paid, how much, and when; whose voices are heard and which stories are told; who holds the power and the strings to the purse. And finally, and this is where I have the most expertise, sustainability can be a way to understand ourselves and the world: what our beliefs and values are and how they are transmitted through artistic work.
The mission of the Arctic Cycle establishes the uses of “theatre to foster dialogue about our global climate crisis, create an empowering vision of the future, and inspire people to take action". How has this journey been since the organization started?
It’s been an incredible journey that is as much about listening and learning as it is about touching people and advocating for change. Our programs were all born from perceived needs that we felt weren't being met. When we started the Artists & Climate Change platform, there were no other place to find artists from a variety of disciplines who engaged with the climate crisis. Same thing when we created Climate Change Theatre Action: we felt there was a need for more voices and more stories tackling climate change issues that communities could gather around. The next thing was our 5-day intensive workshop titled the Artists & Climate Change Incubator: if we wanted this work to evolve and deepen, we needed to be able to get together. We try to adapt to the evolving needs of our audiences and of other artists, but also to the unfolding of the climate crisis and our response to it (or lack thereof).
Which had been the main challenges and opportunities discovered by your work?
The main challenge has been to find support for our work and to convince audiences that watching a climate change play doesn’t mean they’re going to be lectured at, or made to feel guilty about their choices. A play that engages with a social issue is not automatically boring or didactic or of lower artistic merit. But that’s a difficult perception to change.
In terms of opportunities, there is a real chance to make a difference in the world and to empower people to bring forth their best selves in service of the greater good. In other words, we’re not following history, as most of the work tends to do, but we’re trying to shape it. And because “climate change theatre” is still considered “niche theatre” we have an opportunity to really define what it is, from how it should be practiced to what its aesthetic might be.
How have you managed -as an organization- to face this new context of COVID-19?
We’re a small organization without a space of our own (either a presenting space or an office space), so we have been able to adapt to the context of COVID-19 fairly easily. We were already used to working remotely and we have been able to both shift some of our programs online and create new programs. For example, we created a reader-submitted series of short stories about the pandemic and an online offering of some of our short plays written for Climate Change Theatre Action. We also recently facilitated a fellowship for residents of the Lower East Side neighborhood in New York City in collaboration with Superhero Clubhouse. The fellowship was initially conceived to be in person but we redesigned it to be entirely online to comply with current restrictions on gathering.
How can theatre and art in different ways be a powerful tool to be aware of the changes we need
to do, especially now in this context?
I often say that theatre and the arts in general plant seeds for lasting change. When it comes to the climate crisis, the change that is required of us is massive. It means re-evaluating our values and how we see ourselves in the world. But these things are so intrinsic to who we are that we’re often not even aware of them. So, clearly, this change won’t happen overnight. The arts can help this process of introspection and change by opening up avenues of inquiry and offering different perspectives. People rarely wake up one day and decide to become climate change activists. But if we plant the seed for change, who knows how this change will be expressed when it is ready to happen? Activists are focused on action. The arts build the foundation that eventually leads to action.