Climate Action Designer for Metra

Flux Theatre Ensemble is thrilled to announce our search for a Climate Action Designer (CAD) for our upcoming production of Metra: A Climate Revolution Play with Songs. Metra will run at Abrons Arts Center, located at 466 Grand St, NYC, from October 24 – November 19, 2022. The CAD will work with the director, designers, and production team to manifest Metra’s themes of climate revolution by inspiring the audience toward climate action. In the spirit of Flux’s Open Book program, the learnings from the CAD process will be disseminated online for other theatre-makers to use.

Please email Corinna Schulenburg if you’re interested in working with us as CAD. While we welcome people with prior experience in climate organizing and green theatre-making, we also welcome people who are new to this work and want to learn along with us. Learn more about Flux’s values and practices below.

The CAD will be compensated a minimum of $15/hour for their work. Beginning in July and running through tech into opening in October, we expect the CAD will work between 30-40 hours total. The specific activities of the CAD will be developed in equitable partnership with the person who takes on this role, and may include:

• Collaborating with show’s dramaturg to make connections between the climate revolution in Metra to real-world climate activism and activists; 
• Building relationships with climate activists and organizations—particularly those led by Indigenous, Black, and frontline activists—to amplify their goals through the production;
• Working with the technical director on sourcing sustainable materials and reusing/recycling materials for strike;
• Developing pathways for audience members who are inspired by Metra to plug into sustained climate action; and
• Documenting and disseminating the practices that we develop together. 

While the specific goals will be developed with the person who takes the CAD role, we know that success will feel like our community organizing toward sustained climate action. Flux and the CAD will disseminate the practices we develop together through Flux’s website, social media, press releases, and email lists. 

ABOUT THE PRODUCTION:

“Physical manifestations of the many indigenous cultural myths and religions that were mostly eradicated by colonizing forces throughout history. She and her far-flung sisters are the remaining common thread that connects all those myth systems.”
-Cori, Metra: A Climate Revolution Play with Songs

Metra: A Climate Revolution Play With Songs is written by Emily and Ned Hartford, with songs by Ned Hartford. The year is 2043. Despite lip service toward climate efforts, for the past quarter century the fossil fuel industry has continued to thrive. Shit’s bad. The rich folk choose not to notice, because they’ve got air-conditioned Bubble communities with all the trappings of real society, and they continue to reap the benefits of disaster capitalism. But on the Outside, a revolution is brewing. It’s a movement of collective power. It’s tapping into an ancient, mythic, elemental magic. It is underground, in the air, and beneath the waves.

When his vehicle is sabotaged, a powerful capitalist finds shelter in a nearby bar. The denizens of the bar are revolutionaries who offer him a heady cocktail of honeyed mead, ancient magic, and song, which draws him down a mythic rabbit hole. They place the powerful man into the myth of King Erisycthon and his daughter, Metra—confronting him with his complicity in a system of disastrous consumption and oppression. The revolutionaries offer him a choice: step out of the cycle of destruction, or face its consequences.

The creative and production teams currently include: Emily Hartford (co-writer, director), Ned Hartford (co-writer, songs), Will Lowry (Scenic Design), Lori Elizabeth Parquet (role of Cori), Kia Rogers (Lighting Design), Corinna Schulenburg (role of Sam), and Salma Zohdi (Dramaturg). 

The themes for Metra were originally conceived and developed through a series of devising workshops in 2018, led by Emily Hartford, that were funded by the Puffin Foundation. Following those workshops, Metra had its first full table read in September 2019 and received development support through Flux’s Annual Retreat, as well as Flux’s new-work incubator, Core Work. Two additional public readings were held on December 4, 2021. 

ABOUT THE COMPANY: 

Since 2006, Flux has produced 28 productions and countless readings and developmental projects. The non-hierarchical ensemble is made up of eleven Creative Partners composed of actors, directors, playwrights, and designers. Flux is the proud recipient of the 2011 Caffe Cino Fellowship Award, presented annually to an Off-Off-Broadway theatre company that consistently produces outstanding work. The company’s productions of Hearts Like Fists and Ajax in Iraq were chosen as “New York Times Critics’ Picks” and in 2015 Backstage named Flux one of “eight young and mighty New York theatre companies.” Over the years, Flux has received New York Innovative Theatre Award nominations for their productions of Operating Systems, Rizing, Marian or The True Tale of Robin Hood, Once Upon a Bride There Was a Forest, Jane the Plain, Sans Merci, Hearts Like Fists, Ajax in Iraq, The Angel Eaters Trilogy, The Lesser Seductions of History and Dog Act. Flux Theatre Ensemble is a member of the Alliance of Resident Theatres/NY, the Network of Ensemble Theaters and the League of Independent Theatres.

Flux Theatre Ensemble has produced the majority of our plays on the Lenape island of Mannahatta in Lenapehoking, the Lenape homeland. Every year, Flux holds our Annual Retreat at the Little Pond Arts Retreat, also on Lenni Lenape lands in Nazareth, PA. We honor the generations of stewardship Native peoples have given to the water, air, and land.

Flux’s Core Values are: Collective Care; Consent and Agency; Rigor and Release; Aesthetic of Liberation; and Joy. Learn more about our values here: https://www.fluxtheatre.org/about/core-values/  

ABOUT THE LIVING TICKET & OPEN BOOK PROGRAMS: Flux makes our entire budget an Open Book—with all the details published online—so our community knows the true costs of things. We believe this can empower a conversation with our community that treats them as equals, not marketing targets. A frank conversation about the value and cost of making theatre not only helps Flux become more sustainable, but more equitable, as well. When our community gives, they’ll know exactly where their resources are going, and more importantly, to whom.

Flux has also removed the need for a financial transaction to attend our productions. Our Living Ticket program means anyone can attend, regardless of their access to financial resources. At the same time, we invite everyone reserving a ticket to review our Open Book budget and give as they’re able so that we can pay our collaborators a living wage. The Living Ticket program was honored with an Arts Entrepreneurship Award from Fractured Atlas.  

The Living Ticket and Open Book programs, along with our consent-based, non-hierarchical decision-making practices, align Flux with the larger climate movement away from extractive systems toward regenerative systems. This explicit CAD role, focused on designing climate action as an integral part of our production, is the next evolution of that decades-long work.