The moment when the actors’ sweltering bodies shed their crumbled costumes in the dressing room, the breakdown of the inseparable begins—the actors’ bodies and the costumes that presented a seamless portrayal of a character onstage now enter two separate realms. Although the living bodies will most likely appear onstage again, what about the costumes? Pickled with sweat and smeared makeup, they might be sprayed with alcohol before the next performance, or go through some chemical treatment and enter the shop to collect dust, or they might be sold off to those who want to make a big impression at the next Halloween party. But more often than not, they end up as landfill—those cheap, colorful, shiny shreds of garbage that were not produced in Mother Nature's belly, but were made in sweatshops by underpaid textile workers and draped by some overworked costume shop employee.

Theatre making is inherently a wasteful business. Debris of sawdust, piles of cloths and dried-up paint, odd props that once had their place in the limelight onstage but are now relegated to obscurity—these are the material remains of a live event. They accumulate quickly, adding up to a vast pile of theatrical trash. Imagine the total sum of motley wastelands created by production after production, since the dawn of theatrical props, stage design, and costumes. Of all things onstage, it is strange to think that human actors are the only constantly recurring continuum, whereas material objects tend to vanish. With a propensity for celebrating disposability, the theatre world could be regarded as just another garbage-producing institution.

A Californian sitting on the ticking clock of the next seismic eruption in the Cascadia subduction zone—an event that ominously is a matter of “when,” not “if”—I have come to fear nature as it unleashes its irreversible force and runs along upon its unstoppable course. But to irritate it with our lazy habits—wastefully squandering plastic bottles and carelessly throwing away playbills—is simply inviting nature's wrath sooner than necessary.

I am by no means the first one to dream of a theatre piece exclusively made with recycled objects. There has been much contemplation on the contamination of nature, with An Enemy of the People, a play by Henrik Ibsen that was later adapted by Arthur Miller, standing as a prime example. An equally important work in our own time is Caridad Svich's 2012 play The Way of Water, which provides an intimate account of the 2010 BP oil spill's impact on human health and environment. From contaminated bathwater to polluted ocean water, disaster strikes our environment to find catastrophe one of the successful recipes for dramatic meltdown.

But the environmental disasters in these plays have far-reaching implications that go beyond being simply left as a dramatic effect. We see and sense tangible consequences of how anomalous weather patterns can break natural cycles. Actions to counter these environmental destructions—no matter how small their scale might be—should be taken quite seriously. Environmentally friendly practice in the theatre world is a growing trend, from recycling stage set, props, and costumes to building a performing space exclusively from recycled materials. Many small-scale, grassroots-level productions make this point their priority. Take, for instance, a children's educational theatre production called Recycling Pirates, a mom-and-pop production by Good Life Theatre. In the words of its creators, the production is a “rollicking musical about puppet characters created from trash,” who “sail the urban seas looking for things to recycle, reuse, reduce and repair.”Footnote ¹ Originally titled Junkyard Pirates, the show was commissioned by the Wolf Trap Foundation and appeared for three years (2009–11) as the Wolf Trap Institute for Early Learning's field-trip performance at their education center.

In Austin, Texas, a movement to reuse leftover materials from theatre productions rather than discard them was hosted by the performance blog StageSpot: redundant materials from theatre productions in the area were donated and upcycled to become fashionable garments during the Texas Campaign for the Environment (TCE) Trash Makeover show.Footnote ²

Recycling is not only the subject of a play or the aftermath of a play, but can also be the foundational principle of creating a performance space such as The Yard in London's east district of Hackney Wick. Built predominantly with biodegradable materials and the reclaimed materials from London's Olympic Park, The Yard is a small performance space and a cooperative, helping to subsidize local theatre communities by offering a free rehearsal and performance spaces in exchange for half of box office returns and building management.

Environmentalism is not only about small-scale movements. On the more commercial side of the theatre business, an initiative to conserve limited resources and produce less waste was launched in 2008 with the “Broadway Goes Green” campaign—a partnership between the city of New York and Broadway theatres. On 28 November 2008, the day the campaign was inaugurated, then-mayor Michael Bloomberg provided a hopeful projection: “By this time next year the lights on Broadway will burn just a little bit brighter, but our energy bills will be a little bit lower, and our carbon footprint will be as well.”Footnote ³ The initiative is encouraging Broadway productions to use energy-efficient light bulbs for billboards; to be mindful of recycling, repurposing, and reclaiming costumes, stage sets, and props to reduce landfill; and to use eco-friendly materials for producing playbills.

While different forms of environmental activism have been around for a long time, it is a burgeoning trend in the theatre world. As David Stone, a producer behind Wicked, acknowledged, “The theater community has always been at the forefront of social change, and we have been left behind on this one a little bit.”Footnote ⁴ Very true, but better late than never. In the coming years, Theatre Survey could shed more light on our wasteful practices in theatre making by featuring more articles calling for conscientious use of our limited resources—onstage as well as in our everyday life. It could do more to educate us about the disastrous consequences we will face if we don't start changing how we make theatre. Would creativity not be better served if we had to generate a completely new purpose for the props every time we use them?