The Sustainability Officer: A Satire by Amanda Douge
Performance as climate pedagogy situates media and text, whether film, live performance, audio, or print, as a vector and catalyst for climate transformations. Arts-based methods have transdisciplinary dexterity, potentially synthesising knowledge across a diverse range of academic disciplines from climate sociology, political philosophy, critical, feminist, and literary theory, psychoanalytic scholarship, and environmental science. Performance and creative writing can offer multi-layered and accessible responses to sustainability questions and the broad communications provocation, “If the scientists are screaming, why can’t we hear them cry?”
The “Holy Fool” is a comedic archetype which is uniquely positioned to present difficult and emotionally uncomfortable information to power and the public. In the example above, performance and particularly satire, invites critical reflection, provides new perspectives on the subjectivities which transmitters of climate communications inhabit, questions hegemonic relations, inspires rigorous accountability, and makes visible the significance of emotional literacies. But also, sustainability communications which hold the intent to amuse, allow the pleasure of laughter to both widen the impact and soften the blow.
Performer and scholar Amanda Douge draws upon an award-winning, thirty-year career as an actor, writer, and director. She is attentive to the opportunities performance provides within research collaborations and teaching methods to craft impactful, counter-hegemonic climate interventions.
Click the picture below to see the sketch.
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To use the example here for teaching materials, discuss performance as climate pedagogy or for research collaboration enquiries please contact Amanda Douge. A.douge.1@research.gla.ac.uk or for further information www.amandadouge.com