Ocean Filibuster

An interactive intermission features a “thermohaline rave”, augmented reality seafloor structures and local collaborations with New Orleans environmental groups including Atelier de la Nature (Thursday), the Water Map New Orleans (Saturday), the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South (TBD) and Sustaining All Life (TBD).

For more info about this touring show, visit www.oceanfilibuster.com

Credits

Video: Stivo Arnoczy & Tal Yarden
Scenic: Jeff Becker, Nate Lemoine & Jian Jung
Costumes: Olivera Gajic
Lighting: Thomas Dunn
Sound: Andrew Lynch & Sxip Shirey
Production Stage Management: Lisa McGinn
Production Manager: Carly Levin
Video Supervisor & Programmer: Matthew Deinhart
Lighting Supervisor & Ensemble Leader: Evan Spigelman
Sound Engineer & Supervisor: Andrew Lynch
Animation: Rosane Chamecki, Breslin Sibley-Martin, Marina Zurkow
Augmented Reality: Agatha Park
Tour Manager & Producer: Amanda Cooper
Original Sound Design concept developed with Mikaal Sulaiman

Synopsis

Ocean Filibuster draws audiences into a surprising, intimate and theatrical relationship with the ocean. The performance is in two acts, with an extended intermission in between. ACT ONE: Mr. Majority proposes the ocean has become so dangerous it must be compressed into several manageable (and marketable) seas: he speaks and sings his case with biting political rhetoric and lyrics dripping with patriotism. When he calls his bill to a vote, the Ocean appears, begins to filibuster, and “overflows” into a multi-dimensional ensemble. INTERMISSION: The Ocean invites the audience into an interactive intermission led by the ensemble. ACT TWO: Mr. Majority continues to push his anthropocentric point of view, leading to a battle of wills between him and the Ocean. How can humans shift our thinking and transform our power structures to imagine and manifest a healthy future together?

Ocean Filibusteruses spectacle, participation and immersive performance to activate awareness and engagement in science and climate justice. The very core of the project calls for deep community engagement; embedding a local ensemble into the performance, and working with the community to create a hyper-local interactive intermission.

How it Began

Ocean Filibuster began in 2017 with a commission from the Harvard University Center for the Environment and American Repertory Theater, part of a project to bring science and environmental issues to stage. This opportunity allowed us to extend the work we began with How to Build a Forest, our 8-hour performance meditation on forests, ecosystems and human systems. We asked Ocean Scientists at Harvard what they most wanted us to convey about this vast body of water. They were quiet for a minute and then one said “Wonder?” We were hooked.

We quickly became obsessed and concerned with the Ocean as a “human enabler” especially when it came to the carbon cycle. We rely on ocean photosynthesis to create half the air that we breathe. We increasingly inhibit the ocean’s ability to create this air by overloading it with carbon, but it keeps taking it, protects us from feeling the negative impact of our actions, and allows us to keep on with our destructive behavior. But how much can the Ocean take? What if the Ocean decided to start speaking out-- and spoke and spoke and spoke until it was heard?

Inspired by Wendy Davis’ historic filibuster in the Texas Senate in 2013, we imagined a future global senate in a world where the Ocean has already changed the shape of many continents due to sea level rise. Mr. Majority presents a bill to protect humanity by ending the Ocean as we know it; The Ocean arrives to stand up for itself and begins to filibuster the bill.

We knew immediately that both characters would be played by one actor, exploring the intimate, interconnected human-ocean relationship. Jenn Kidwell, with their immense clowning and devising talent and huge heart and mind, was the perfect person. We also knew both characters would speak and sing their arguments and asked our long-time collaborator Sxip Shirey to join us to compose music. The rest of our fabulous design team joined once we had a draft of the show.