Fairy Tales for the Anthropocene Playgoer's Guide

Theatre as a living artform, new plays breathing new life.

  • Sometimes when we think of theatre, we think only of the classics - the Shakespeare’s and the Arthur Miller's - but theatre as an artform is so much more than just the classics. As said in our mission statement, The Mission of ISU Theatre is to empower citizen artistry by engaging students and the community in transformative theatre and performing arts experiences which examine the human condition, encourage lifelong learning, teach artistic skills, prepare professionals, inspire empathy, explore creativity, build relationships, and embrace diversity. What better way to do this than to explore new works by living and breathing playwrights from all backgrounds, from all around the United States? Working with new plays is a wonderfully unique experience, and we’re honored to be some of the first people to bring these scripts to life on stage. Speaking of new plays, who are the playwrights? 
  • Listed below are the websites of each of our playwrights. Please take a look around and explore these exceptionally talented folks’ pages. 

What is the Anthropocene 

  • The word Anthropocene is derived from the Greek words anthropo, for “man,” and cene for “new,” coined by biologist Eugene Stormer and chemist Paul Crutzen in 2000. The Anthropocene is the proposed Epoch (An instant in time chosen as the origin of a particular calendar era, serving as a reference point from which time is measured) that we are currently living in. Officially, our current Epoch is known as the Holocene, which began roughly 11,700 years ago after the last major ice age. While the term Anthropocene has gained traction in recent years, it has yet to be formally adopted in the scientific community. That being said - if we are in it, when did it start?
    • Among those who accept the proposed Anthropocene, there is still debate on when it began. One of the leading theories is that the geological age began in the early 1800’s as a result of the industrial revolution and the impact it’s had on the Earth’s environment. Others argue that the Anthropocene truly started in 1945, when humans tested the first atomic bomb, and later the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, as the resulting radioactive particles were detected in soil worldwide. 

 

chart of epochs

 

Puppets? Why!?

  • The act of creating and performing with a puppet is, as puppeteer and puppet scholar John Bell stresses, an act of humans “coming to terms with the material world, a momentary alliance or bargain between humans and the stuff of, or literally stuff in performance.” We believe that through the use of puppetry in this performance, we can truly capture the essence of this alliance and better understand what it means to live in harmony with the “stuff” surrounding us. That, and well, puppetry is cool! As one of the (supposed) earliest forms of theatre, puppetry is a diverse and complex blend of craftsmanship and theatrical performance. There are over 60 types of surviving puppetry techniques documented by the World Encyclopedia of Puppetry Arts - and we explore just a few in Fairytales for the Anthropocene, the main one being Shadow Puppetry. 
    • Shadow puppetry began thousands of years ago in China and India, but is a form that is found in many more cultures including Greece, Turkey, and more recently (starting in the 1800’s) western Europe. 
    • Traditional shadow puppets are flat and made of leather. Smaller areas within each figure are cut away to create fine detail such as faces, tools, clothing, etc. Puppeteers move and control the figures using long rods behind a translucent screen (usually made from paper or cloth). A lamp on the puppeteer's side of the stage provides the light that allows the audience on the other side of the screen to see the moving shadows.
    • There are many contemporary puppeteers who have built on this practice using modern technologies, which means there is no limit to where their imaginations may take them - some of which we explore here in our own production. 
shadow puppetry