When visiting professor Emily K. Harrison’s students at the southern liberal arts college of Sewanee in Tennessee suggested producing a play about climate change, she was initially hesitant.
“That idea filled me with dread. I was like, ‘Uh, nobody wants to hear us talk about that,’” she says of her Spring 2022 devised theater students’ request to tackle the climate crisis on stage. “But they were really passionate about the topic, and I became really interested in making this with my students because their lives will be so much harder if people don’t wake up to the severity of the moment.”
Following this initial collaboration at Sewanee, Harrison put together a team of multigenerational artists from across the country to produce the world premiere of Things We Will Miss: Meditations on the Climate Crisis through her Boulder-based, award-winning company, Square Product Theatre.
The collage-style work is a non-linear exploration of the performers’ personal reflections on living amid worsening climate change. Through a collection of personal vignettes, Things We Will Miss invites viewers to consider what will be remembered as the world we know disappears.
“It’s postmodern at times and realistic at others,” Harrison says. “We are sharing incredibly intimate stories, but there is no plot — just our reflections on the climate crisis, the mess we are in, and what options we have left. … The climate crisis is very much a story of our time, one that many of us are trying to make sense of, and so we’re exploring theatrical tools that share the experience, that tell the story, in new and exciting ways.”
The upcoming workshop presentation at the Dairy Arts Center, running July 7 through July 22, greatly expands upon the work Harrison did with students at Sewanee. Square Product Theatre has continued to work on its script in Zoom meetings with a variety of student and professional theater creators across America to expand Things We Will Miss into the company’s first full-length, original work since Everything Was Stolen in 2019.
“I’ve loved seeing how this piece has evolved in the year since we began devising, and getting everyone together in Boulder is going to send it in some incredible new directions,” says Nathaniel Klein, an artist based in Madison, Wisconsin, who has worked on the project since its inception. “Everyone has to put a little bit of themselves into the piece, and that kind of sharing is transformative.”
‘The beauty of what could be’
According to Harrison, Things We Will Miss has evolved a lot since its development at Sewanee. “I think the main difference between the original and what it’s become now is that the original had a kind of heavy, depressing nature and this one is much more optimistic,” she says. “We weren’t willing to look on the bright side or consider that a brighter side could exist. Things We Will Miss is still serious, but I want people to know that it’s not going to be a total downer.”
In its mission to illuminate the climate crisis for audiences, Things We Will Miss incorporates text from other media into real-life stories to help make the play more engrossing. “It’s a combination of devised and found text,” Harrison says. “We draw from Twin Peaks, poetry, speeches from conferences at the United Nations, lines from previous plays we’ve produced and Laurie Anderson songs — just kind of random shit that some people will recognize, and some people will not, but everything connects back to this central theme.”
After performances at the Dairy, viewers are encouraged to offer feedback to the creative team, which they will use to improve and further develop the work. “We’re a Colorado-based company, so it just makes sense for us to premiere it here in Boulder and see how our audience responds,” Harrison says. “The goal is for us to keep working on it and do it again in other places.”
Since the production is still being workshopped, Harrison decided to include minimal technical elements. Keeping Things We Will Miss light on design allowed the creative team to easily make changes to their blocking and script.
“It is easier to change things around in the development when you don’t have a lot of shit,” Harrison says. “We have some handheld lights we are playing with, and the costume will be simple clothes you would see in real life. The most active technical elements are the sound and projection design, which showcase the beautiful things that we will miss in the wake of the climate crisis.”
Ahead of the workshop’s upcoming debut on July 7 at the Dairy’s Carsen Theater, assistant director Irmak Sagir says working on the show has offered an opportunity to reflect on the severity of the looming crisis and the power of the stage to affect social change.
“I learned so much from working on this show,” Sagir says. “It forced me to imagine what the future will look like, and it got me thinking a lot about theater’s powerful world-building ability and how it can help people understand climate change. Theater has the power to show the world of destruction — so you can see what to be afraid of — as well as the beauty of what could be if we make a change.”
ON STAGE: Things We Will Miss: Meditations on the Climate Crisis by Square Product Theater. 7:30 p.m. July 7–22, and 3 p.m. July 15. Carsen Theater, Dairy Arts Center, 2590 Walnut St., Boulder. Tickets here.
