Episode 6 - Nov 22, 2020
We speak with two artists who are using their work to explore humanity's interaction with the environment. Composer Gabriela Lena Frank and playwright Chantal Bilodeau discuss how the arts bring discussions of climate change and sustainability center stage.
Learn more about Rising Tide and stream the movie at novaslc.org/crossroads.
Hosts:
Rebecca McFaul, Fry Street Quartet violinist
Dr. Rob Davies, Utah State University Dept of Physics (Twitter @robsMast)
Guests:
Gabriela Lena Frank, composer (glfcam.com)
Chantal Bilodeau, playwright (thearcticcycle.org)
produced by Chris Myers (argylearts.com)
Copyright © 2020 NOVA Chamber Music Series. All rights reserved.
Transcript
Announcer:
Welcome to the NOVA Podcast.
Rebecca McFaul:
Welcome to the NOVA Podcast. I'm Rebecca McFaul, a violinist with the Fry Street Quartet, which is in residence at the Caine College of the Arts at Utah State University. We're also currently serving as co-music directors for the NOVA Chamber Music Series in Salt Lake City. This is episode six of The Crossroads Series and the subject is stories. Recently, my colleagues in the Fry Street Quartet and physicist Dr. Robert Davies premiered the film version of Rising Tide: The Crossroads Project, a multidisciplinary performance project addressing issues of global sustainability, which has inspired this series of podcast discussions as a forum to go deeper into the subjects the film brings up. To talk a bit more about this project, I'd like to introduce my cohost, my colleague and, full disclosure, my husband, Rob Davies.
Dr. Robert Davies:
Hi Sweetie. Thank you. As you've heard, I am Rob Davies, co-creator of The Crossroads Project along with my friends, my wife, and the Fry Street Quartet who are artists and residents at Utah State University's Caine College of the Arts. As Rebecca has just said, this is the last in our series of podcasts which are produced in collaboration with the NOVA Chamber Music Series, and a quick shout out, by the way, to Chris Myers with NOVA who has been just an outstanding producer of these pods. Thank you so much, Chris. These pods were part of the film premier of our Rising Tide performance, as you just heard, which you can still view for free, by the way, on YouTube through the end of the year, courtesy of NOVA Chamber Music Series. You'll find the link here on the video. Go to the NOVA Chamber Music website, and you can just follow your nose and find a link to that performance to see it if you haven't yet.
If you've made it this far though, you know that Rising Tide is this, as Rebecca said, intimate look at our planet, at ourselves, at the intersection of these two, and the paths that lie before us. We cover quite a lot of ground in this performance in just 70 minutes, and these podcasts have been a space for us to delve deeper into the topics that we cover: water, the biosphere, life, food, and society. Of course, Rising Tide is also an attempt to bring to bear the power of performance art on telling these critically important stories. It is one of a growing number of such efforts. In this, our final discussion, we've invited two artists who have been hugely effective and hugely active in using their professional lives as performance artists to bring the stories of climate and global change to the world.
Rebecca McFaul:
Currently serving as composer in residence with the storied Philadelphia Orchestra, and included in the Washington Post list of the 35 most significant women composers in history, identity has always been at the center of composer pianist, Gabriela Lena Frank's music. Born in Berkeley, California to a mother of mixed Peruvian and Chinese ancestry and a father of Lithuanian and Jewish descent, Gabriela explores her multi-cultural heritage through her compositions. Inspired by the works of Bela Bartók and Alberto Ginastera, Gabriela has traveled extensively throughout South America in creative exploration. Her music often reflects not only her personal experience as a multi-racial Latina but also refract her studies of Latin American cultures, incorporating poetry, mythology, and Native musical styles into a western classical framework that is uniquely her own. Moreover, she writes, "There's usually a storyline behind my music, a scenario, or character." Gabriela is on the G. Schirmer roster and also is the recent recipient of the Heinz Award in the arts and humanities. Welcome Gabriela.
Gabriela Lena Frank:
Thank you so much, Rebecca and Rob, for inviting me to be here with you this morning on such an important topic. I think the work that you're doing is extraordinary, and to be able to contribute my own experiences and my own thoughts is very meaningful to me. Here in California, we've been coming through these really apocalyptic and devastating fires, and recognizing this kind of threat is not something that was ever on my radar. I never thought about talking about the environment or talking about any kind of climate distress as part of my story. I had my hands full with talking about what it means to be a multi cultural native of America in this day and age.
I thought I had enough stories to witness and to talk about through my music, but the reality of these fires in recent years is it can't be denied, and that the climate crisis is going to touch every corner of this planet and affect every single story that exists to be told. In recent years, I've been really doing a retrospective of my life and understanding that I have a career of gratifying substance that it was well incumbent upon me in high time for me to think beyond the content of my own work and to start thinking about the kind of leverage or the kind of confidence that I had, or leverage and confidence that had been invested in me to wield greater influence and a positive influence. I think there's no greater goal than to save our planet so that we can keep on making music, and we can keep existing at a human race and just a race of beings, human and non human.
To that effect, a few years ago, a small academy that I founded, using the connections that I had over a number of years, my own experiences in the concert world, traveling a lot in Latin America, and writing my symphonies in the string quartets, I decided that I would create a safe space for my emerging siblings in composing. We would make this a safe space for people that are coming in from non-Western cultures, as well as those that are from the west, and not only those from the west but may not be within the classical cannon. They may be improvisors. They may be punk musicians or hip hop musicians, and that's been a transformative transition. From the first year that we existed at a small academy out of my own home, providing residencies for these emerging voices to create works of art for incredible performers that mentor them, we were threatened by fire. First, we adjusted nominally. We rescheduled, as I was accepting that, "Wow. We really do have a fire season."
In the second season, 2018, of our existence, when I was handing out masks to our composers as the nearby city of Paradise was burning down, we were literally breathing its demise. I began to think this was our new reality, and what was the power of composers to be able to describe what was going on? We've started to adjust and to try to provide opportunity for composers to first educate themselves and to come to grips emotionally. We're at the beginning of the journey we're about to embark on in stowing a curriculum do this, and of course I need to model that in my own life. I have been blessed with a good career. I think the activity will continue, and the next steps for me now that I hope to include in my life story is that I've been able to facilitate a change of heart within the music industry that contributes to the hastening of the environmental distress that we're experiencing, but also for the public at large.
Rebecca McFaul:
Fantastic.
Dr. Robert Davies:
Thank you so much, Gabbie. We're going to get into a lot more of what you're doing. I would like to also now take the opportunity to introduce our second guest, who is Chantal Bilodeau, coming to us from her home in northern New Jersey. Chantal is the founder and artistic director of The Arctic Cycle, one of the pioneers who's working at the intersection of theater and climate. She has co-organized national gatherings and workshops. Full disclosure, I attended one of Chantal's workshops in New York City a couple of years ago. It was fabulous as a vehicle to help emerging artists, particularly in this case theater artists, make their theatrical voices relevant on this topic of climate change. Chantal has published widely on this topic. Chantal, I know you're a native of Montreal as well, so bringing a further international perspective to the discussion as well. Thank you so much, Chantal, for joining us.
Chantal Bilodeau:
Thank you for inviting me, and congratulations to you and Rebecca, and to everybody involved in the film, which I think is really wonderful. I'm so happy it exists, and it can be watched. Anybody can have access to it and watch it. I am originally from Montreal, and I bring a French accent to the discussion. I guess. I'm trained as a playwright, and something like 12 years ago, I went on a trip to Alaska as a vacation, because I knew somebody who lived there who had invited me to visit. This was my first time that far north. It was my first time in Arctic territory. This was 2007, so it was one year after Al Gore's first documentary. An Inconvenient Truth came out, which means that the climate was more part of the main stream conversation.
The combination of that and being in the Arctic where the impacts of climate change were so much more visible than in the rest of the U.S. made me want to see if I could bring that topic into my work. It had been a personal interest, but this was the first time that I started thinking, "Maybe I can write a play about this." Of course, in doing research and getting interested in this idea, I felt more and more that artists had a role to play. I felt like I wanted our voices to be heard, and I wanted us to have a way to contribute. If everybody's being called to lend a hand, artists should be part of that call, so I wrote a play. Again, being from Quebec, from Canada, I started looking at what was going on in the Canadian Arctic, because of course the Arctic territory in Canada is huge compared to the U.S., let's say. Alaska is a small proportion of the entire U.S. territory, but the Canadian Arctic is really big.
I wrote my first play. It's called Sila, which is set in the Canadian Arctic. It premiered in 2014. In working on that, I felt that there was much more to say than I could say in one play. I thought, "Okay. I'm going to write another play and maybe more after that", but in order to have this work be somewhat cohesive, I looked for some kind of container. Of course, I discovered the Arctic Council has eight members who represent the eight countries that have Arctic territories. I thought, "Okay. I'm going to write a play for each of these countries", which that means eight plays on that topic. It's a huge endeavor. I'm on number three at the moment, so one and two have been written, produced, and published. I'm on number three, and my biggest hope is that I get to the end of this series before I die. Then, we can get on about the other stuff later in the conversation, but after that I went on to create other programs, because I was looking for things that didn't exist, but this is my original story, let's say.
Dr. Robert Davies:
I find both of these stories fascinating, and the thing that, I think, really connects them in my mind is ... Gabbie, what brought this into your professional sphere was the experience you were having with the fires. Chantal, what brought this into your professional sphere was your personal experience in the Arctic with climate change. Of course, climate change is progressing quite rapidly, so you've both made large professional commitments to really address this in your professional works, but I'm assuming that's evolving. Maybe I'll start with you, Chantal, because you started maybe a bit earlier, call it 10 years ago. You're going to write eight plays. You're on number three, but of course in the time that you started, the progress of climate change has really stepped up dramatically. Is this changing your thought as to what you're going to write?
Chantal Bilodeau:
This was part of what was interesting to me, just because of how the theater industry works and also my own rhythm. I knew it was going to take me a long time. There's what each play is going to say, but there's also what the cycle as a whole is going to say. Because I knew it was going to be long, I'm hoping that the plays are going to reflect our evolving relationship with the issue.
Dr. Robert Davies:
You've got this built in flexibility to do that?
Chantal Bilodeau:
Yeah.
Dr. Robert Davies:
As you were telling. Gabbie, what about you? A few years ago, you really took to this, but of course I can't even begin to describe how much has changed in just the last few years.
Gabriela Lena Frank:
Yeah. Our feet were literally held to the fire. We just went through our fourth season. 2017, here in California, was when this latest wave and devastating wave of fire started. A lot of us wrote it off as just a particularly bad year, because California every 10 years or so has a really bad fire season. I had an urban view on it, living in the Bay Area and being a native to the Bay Area for so long, that I thought of it as, "Well, that's the price you pay. You want to live in the rural interface, you have to accept that fire is going to hit your area every 10 years or so." I didn't brook a lot of sympathy to be perfectly honest.
Then, in 2018, the fires hit, and it was even worse. 2019, evacuations hit the coast line. 2020, millions of acres were burned. Each year, it's been so dramatically worse. We know people now. We know people. The urgency is not going to wait for a typical concert season in which commissions are brokered and come forth three, four years after the initial discussions. The symphony orchestra plans out five to ten years often, and we have what? Nine more years before we hit that tipping point. They talk about the year 2030. That's just around the corner, so there is a certain amount of urgency dividing projects in which we can get composers more quickly up to speed and to any initial rounds of commissioning that I would like to do of my alums from my academy.
I'm looking at the ones that have the skillsets, and they have gone through some of these experiences already. In this initial group, I'm looking at several native California's who had been thinking about this and experiencing this already. In order for our stories to be authentic, it takes time. Artist work that's here takes time to come in with an angle that will not dissipate like cotton candy. It's sweet, and then just goes away. They don't really leave a dent in your psyche. We need to strategize about how people can delve into the experience that they already have while training the next generation, succeeding artists to tell these stories.
Rebecca McFaul:
I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about delving into the psyche? What are you hoping to inspire with bringing this urgency kind of into your professional work? I'd love to hear from both of you, but since you used those words, Gabbie, maybe you can speak to that a little bit?
Gabriela Lena Frank:
I think they're mutual words. You and I have talked about that ideal place between alarm and aspiration. Frankly, using this wonderful imagination that all of us artistic types are supposed to wield every day, in and out, we're supposed to imagine what a green planet looks like. I'm 48 years old now, so I'm about to move into the second half of my life, because I'm determined to hit 100. I want to know what it looks like when we come through the other side, what a green planet looks like when everybody accepts that we're a part of this effort to repair the earth and get it back to where it was in our childhood, when birds sang all the time and insects just stringed out at a garden.
This was how things were. Butterflies were abundant. I slowly realized that's not just a romanticized childhood memory. That really was how things were, and we artists can tell those stories. The inclination is for people to throw up their hands. It's to enter a mental and psychic paralysis saying, "What do you mean I can't fly? I have to put food on the table. What is my artistic life going to look like when I can't take that prestigious gig in New York City, and I can't argue with my employers that want me to take a tour around the country that is completely not ethical from an eco standpoint?" There's also the journey of grieving that I think we don't talk about a lot.
I remember when it hit me, when I really just sat and said, "My life is in danger." I'm looking at this smoke, and my life is in danger. I just sat there like a rock. My whole life just caught up with me. The fact that I built a major career on the back of a lot of carbon and flying. I was grieving that my planet really wasn't the same as it was that I remember from my girlhood. Perhaps, if you're artistic, you really feel things sometimes. We pour it into our plays and our prose, but we have to move on this. We have strength. We really do. We can channel that grief into the stories but also provide a way for artists to grief. We can't take a lot of time just to stay in grief. We can grieve and then move at the same time. We have to.
Dr. Robert Davies:
This notion of grief that Gabbie brought up, you and I have talked about this a little bit, and in conjunction with this question that Rebecca's probing is the psyche of people that are participating and collaborating with you. In your case, Chantal, you run seminars and workshops. I know I think you get a pretty strong interest in participation. The people that are coming, do they have personal experience with a)climate change, and b)this sort of notion of grief, what level is that playing with the people you're working with?
Chantal Bilodeau:
Gabriela, I'm glad you brought up grief, because it's such an important thing. There's no cultural mechanism to deal with that and to deal with climate grief, I guess. I think the art is playing an important part in that. The people who come to my workshops, it depends. A lot of times, they're university students who will be more or less knowledgeable about climate. In the case of the university students, I encounter them only for a short period of time, so I don't have the same in into how they're feeling maybe as a professor would who's seeing them for a semester. Usually, they're pretty anxious and worried about the planet, especially if they're coming to a seminar that I'm teaching. That's the subject matter, so they're already in tune with it. In terms of the incubator, which is the one you participated in, Rob, it attracts a mix of professional artists, some at the very early stages of their career and some more experienced, scientists, activists, educators.
It's kind of across the board, and the comment I get again and again is to the comfort of being in a room with other people who are feeling the same way. I think everybody who's working on climate across the board, it can be a very lonely pursuit, and it's certainly emotionally taxing, so it's reassuring, I think. We get energy from being with other people who are doing similar work and who are thinking similarly, because we're like, "Okay. Even though my part may not be working well, or even though I may be really tired, somebody is doing great stuff. Oh my god. If they're doing it, I have to do it too." Maybe that's where the grief plays out in the way I encounter people. Being able to counter it in a way, the same way you would when you go to a memorial, right? It's like I'm feeling pain, but there's all these people around me who are feeling the same thing, and I'm getting strength from that. I think the incubator functions a little bit the same way.
Dr. Robert Davies:
I'm going to follow it up. I know I'm quite certain Rebecca is busting with all kinds of questions for both of you, so I'm going to get mine in while I have a chance, which is within your professions then. Chantal, you're working within this much broader profession of theater, Gaby within in this much broader profession of composing and classical music. Are you feeling support, or are you feeling like you're having to buck the system? How are you feeling within your profession? Does it feel risky? Liberating? Maybe a little of both? Chantal, let's start with you, and then we'll go to Gaby.
Chantal Bilodeau:
I'm going to refer again to what Gabriela said earlier. She said something about it takes a long time to commission somebody to get a piece done, and it's certainly the same in the theater. I guess my short answer would be you have to buck the system, because the system is not designed for this. The system is not designed to move fast. It's not designed to be responsive. It's probably the same in the music industry, but in the big theaters they're programmed two years in advance. They're not set up to respond to anything, and they're also not set up to push the boundaries, to a certain extent, because they're dependent on people filling in the seats. They need an audience, so they have to be a little careful about what they offer.
Most of the work is happening in smaller companies, the ones who are nimble, who don't have to worry, and who have no money to start with, so they don't worry about losing it. Young people who don't have a career behind them of doing things differently, they're, again, more willing to try different things and take risks. Depending on where you are in the country, it's still weirdly a controversial issue. The work happens mostly, I think, on the coast and in large urban areas, but otherwise it's hard to push this topic into more rural areas or areas where there's still a lot of denial of climate science.
Dr. Robert Davies:
Gabbie, what about you?
Gabriela Lena Frank:
I can't add a single thing. You can take out the word theater and just put in music. I have to agree with the whole thing you said, Chantal. It completely applies 1000 per cent, and I would add that the young people, because they haven't invested their identities so much in the expenditure of carbon the way we have, you look at them and they're more vegan than the generations coming before. A lot of them are already saying, "We're not going to have kids, because we don't have time. Why would we?" I can very easily envision a future where they're boycotting events in which the guests flew in. We're going to lose this audience for theater and music. The mystique of the celebrity outsider, the exotic European violinist coming in to do a concert, is not going to be of interest. There are deep cultural values that need to shift.
That said, I think this past year, this pandemic has been such a violent and hard reset for all of us, where we are doing and imagining things we previously thought completely antithetic, completely impossible, and sacrilegious to even entertain doing anything online for an art form like theater and music, which really depends on being in person. Lightning would come down from the sky if you should ever suggest that, and yet some really interesting new art forms are coming out from this. Also, looking at diversity, and there's abundant evidence to show that when we educate girls and we educate people of color, that is a climate action. To give voice to their stories, you might unintentionally talk about environmental racism, for instance. This year has just opened the door on multiple angles in which to talk about the climate crisis hidden under diversity initiatives or including more voices from women.
I think now is the time when people are more open to different kinds of solutions to also talk about, "Well, health epidemics are more likely on a warming planet, and this pandemic is a climate crisis in action. We are in it." When I bring that up to some of my peers, you see them just freeze for a moment. It suddenly became real, just like the way they checked in on me. "Are you still alive there in California. Each fire is getting worse", and I really had that kind of reaction. We're at a unique time when the theater world and the music world may speed up, may become nimble and, like a smaller organization, may lean on the urgency that young people are feeling. One can hope, and I think those of us that are conscious of it, now working from the inside of our respective industries, need to push and to say, "Keep innovating. Keep trying new things. Speak the language of the present urgency that a lot of these organizations are feeling but with a larger impact beyond when this specific crisis begins to ease."
Rebecca McFaul:
If I could hop in for a second. I love this discussion about moving the industry, becoming nimble, and the lessons of the pandemic. I always return back to this notion of sustainability and the arts. This is not an unfamiliar concept to any artist. To become sustainable just as an individual ... as an artist is a big deal. Once you start thinking about that concept inside this crisis, you start seeing all the layers that actually, without addressing the big existential sustainability crisis, our very own sustainability with careers in the arts is also at risk.
To pivot to the hopeful message, the lessons of the pandemic about needing to pivot quickly and trying new things, I think, maybe does have us in a more experimental activist mindset possibly. When you look at the numbers for the carbon budget and the scientists telling us that we've got basically eight years from this point to make this transformation. Of course, the transformation has to happen now in order for us to meet that deadline. What I dream of, or love to imagine, is what would this mean for us to have all hands on deck, both with our messaging through our art forms to change hearts and minds and mindsets, but also in our actions in our industries so that just at every turn, we're normalizing adjustments in the ways in which we reimagine a way forward.
We have block booking for artists. As a member of a string quartet, I don't know how many times, I'm ashamed to say, I've flown across the entire country to give one or two concerts. It's a huge carbon footprint, and I love making music with an audience. That's what I've spent my life hoping to do, but we can reimagine this. We can strengthen our local communities and our arts within our communities, I think. Anyway, I just wonder if, along these lines, I could ask each of you to talk a little bit more about some of the re-imagining maybe that you've done? What do you see that could be transformational, either inside the art form itself and the messaging or in practices? Anything at all? Maybe Gabbie, I'll throw it back to you, because I know we've talked a little bit about this already.
Gabriela Lena Frank:
I think you mentioned one big one about the block booking and the restriction clauses that make it really difficult for a musician to come in and pick up six local concerts, or be on the road for a month and then largely stay home. One thing that we have just begun to launch at my tiny academy, and we are one of those nimble, very low budget organizations, like literally out of my house. I set the rules if it's in my house once I have the five dollars that it takes to get something going. One thing that we have started ... We're calling it the Chaski Music Series, a de-carbonized concert experience. We just had the premier last week, a solo violin work in the Chaski, coming from my mother's culture in Peru. The Chaski was the runner that was allowed in an official capacity on the Inca road, which was our version through Peru in Latin America of the Silk Road, the Camino Del Inka. The idea is that we would commission from our alums a solo work.
In this case, it's violin, and then line up a dozen violinists around the world that will commit to playing it. This way, the music does travel without that premiering violinist needing to get on a plane. We would ask each of these 12 Chaskies to take photographs and videos, and to have a small audience. It could be three people. It could be a big one once we ease out of the pandemic. Then, we would collect together a collage of all these performances. Every composer, when they write a piece of music, just like when a playwright writes a play, you wonder if it's going to have a life beyond a premier. Getting that success of line is really, really important. We would be able to do that, so we have violinists lined up in Monaco, South Africa, Asia, across the U.S., and my good schoolmate in Chile to give us the Latin American premier there of this work that is composed by Rajna Swaminathan, who's a Carnatic Indian musician who voted for a really esteemed classical violist, Hyeyung Yoon, here who just performed in New York last year.
Our idea is to show how we were able to spread the music through multiple musicians in a highly beneficial way without needing to get on a plane. We ask the musicians, "This has to be in your hometown or where you live. We don't want you to get on a plane and do that." If it's included, then we have some guidelines. For instance, we're trying to introduce the violinists themselves to this idea of rethinking how they make music. See, we're not advocating just to a public. We're talking to each other within the industry, and that's really, really necessary to model how they can a vibrant career if we think about these other ways. Who else, but we insiders? Chantal can think of these things that she knows is necessary, and I can think of these things, and everything. There's not very much in the first year, but the goal is to model it. Once it's modeled, we have something to show to donors so they understand what's going on, and they see this incredible talent and commitment. It's much easier to pull in the funds to grow the program.
Rebecca McFaul:
That's great.
Dr. Robert Davies:
Chantal, along this line, this very line, I know you have this project. I want to make sure I get the title right. Climate Change Theatre Action. Earlier, Gabbie mentioned the emphasis on cultural diversity as well, and bringing into all of this voices that have often not had a large stage or a real voice. I know that this year, your Climate Change Theatre Action project has this focus on the Green New Deal. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit? First, what is this effort, and then why the Green New Deal?
Chantal Bilodeau:
Yeah. Climate Change Theatre Action was created in 2015, and it was an idea that I and three other colleagues came up with. The concept of a theatre action already existed in a somewhat different form, so we took that, and we expanded on it. Essentially, what we do is ... I like hearing what Gabriela said, because there are a lot of similarities. We commission 50 playwrights from around the world, so every continent is represented, to write a short play, five minutes long, about an aspect of climate change based on a prompt. That gives us a collection of 50 plays, and we make these plays available within a certain time window, which is in the fall to coincide with the United Nations COP meetings.
We say to people, "You can take one or several of these plays and present an event in your community. Please feel free to add other materials from musicians, other artists, or other playwrights that you know. Essentially, as long you use one play, you can be part of this project." Then, we provide support. We put all of the events on our website. We publicize them on social media. At the end, we ask for feedback from people. We ask for feedback on just how it went, but also in terms of numbers ... how many people organized it and how many people attended. We ask for photos and footage when they have then.
How the project came up is somebody at some point asked me, "What do you think needs to happen now?" This was in 2015.
I said, "There needs to be more playwrights writing about this, because if it's just me it's going to take way too long."
That's how we came up with the idea, so it's like, "Okay. We need to get playwrights interested in a topic and familiar with a topic, and then we need to get these stories out there so people have a way to come together and talk about this issue without it being a scientific lecture or something that's very political." It's a place where you can be highly subjective and when you can talk to your neighbors. It's in a community. Theater is very local, just like live music. It's very exciting for playwrights, even though it's a short play, sometimes their plays will be done 20 times in 10 different countries within the space of two or three months, which never happens in real life.
We didn't know. We did that on a fluke like, "Let's see what happens", and it has been more successful than I ever suspected. It grows every time. We do it every other year, because it's such a huge endeavor. The last time, in 2019, we had over 220 events in 28 countries. The 50 plays collectively were presented over a thousand times, and we reached 25,000 people. The other part of the project also is when anybody whose doing something, depending on your resources, bigger or smaller ... but if I have to do an event and 25 people show up, compared to the scale of the problem, it feels insignificant. It can be discouraging, but if you have 220 people putting up an event at the same time, then it feels like you're a part of a movement.
It's the same concept as being in one room together, right? Here are all these other people around me, and I'm going to gain energy from them, and I'm going to put energy into the pot. We're all going to be stronger at the end. My expertise is not in sustainability. I have colleagues who look very closely at that, in terms of building materials, energy consumption, buildings, and all of that related to the theater, but definitely it's a way to have work travel without anybody getting on a plane, since everything is very local. It's a way to be able to bring together the local and the global since the plays are from all over, so you can have somebody presenting a play from New Zealand in Canada, let's say. Maybe the Indigenous rights issues will be similar, right? Then, you get a sense of how things work across the world, but you can relate it to your own experience.
Oh, and one thing I would like to add ... When we talked about the purpose of stories, there's a study that was done not too long ago, I think, by the Yale Climate Change Communication project, I think the name is. The number of people in the U.S. who talk about climate change with their friends and families is very low. Very low, like less than 50 per cent. Unless we're able to normalize this, bring it into the culture, and be able to talk about it every day, we're not going to be able to take action. Even I tell myself sometimes, "Well, it's a play, really. It's a play. How much is it going to change the world?" What it's doing is it's bringing the topic more and more into conversation. If people encounter a play, and then a concert, and then hear a song on the radio, and read a book, then suddenly it becomes part of the Zeitgeist and it's not this thing out there that we have to deal with. It's just part of our lives.
Dr. Robert Davies:
It's something I sometimes call an ecosystem of messaging, right? We need to be continually pulsed from different places in our lives, and hopefully we're all here trying to create those pulses. Gabbie, you had your hand up. You were bursting with something.
Gabriela Lena Frank:
I did. Chantal, I was listening to you, and I was just responding artist-to-artist. We, composers ... When there's a text, a poem, or a play that could be a libretto for an opera, we want to jump on it. I just felt that kind of like, "Oh my goodness. I have to look at all this material." When this podcast is over, I would love to talk with you and look at all these wonderful artwork. Maybe I could compose something to you or bring to life in a small opera or my composers. We have an army of talent and an army of messengers basically. There is a confluence of benefit, I think, that can happen when we do normalize these conversations, and we do so within our artistic circles as well as outside. I think like attracts like, which is what this quartet of voices is proving, where we have to normalize finding one another, magnify our intentions and efforts, and I'm having that kind of response to this magnificent project that you've stewarded into life.
I do believe messages have to be reiterated again and again and again from unexpected places, from trusted voices, and unknown voices in a variety of different angles, in the news but in art. It just has to happen again and again and again and again. Our industry is not necessarily built for that. It's built for the plashy premier that is often the bulk of a person's income, where you depend on these commissions and you may get some royalties that trickle in for the scant performances that happen elsewhere. If we address climate change, we're also going to change the field. The two go hand-in-hand. I really don't see how addressing climate change in a meaningful way, climate crisis I should say, in a meaningful way can happen with the existing mores and the existing mechanisms of how art is produced, disseminated, and enjoyed. It's just not necessary enough if you follow this path.
Rebecca McFaul:
I love all of that. I wonder ... Chantal, you said something that is dear to my heart about creating this cultural space for these conversations and for this messaging away from the political arena, or just normalizing it through talking to your neighbors about it. That was very much the inspiration for Rising Tide actually, because the concert hall is a safe space. People go there, and wow ... There's just so much potential to move the conversation away from places where that conversation is currently stuck or hindered, so I'm just inspired by both of you in all that you're doing to kind of claim that space for change.
Chantal Bilodeau:
Congrats to you for bringing us together. It's really the film and the project that is bringing all of these wonderful people. I watched some of your other podcasts, and my congrats to you for doing this.
Rebecca McFaul:
Oh. Thank you. Thank you.
Dr. Robert Davies:
I was struck by something else that Gabbie, I think you said, and we just have a few minutes left, but I think this is kind of a nice place to round back to. My original inspiration was I wanted to enlist the arts to help you tell the story. Of course, not unreasonably, artists will sometimes bristle at having themselves enlisted to the company harder the art ... you know, the art is here for this. In fact, this is what you're both doing. You're saying and, I think, expanding that notion saying, "No. You can't just enlist us. We're going to enlist you to help us change the world." Both of you are not just creating works that draw attention to these issues and open up space for the conversations and promote them. You're also training other artists. You've both created little factories of which you're trying to bring in artists and have them become a part of this effort and this storytelling in whatever way makes sense to them.
To do that, of course, you've both said you need those artists to know the story of climate change, of global change, and all the connections to that social, all kinds of aspects of social justice. All aspects of it. You've both built that into your work, and I wonder if you might just talk a little bit about how it is you're helping your community learn these stories? I'll just say that in a class that I teach for fine arts and humanities students, their final project is to retell the scientific story in their own artistic voices. My only rule for them is you don't have to get the science right, but you can't get it wrong. I'm wondering if you might talk about how it is you're helping your artists do that? We've got about five or ten minutes left. Chantal, you bring in these workshops, and you want them to know the story. I already know the answer to this, but I'm going to ask you to talk about it.
Chantal Bilodeau:
I say it's not your job to teach the science.
Dr. Robert Davies:
Good. Yeah.
Chantal Bilodeau:
You have to understand it, but it's not the job of the artist to teach the science, because we're not scientists. It's not our job to do this. We're going to get it wrong. You can do something that's very much inspired by science and that includes science, but the end goal is not to teach the science. The end goal is to open up avenues for explorations and to pose questions that we maybe can all pose together or answer together, so the science becomes a way to ground the story you're going to tell. Depending on who's telling the story and what story they want to tell, sometimes they don't even need to know that much of the science.
If you're going to write a story about escaping a wild fire in California, it doesn't matter what the science is. It's a very personal story about a lived experience. If you're going to tell a story about the evolution of the world, then you should know a little bit more. It's all contextual, but I think the most important point, and another thing I say, is don't repeat the headlines. We're reading the headlines. We're overwhelmed by the headlines. We don't need a play, a story, or anything that's going to repeat that. You have to find another way in that's not a scientific lecture, that's not what we read in a newspaper. This is where the artistry comes, I think. What is the story that hasn't been told yet that you feel should be out there?
Dr. Robert Davies:
Beautiful. Gabbie?
Gabriela Lena Frank:
Yeah. Again, I absolutely agree. And I think that artists really respond well when they see one or two examples of something that is revealing connections that haven't been made before. Again, if you read the headlines, that's pretty clear, but if you tell the intimate story of somebody that is experiencing that headline within a scope of their life, and you do so in a beautiful choreography, piece of music, or in a dance, that's going to hit people in their hearts despite their political persuasion and other things. When I talk about this, and I'm in a very preliminary phase really of instilling this curriculum ... although I have been talking about it with my composers, it's only been recently that I've been letting them into my thought process as I'm weighing which stories to tell, is music the best medium, and which music form? Should this be with words, or should it be purely instrumental? Should it be symphonic? Should it be choral?
I have a gig coming up with a fantastic youth choir. I don't know what they're going to say, but I said, "Imagine a power of children saying, 'What are you leaving us with?'", the young voices doing this, but then I have to talk about, "Don't scare the kids too much." What I'll do is I'll read these articles that are abundant advice for parents, "How to talk about the climate crisis with kids", and that helps me approach the words, the text, and the music. It's like I'm their parent for a little while, and then watching the reaction of the audience ... the guilt, or the parents that are among them in the audience. You have to think about that. I talked to the composers about how I'm approaching it, and I might start strategizing even though I don't have that piece fully formed yet, but I have an entry point in to start finding my way.
Another that Rob and Rebecca know about is strategizing larger connections. I had a gig with the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the piece was postponed, its premier, because of the pandemic. That was supposed to react to Beethoven, this being a huge Beethoven year and anniversary, 250 year anniversary for Beethoven. It's kind of a classical music response to go back and honor this giant that is not really symptomatic of our diversity and our championing of current voices. I was able to bring in three composers from my academy to respond to different symphonies. The orchestra agreed to that because of this relationship that we have, and the composers were one African American, one Iranian Canadian, a young woman, and myself, so it was the four of us. Very diverse. I was able to get that going, which was really beautiful. Then, two of us responded to the environment.
I said, "This is an amazing platform, and why would a response to Beethoven invite a discussion about the climate crisis?"
Iman Habibi, my Iranian Canadian composer, said, "Beethoven loved the forest. He got his best ideas by walking through this healthy forest, which we don't have anymore, that's imperil to the genius and creativity."
I had a choral component, because I was responding to the 9th Symphony, the Ode to Joy, with that big call component that is recognizable in big action scenes. Prisoners of war in various wars have sung it to their captives. It has an incredible history. I said, "You know, Beethoven lived during the Industrial Revolution, and this was the time when you start finding people complaining about pollution." This was the backdrop to his entire life. The Industrial Revolution was propelled by colonizing Latin America and other parts of the world. This is the fantasy. Beethoven is going to meet somebody from Latin America, who is a fellow artist and member of the Cuzco school of painters. The Cuzco school were these anonymous, Indigenous painters of Peru conscripted into artistic evangelism. They were taught the Flemish style of painting in order to evangelize the Natives.
They were largely anonymous, but as the movement went on over many decades, they began to sign their painting. They began to include emblems of Peruvian landscape while the Peruvian landscape was changing. The message is that you are harming our environment. We're trying to save it. We're putting it out into this inhospitable land, so Pachamama is asking what evokes, finally when, that land today is in peril, when these animals that I'm hiding in my paintings, that are native to Peru and not to Europe, are no longer here, and when these beautiful rivers are exploding into oily fire because of oil spills. It's really startling when you can make these large juxtapositions that talk about the consequences from centuries ago landing now in the environment. This draws on what I already know. I already know about Latin American idioms.
What we have to tell our artist too is that you have 90 per cent of what you need already. The 10 per cent of education is to help you connect the climate crisis to what you know. Like what Chantal was saying, you don't have to be a scientist. Use that imagination. This takes time. I didn't have the beautiful story clear in my head when I first write the piece. I had an instinct that there was something to explore here, and I got it at the bar line. I got the whole thing right as I was in it. You have to teach your artists courage. This is a new area that not a lot of artists have explored yet, and they have to use the skillset they already have and find answers in it, which can be hard when everything is publicly premiered. You don't have the privacy to fail so much, and we don't have a lot of time for that. I talk about that with my composers. You're asking about how do we train our artists into it.
Dr. Robert Davies:
I would just like to say that entire description of how this story connecting to Latin American painters, the Peruvian painters ... This is not a storytelling device that would ever occur to a physicist. I can promise you. It's so exactly right. What you said, Gabbie, this notion of, "We have everything we need scientifically and technologically. What we don't seem to have is the cultural ability at the moment to make these changes." Of course, this is what you guys do, is connect us to these stories in ways that actually evolve our culture. Rebecca, we need to thank our guests one more time.
Rebecca McFaul:
Yes.
Dr. Robert Davies:
I just want to thank you so much both for the thins that you do, and thank you so much for joining us for this conversation.
Rebecca McFaul:
Yes. Thank you. You're both extraordinary, and I love the idea too of just leaving it on the notion of courage. Thank you so, so much. We have a few sponsors to thank in closing as well. Our 2020/21 season sponsors are the Utah Legislature and the Utah Division of Arts and Museums, the Lawrence T. & Janet T. Dee Foundation, the Salt Lake County Zoo, Arts, & Parks, the George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Foundation, iZotope, Salt Lake City Arts Council, Cultural Vision Fund, Dominion Energy, Rocky Mountain Power Foundation, the Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, and the Aaron Copland Fund for Music. Thank you to all our sponsors as well, and thank you for listening.
Announcer:
This has been the NOVA Podcast. Our hosts were Rob Davies and Rebecca McFaul. Our guests were Gabriela Lena Frank and Chantal Bilodeau. This episode was produced by Chris Myers. This concludes The Crossroad Series, six episodes centered around the themes of Rising Tide, a new film from The Crossroads Project. You can view Rising Tide for free at novaslc.org/crossroads. The NOVA Podcast is funded by listeners like you. You can donate to support NOVA's programming at novaslc.org. On our next episode, we're bringing you great music from the NOVA archives, so don't forget to subscribe and share the NOVA Podcast with your friends. Thanks for joining us.