Straw Buried Fields, Forever (A Full Length Play)
Straw Buried Fields, Forever (A Full Length Play)
The goal for this project was to write a full-length play about the history, use, manufacturing, and devastating effects that plastic straws have had on our planet.
During the last two years, I found myself accomplishing daily reading and reviewing of climate change literature, a plethora of plays about climate change, natural and man-made disasters, war and apocalypse. I found many common threads about pollution, waste, and more specifically, the threat of plastics-which, according to the Department of Natural Resources, can take more than an unforeseeable 1000 years to decompose. And let us not forget that the composition process is a living nightmare every-which-way an oceanographer looks on our planet.
I was also invited to the Mid-America Theatre Conference (MATC, Chicago, IL), the 44th Annual Comparative Drama Conference (Orlando, Florida), NYU, and CUNY, to present my research and talk about the plays that I have written. I will continue to address these issues and attempt to produce these messages of social change all across our sacred planet.
As an American culture, we have finally made an everlasting legacy where straws, fishing line, and Styrofoam will not only exist a thousand years from now, but it will lay, polluting this planet, forever. This play tells a story in a way where drama and comedy intermingle. In which forms of expressionism, realism, and absurdism often collide and clash. I sought to express my emotional and cognitive dissonance with the experience I was having whenever someone would seek to push a plastic straw into my life- whether at bars, restaurants, coffee houses, or even convenience stores. My internal reaction was based on what I knew before and would eventually find out about straws--they are single-handedly one of the most destructive forces on the health and welfare of our planet.
"Straw Buried Fields, Forever." is a dark comedic musical written in three acts. Using techniques inspired by Bertolt Brecht (Mother Courage and Her Children) and Drama Expressionist Sophie Treadwell (Machinal) "Straw Buried Fields, Forever." attempts to distance the audience from emotional involvement by using fake laughter in places of serious concern. Providing jolting reminders of the artificiality of the theatrical performance, all the characters in this play are oppressed, including the fast-food Workers, factory workers, community protesters, third-world people in poverty, and middle-class Americans. They are subject to a part of destruction in a wasteful system of consumerism, capitalism, and social oppression. These characters constantly interrupt the main characters to comment on dialogue and sing songs.
Stage interactions expose the machines, lights and props, which keep the audience aware of being in a theatre. Characters were created based on real people in the here and now, utilizing real news articles and real manufacturing processes. Exposition of fact, history, and plight are expressed through song and comedy. Through this, the audience can witness third-hand, some of the real dangers and pollution of petroleum, waste, and plastics. The play also derives inspiration from absurdism through Beckett’s "End Game" noting past, present, and future of a planet that has been, is, and will be, through the destruction of our planet. Roald Dahl and David Seltzer’s Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory, which both comment on oppressed people, greed, imprisonment, factory work and a sense of being trapped in an environment, separate from the outside world. The Oompa-Loompas suffer from greed, capitalism, and neoliberalism.
A variety of theatrical techniques are used to inform and entertain the audience, including historical anecdotes, musical elements, dance, vaudevillian themes, masks, creative fast-food costumes with straw designs, sound effects, television and video technology, photography, and motion-picture backdrops. The use of John Coltrane’s version of “My Favorite Things” is to signify the idea that we as a culture, use straws, consumerism, and waste as a favorite pastime--without even thinking. Coltrane adds rhythm where there often is none. Contrane's "My Favorite Things brings a sense of dissonance to the subject-matter by adoring waste and consumerism-with the idea that those things are America’s favorite things.
Billy Talen, in his book called, The Earth Wants YOU, rants about how the earth is speaking back to us in response of our treatment of it. "Our old ones were talking about this. And they were saying that there is coming a time when the Earth will rise up because she needs to cleanse herself. And it could go one of two ways. The Earth rises up and then the people rise up with her. Or the Earth rises up. And the people don’t. And then they fall away. And they are no longer here." — prophecy recounted by Debra White Plume of the Lakota Nation, and retold at Occupy Wall Street by Kandi Mossett of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara people. (Qtd. in, Talen, 1)
As a planet, more than ever, we are experiencing weather extremes on all continents. More hurricanes, more acid rain, more fires, more pollution, and more consistency of natural disasters affecting man-kind, then ever before. In the play, the fictional character “Hal” (portrayed as an older white male) is to signify that old ways (that are dying and should die) of doing things that are no longer sustainable. His life and lineage describes a past that is wasteful, ignorant, and that of exploiting the earth of its resources. He dies amid and subjected to these themes. Whether it be through war, manufacturing (straw factory), consumerism (bars and fast food), and the killing or dying of natural life (pollution of our waterways, beaches and air).
Millions of news, scholarly articles, and books have been written about pollution, and the waste stemming from plastics. Our nation’s policies have been slow to change. The Environmental Protection Agency has recently continued to ignore aspects of climate change, rolled back and eliminated environmental protections in the interest of oil and natural resource consuming companies. In a collaborative effort of scientists worldwide, the 2001 formed Global Carbon Project (GCP) put out an annual report this year, stating the amount of greenhouse gases caused by human activities had significantly gone up--way up.
In his book, The Great Derangement, Amitav Ghosh describes the man-made influence of climate change, pollution, and natural disaster have been highly focused to journalistic news and science fiction. "Indeed, it could even be said that fiction that deals with climate change is almost by definition not of the kind that is taken seriously by serious literary journals; the mere mention of the subject is often enough to regulate a novel or a short story to the genre of science fiction." (Ghosh, 7) Ghosh’s determination is the reason why I wrote this play to exist in the present.
The fictional characters are on based on real people with real news stories, research and facts. Because all of these ideas are immediate, not just a part of a distant future. Where factual news can often turn people off and science fiction stories or novels distance people from the immediacy of severe issues, Straw Buried Fields, Forever aims to entertain. Entertainment with real facts about climate change and pollution issues. This play’s ultimate intent is, not just to inform people and call for straws to be banned, it is to ground us with the acknowledgment of our past, present and future.
The goal for this project was to write a full-length play about the history, use, manufacturing, and devastating effects that plastic straws have had on our planet.
During the last two years, I found myself accomplishing daily reading and reviewing of climate change literature, a plethora of plays about climate change, natural and man-made disasters, war and apocalypse. I found many common threads about pollution, waste, and more specifically, the threat of plastics-which, according to the Department of Natural Resources, can take more than an unforeseeable 1000 years to decompose. And let us not forget that the composition process is a living nightmare every-which-way an oceanographer looks on our planet.
I was also invited to the Mid-America Theatre Conference (MATC, Chicago, IL), the 44th Annual Comparative Drama Conference (Orlando, Florida), NYU, and CUNY, to present my research and talk about the plays that I have written. I will continue to address these issues and attempt to produce these messages of social change all across our sacred planet.
As an American culture, we have finally made an everlasting legacy where straws, fishing line, and Styrofoam will not only exist a thousand years from now, but it will lay, polluting this planet, forever. This play tells a story in a way where drama and comedy intermingle. In which forms of expressionism, realism, and absurdism often collide and clash. I sought to express my emotional and cognitive dissonance with the experience I was having whenever someone would seek to push a plastic straw into my life- whether at bars, restaurants, coffee houses, or even convenience stores. My internal reaction was based on what I knew before and would eventually find out about straws--they are single-handedly one of the most destructive forces on the health and welfare of our planet.
"Straw Buried Fields, Forever." is a dark comedic musical written in three acts. Using techniques inspired by Bertolt Brecht (Mother Courage and Her Children) and Drama Expressionist Sophie Treadwell (Machinal) "Straw Buried Fields, Forever." attempts to distance the audience from emotional involvement by using fake laughter in places of serious concern. Providing jolting reminders of the artificiality of the theatrical performance, all the characters in this play are oppressed, including the fast-food Workers, factory workers, community protesters, third-world people in poverty, and middle-class Americans. They are subject to a part of destruction in a wasteful system of consumerism, capitalism, and social oppression. These characters constantly interrupt the main characters to comment on dialogue and sing songs.
Stage interactions expose the machines, lights and props, which keep the audience aware of being in a theatre. Characters were created based on real people in the here and now, utilizing real news articles and real manufacturing processes. Exposition of fact, history, and plight are expressed through song and comedy. Through this, the audience can witness third-hand, some of the real dangers and pollution of petroleum, waste, and plastics. The play also derives inspiration from absurdism through Beckett’s "End Game" noting past, present, and future of a planet that has been, is, and will be, through the destruction of our planet. Roald Dahl and David Seltzer’s Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory, which both comment on oppressed people, greed, imprisonment, factory work and a sense of being trapped in an environment, separate from the outside world. The Oompa-Loompas suffer from greed, capitalism, and neoliberalism.
A variety of theatrical techniques are used to inform and entertain the audience, including historical anecdotes, musical elements, dance, vaudevillian themes, masks, creative fast-food costumes with straw designs, sound effects, television and video technology, photography, and motion-picture backdrops. The use of John Coltrane’s version of “My Favorite Things” is to signify the idea that we as a culture, use straws, consumerism, and waste as a favorite pastime--without even thinking. Coltrane adds rhythm where there often is none. Contrane's "My Favorite Things brings a sense of dissonance to the subject-matter by adoring waste and consumerism-with the idea that those things are America’s favorite things.
Billy Talen, in his book called, The Earth Wants YOU, rants about how the earth is speaking back to us in response of our treatment of it. "Our old ones were talking about this. And they were saying that there is coming a time when the Earth will rise up because she needs to cleanse herself. And it could go one of two ways. The Earth rises up and then the people rise up with her. Or the Earth rises up. And the people don’t. And then they fall away. And they are no longer here." — prophecy recounted by Debra White Plume of the Lakota Nation, and retold at Occupy Wall Street by Kandi Mossett of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara people. (Qtd. in, Talen, 1)
As a planet, more than ever, we are experiencing weather extremes on all continents. More hurricanes, more acid rain, more fires, more pollution, and more consistency of natural disasters affecting man-kind, then ever before. In the play, the fictional character “Hal” (portrayed as an older white male) is to signify that old ways (that are dying and should die) of doing things that are no longer sustainable. His life and lineage describes a past that is wasteful, ignorant, and that of exploiting the earth of its resources. He dies amid and subjected to these themes. Whether it be through war, manufacturing (straw factory), consumerism (bars and fast food), and the killing or dying of natural life (pollution of our waterways, beaches and air).
Millions of news, scholarly articles, and books have been written about pollution, and the waste stemming from plastics. Our nation’s policies have been slow to change. The Environmental Protection Agency has recently continued to ignore aspects of climate change, rolled back and eliminated environmental protections in the interest of oil and natural resource consuming companies. In a collaborative effort of scientists worldwide, the 2001 formed Global Carbon Project (GCP) put out an annual report this year, stating the amount of greenhouse gases caused by human activities had significantly gone up--way up.
In his book, The Great Derangement, Amitav Ghosh describes the man-made influence of climate change, pollution, and natural disaster have been highly focused to journalistic news and science fiction. "Indeed, it could even be said that fiction that deals with climate change is almost by definition not of the kind that is taken seriously by serious literary journals; the mere mention of the subject is often enough to regulate a novel or a short story to the genre of science fiction." (Ghosh, 7) Ghosh’s determination is the reason why I wrote this play to exist in the present.
The fictional characters are on based on real people with real news stories, research and facts. Because all of these ideas are immediate, not just a part of a distant future. Where factual news can often turn people off and science fiction stories or novels distance people from the immediacy of severe issues, Straw Buried Fields, Forever aims to entertain. Entertainment with real facts about climate change and pollution issues. This play’s ultimate intent is, not just to inform people and call for straws to be banned, it is to ground us with the acknowledgment of our past, present and future.
