Did you ever climb a tree, plant a tree, have a favourite tree, or name a tree? Share your own personal connection to a tree — either your “earliest tree memory” or “a significant tree memory.” with us. Sharing tree stories helps us place a spotlight on trees and become aware of their significance in all our lives.
Here’s a tree story from one of our writers, Rebecca Lyon:
‘ There were Beech trees, at the bottom of the garden. A regiment of them. In summer, their leaves were shiny, the greenest green, perfectly striped. Lizzie and I would score them with our fingernails to make distinctive epaulettes and put the leathery beech nuts in our potions of power made of mud and puddles and rocks. Then, in autumn, the leaves turned to lace. We would look and look for undamaged leaves, amongst the fallen ones crunching beneath our little feet. Lizzie would find the most beautiful ones – translucent in the sun, veins perfect, delicate, as if reflecting their mother tree’s roots, in miniature. Lizzie said they were fairy clothes. I said that would be very impractical. Lizzie smiled at me. Her fairies, her beech trees, my glimpse into another world.’
Registration for our April workshop is now open. You can sign up here.
Last January we embarked upon a year-long writing journey. Through monthly workshops, with a pit stop at Berlin Kreuzberger HoffestSpiele in September, where we showcased three short plays, we are nearing the end of our 2021 programme. A big congratulations to everyone who participated! It feels so good to get together and write regularly, share our work and inspire each other.
Our workshops don’t follow the classic structure of teaching models of playwriting. We cover the basics of playwriting in a more relaxed and playful environment. We use writing prompts that help you remember the long-forgotten memories, both joyful and not so, and through personal experience write about contemporary social issues. We create plays that show us the possibility of positive change, be it personal or social.
You write what you want and need to write at our workshops: it could be a full-length play or a short. A scene. A line. Or just join in for the fun of the writing exercises. To write together in a group. You don’t have to share anything you write. But experience the joy of being there, listen, write and support and be inspired by each other. It is all about feeling hopeful about a better future and showing each other how theatre can energise such change.
In 2022 we will continue the same workshop structure, this time with a focus on climate change. There is no doubt that climate change is the greatest threat our planet is facing today.
Climate change is not ’just’ an environmental problem that is happening to someone else, somewhere else and sometime in the future. It is already happening, to all, everywhere. We are equipped different to adapt to it but we all have limits to how much we can adapt.
Climate change is a justice issue. Not everyone has contributed to the climate crisis in the same capacity, and not everyone has been or will be impacted the same way.
Climate change is a human rights issue. It impacts people disproportionately and in different ways. It affects individuals’ living and dignity, and their basic human rights.
Climate change is an economic prosperity issue. Poorer people all over the world suffer the most due to climate change because they are more reliant on nature for their living and less able to deal with droughts, floods and pollution. Climate change breeds poverty.
Just as climate change affects all, solutions also lie in all working together. All across the world delivering their responsibilities, all across sectors and sciences. Theatre has to play its part!
We invite everyone to talk about and write plays on climate change. Our aim is to tell the stories of the communities and people who are affected by them. We will also ask simple questions to understand certain scientific concepts that may appear abstract.
Climate Acts playwriting workshops will be a year-long programme.
The monthly workshops will be open to everyone from anywhere in the world – no prior theatre or writing experience is necessary. These workshops are packed with exercises to strengthen your writing skills, go through the elements of playwriting, network with other writers in the group, share ideas, inspire and be inspired.
The first online workshop will be on the 23rd of January 2022. They will follow on every 3rd Sunday of the month between 11 am and 1 pm Central European Time. The working language of the workshops is English but you can write in any language.
You can sign up for the January workshop from here.
These workshops are on Pay As You Can basis. Your donations help with IT and workshop costs.
