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Post by Phantom of London on Nov 10, 2017 22:45:53 GMT
If any of you are any doubt, it's my true love and that is theatre.
However one part of theatre that makes me truly shudder and I'm no tree hugger by any mean, That is when you see a set design and the amount of wood that is used and I think how many trees have been felled to create this marvellous piece of theatre. I see productions such as Shakespeare In Love that all use high quality wood, this show isn't the only offender though by any means, or other shows with wood as stage flooring.
When they use so much wood I wonder if it is sustainable, if they offset what they used by planting more trees, if they don't - do you think they should? I certainly do.
After all, we ultimately inhale trees to survive.
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Post by daniel on Nov 10, 2017 23:00:16 GMT
I remember reading about a company that recycles old theatre sets. How much they're used I don't know, but at least things (hopefully) aren't just going on the skip.
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Post by shady23 on Nov 10, 2017 23:26:46 GMT
What about the old programmes when there's a cast change? Forests upon forests there too.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 11, 2017 6:48:07 GMT
I did a bit of searching for "sustainability of wood"* and the WWF has set a target for 100% of UK timber use to be from sustainable sources by 2020. I couldn't find any sources for how the theatre industry is doing but there are standards for sustainability for other areas of entertainment so I'd expect theatre to be doing something similar.
* Not one single search result was for viagra.
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Post by oxfordsimon on Nov 11, 2017 11:07:30 GMT
The theatre group of which I am secretary is lucky to have the use of a huge Victorian indoor tennis court which is our set building facility and store. We use and reuse set pieces over many, many years - only buying new materials when we can't recycle. Sadly we will have to leave there in the coming years and that will mean that we will struggle to keep anything other than the bare essentials from year to year.
But in terms of current sustainability, we are pretty decent at it - more because it keeps costs down to reuse than anything. Plus once you have built a 14ft flat to fit the Oxford Playhouse stage, you might as well keep using it until it ceases to be viable. No point rebuilding everything every time.
I suspect there are many amateur groups who don't have a large storage space who do have to build from scratch a lot more that we do. And there are those who can store between shows.
I know the Oxford student drama scene is trying to be sustainable - and certainly you see a lot of the same furniture being reused - but they don't have a set storage space and so at the end of many major productions, you see a skip outside the venue ready to receive stuff.
So for many people, storage is the key to sustainability. If you can, your environmental impact will be much lower than those who can't. And storage don't come cheap.
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5,062 posts
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Post by Phantom of London on Nov 12, 2017 20:03:06 GMT
What about the old programmes when there's a cast change? Forests upon forests there too. I would hope for £4 - £6 I pay for a programme, then they would have the decency to use recycled paper. What does drive me made though is the amount of promotion brochures I have drop through my letterbox, somewhere along the line I must have forgotten to check a box whilst making an online purchase, so consequently I receive every brochure from ATG theatres, even ones hundreds of miles away from my home, these Normally come just before pantomime season (now). as I say I forgot to check a box, which would have been done online, so a hint there, how I decide what to see. The theatre group of which I am secretary is lucky to have the use of a huge Victorian indoor tennis court which is our set building facility and store. We use and reuse set pieces over many, many years - only buying new materials when we can't recycle. Sadly we will have to leave there in the coming years and that will mean that we will struggle to keep anything other than the bare essentials from year to year. But in terms of current sustainability, we are pretty decent at it - more because it keeps costs down to reuse than anything. Plus once you have built a 14ft flat to fit the Oxford Playhouse stage, you might as well keep using it until it ceases to be viable. No point rebuilding everything every time. I suspect there are many amateur groups who don't have a large storage space who do have to build from scratch a lot more that we do. And there are those who can store between shows. I know the Oxford student drama scene is trying to be sustainable - and certainly you see a lot of the same furniture being reused - but they don't have a set storage space and so at the end of many major productions, you see a skip outside the venue ready to receive stuff. So for many people, storage is the key to sustainability. If you can, your environmental impact will be much lower than those who can't. And storage don't come cheap. I applaud you how even in community theatre, you make great efforts in substainability by suing materials many times, my guess would be the wood you do use would be Plyboard/MDF which is a good choice in itself and is a better substainability wood than others. Daniel earlier hit the nail on the head earlier, by saying in the skip, which I would find abhorrent. |
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Post by oxfordsimon on Nov 12, 2017 20:10:21 GMT
We do, indeed, mainly use marine ply for outdoor shows and thin MDF for inside productions. We also buy some softwood to make frames for cloth-covered flats.
We built a staging unit in 2006 for outdoor shows and that went on to be used for a further 8 summers. It is since been cut up for other purposes - so still hasn't been fully scrapped.
But storage is the key. Without affordable storage, we would have to build and discard. The economics of theatre at any level means that there is rarely money for medium or long term storage.
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Post by Phantom of London on Nov 16, 2017 21:59:03 GMT
We do, indeed, mainly use marine ply for outdoor shows and thin MDF for inside productions. We also buy some softwood to make frames for cloth-covered flats. We built a staging unit in 2006 for outdoor shows and that went on to be used for a further 8 summers. It is since been cut up for other purposes - so still hasn't been fully scrapped. But storage is the key. Without affordable storage, we would have to build and discard. The economics of theatre at any level means that there is rarely money for medium or long term storage. It seems that your theatre company tries its upmost to being substainable and you can only do your best, as you pointed out you use wood that’s very substainable and obviously it is out of your hands with the storage situation. What I find more gaoling is when I am in the West End and you see Oak being used which takes absolutely years to grow and may come from an undeveloped country, so could effect that countries ecology through deforestation. As it happens I was reading my Albion programme from the Almeida, a couple of days after creating this thread and noticed this. almeida.co.uk/index.php?option=com_docman&view=download&alias=254-environmental-sustainability-policy-2015-18&category_slug=almeida-green&Itemid=133On a different note earlier on this thread I noticed you mentioned the Oxford Playhouse, I made my first visit to the venue a couple of weeks ago, to see Driving Miss Daisy - I also took in the Ashmolean across the road and enjoyed both very much. |
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