Watch the play, eat the stage!

23 03 2013

The other day I went with a friend to ‘Earthly Activation’, an informal talk about sustainability presented by Melbourne’s architectural and design community. The event was held at the Section 8 pub in Melbourne.

A nice hot day, where some fantastic speakers gave great insight on relevant topics such as the current food system, ethical food, organic food certifications and sustainability in all its forms! It was a really good discussion and I learned a few things about traditional and organic food systems in Australia. But what I really loved was Tanja Beer’s presentation about “The Living Stage”.

This presentation was really surprising! I’ve never heard about this concept of “Green Theatre” or “Living Stage”. The “Green Theatre” offers sustainable solutions for theatrical design to support the ethic of ‘ecological design’ in the Performing Arts. The main idea is to demonstrate to the community that we can create exciting artistic projects and ideas with minimal effect on the environment.

The Living Stage

Tanja shared her experience with the audience and explained how she started integrating sustainability into her work. She presented the concept of “Living Stage” which is an eco-scenographic concept that combines stage design, permaculture and community engagement to create a recyclable, biodegradable and edible performance space. She uses plants, vegetables, fruits, salads or even soil.

Imagine a stage that you can literally eat after the play! How crazy is that?! I have never seen this before and I really love the idea of being able to eat the stage! Such a cool idea!

Instead of using traditional construction materials to build the stage, they use recycled materials, plants and a veggie garden that is cultivated by the community. She said that the actors also play with the elements on the stage interacting with the audience. Those plays are for sure an exceptional experience for the public.

She brought some salads from one of her “Living Stages” for us to try and of course I didn’t miss the opportunity to scoff the salad! The taste was so good and healthy! I have just one thing to say! Great job Tanja! It’s a beautiful and creative way to integrate sustainability with design and performing arts. Well done!