Storm and Drama: How Theater for the Future can create cultural shifts toward sustainability

Will they see us as sleepwalkers who ignored scientific insights on human-induced global warming, species extinction, and resource depletion? Will we be remembered as the generation in the 300 000 year history of homo sapiens that generated unprecedented levels of scientific insight yet did not manage to translate this knowledge into understanding, the prerequisite for adequate action? Or will they see us as the awakening generation, where not only experts knew, but society also understood? The generation who not only started to think differently but also started to live differently?

Benedikt will discuss how artists can transform scientific insight into societal understanding and how scholars and practitioners in natural sciences, humanities, social sciences, and arts can collaborate to create a coherent narrative to support the transformation toward sustainability. She will present some concrete examples of theater productions that artists and scientists have developed and discuss the potential of such work to create a more just, healthy, and safe future for humans and much other life on this planet.