Vancouver-dependent theatre enterprise wins $3K in inaugural awards

A Vancouver-dependent theatre company is in the countrywide spotlight for applying art as a instrument for weather motion.

The Only Animal Theatre Modern society has received two inaugural awards this thirty day period – the Rewilding Arts Prize from the David Suzuki Foundation and Rewilding Magazine, as effectively as the Inexperienced Award from the Skilled Affiliation of Canadian Theatres – in recognition of the company’s efforts to fortify the bond between humans and mother nature as a result of artwork.

Although the enterprise has existed for 17 many years, founder Kendra Fanconi believes there’s extra cultural hunger than ever for art that invites audiences to enable make the entire world a much better spot.

“So numerous folks are suffering from climate anxiety and climate grief and it will not genuinely assistance to study much more content articles and get far more terrified – folks freeze up,” Fanconi instructed CTV News.

“I believe what can aid is what artwork does, which is to get people today jointly collectively on a journey to new places, to transformation. I consider that art – and theatre, specifically – has so several delights that we can present. We have humour, elegance and magic, and we can bring those people items to this really hard, large story that we’re residing by means of to assist us system and comprehend a new orientation to it,” she mentioned.

A lot more than 550 artists utilized for the 2022 Rewilding Arts Prize, but only six had been picked.

The Only Animal is just one of two B.C. artists that designed the slash, and each will be awarded $2,000 and be profiled in Rewilding Magazine.

The other B.C. winner, Natasha Lavdovsky, is a multi-disciplinary arts who mainly operates with lichen.

Fanconi describes Lavdovsky and her fellow awardees as eco-artists who use purely natural products to make art independently.

“Our get the job done is a tiny distinct in that we’re always doing work with unique designers, we’re generally building factors alongside one another,” she explained.

A single way the organization is presently collaborating is by means of its three-12 months initiative “The Artist Brigade,” the Eco-friendly Award-successful venture chosen by PACT.

As part of the initiative, The Only Animal picked 100 Canadian artists—whose disciplines consist of theatre, dance, high-quality arts, eco-arts, poetry, images, filmmaking and online video video game design—to operate with the company for a 12 months to deliver art to the climate disaster.

“The upcoming 12 months will element the commission of up to 10 artists of the Artist Brigade to acquire their possess climate artwork works, forming a doing work group within just The Only Animal with ongoing mentorship and assist as they go as a result of the imaginative cycle,” PACT wrote in a news release earlier this thirty day period, saying the winner of its initially-at any time $1,000 award.

Fanconi states the company’s goal is to invite audiences to slide in enjoy with the purely natural earth, which is why their reveals hardly ever take area in theatres.

“We operate to connect people today to these normal locations mainly because we know that if they slide in love—you defend what you adore,” she said.

The Only Animal is presently endeavor a creation like no other—The Thousand Yr Theatre—which is established to be complete by 3022.

Logistically, that indicates the firm is working with silviculturists and other conservation biologists to build a forest full of species like Douglas firs, cedar and hemlock—plants that are equipped to survive the circumstances of a shifting local climate.

“We’re not just building a established that is going to close up likely to the dump in a 5-ton truck, we’re searching at how we can essentially contribute to generating the world a better put,” Fanconi explained.

“We’re planting a theatre that will occur to its total maturation in a thousand several years using the keystone species of our forest, but also to sort of plant an concept in our society that we can feel a thousand yrs into the long run and that human beings can be a steward of that globe to arrive.”
