Florida EcoPerformance Manifesto: Producing Climate Forward Live Arts in the State of the Future

Elizabeth Doud*

Abstract

Introducing the practice of ecoperformance, the essay discusses the author’s experience producing climate-centered live arts events in Florida and why Florida represents the state of the future. Part historical reflection of past practice and part proposal for ongoing and future action, the author describes how a combination of climate consciousness and cultural investment are a fertile pairing to support plural and thriving communities. Florida is a place of legends—some exotic, some tragic, some romantic, some ridiculous. It’s also a unique and fragile bioregion and culturally plural state that intersects a multitude of peoples and ecologies—indigenous and non-indigenous—right at the Gateway to the Americas. While the rest of the country jokes about Florida—and secretly wants to move here—for decades the state has had a front row seat to some of climate change’s myriad challenges. Instead of focusing on the many obstacles to progress in a state like Florida, the author leans into the benefits of making arts and climate action work together for bold sustainability solutions where we least expect them.

Keywords: ecoperformance, Florida, climate action, sustainability, creative resilience

“I don’t see how a world that makes such wonderful things could be bad.”
Ariel from Disney’s The Little Mermaid

“Everything’s not alright, but we will find a way.”
Climakaze Dialogues

Introduction

Ecoperformance is the future of culture, and Florida is “the state of the future”—both literally, as a U.S. state on the frontlines of climate change, and figuratively, as a symbol of the complex, urgent realities that may define our collective future. Innovative, climate-centered performing arts are prime tools for fostering resilience in the face of societal challenges in Florida and around the world. Ecoperformance encompasses any live arts event created by artists engaging with themes of ecology, climate change and environmental justice. I contend that these artists contribute not only to the global climate movement but also to creative research in their field and area of interest, wielding significant socio-cultural influence.

As a Florida-based artist, global culture worker and avowed treehugger, I believe that ecological and artistic polyculture are essential for building thriving communities not just in our state but everywhere. For more than 15 years, I have worked at the intersection of performing arts and climate action. I have been a cultural advocate and traveled in more than 20 different countries on five continents, have lived in Brazil and Spain and have called Florida home for nearly 30 years. And I moonlight as a vigilante mermaid.

Through my work, I’ve listened to artists around the world express their priorities and challenges. Overwhelmingly, their creative focus is shifting toward climate-related stories. For over a decade, my independent artist practice and cultural organizing has produced a series of events, gatherings and performances across Florida that use live arts or ecoperfomance to spark critical conversations on climate and community resilience and to provoke a reckoning with unsustainable systems of resource extraction, unchecked development and environmental racism in our bioregion. Through these Florida-based projects and global collaborations with like-minded cultural practitioners, I have witnessed compelling evidence that artists are indeed effective leaders, strategic consortium builders and catalysts for climate justice transformation. At the same time, these artists and projects remain an untapped force, too often overlooked in shaping the solutions we urgently need in all disciplinary areas.

First-hand experience in my own artistic practice and examples of work by artists globally demonstrates that the willingness to address climate issues in the arts is strong and growing. Florida is no exception. With its unique environmental vulnerabilities and complex political stakes, the creative arts and environmental fields have the potential to make culture a driving force in shaping social frameworks that address climate shocks and stressors—both in the immediate future and for generations to come. But we need to act on the conviction that culture unites in moments of extreme precarity as we are definitely in a moment of heretofore unknown crisis in the Sunshine State.

Program cover for first edition of Climakaze Miami, 2015. Artists featured on cover are Antonio Salinas of Mexico in his solo dance work *Polar Bear Fever* and Michelle Ellsworth of Boulder Colorado with her work *Preparation for the Obsolescence of the Y Chromosome* (left to right)

The State of Florida

I’ve encountered the neologisms glocal and lobal to describe how effective climate narratives galvanize people around place-specific concerns while situating the same climate issues within the broader context of global climate change phenomena. Over the last 15 years, I’ve also been part of a movement to cultivate what I call ecoperformance—leveraging the power, intelligence and poetics of live arts to generate collaborative action toward climate-just futures. This movement is composed of artists and transnational cultural organizers who speak dozens of languages, create work deeply rooted in their bioregions and connect through a worldwide network of artivists dedicated to climate activism and cultural organizing.

Authors like scholar and playwright Chantal Bilodeau or educator, researcher and ecotheatre pioneer Una Chaudhuri have written about the challenges and opportunities of crafting dramaturgy for ecoperformance practice (see Chaudhuri and Hughes). Much of this dramaturgy’s power lies in maintaining the tension between hyperlocal stories and global awareness, while navigating unimaginable timescales and the unseeable phenomena of climate and its effects, which have vexed theatre-makers and resulted in less compelling theatre that leaned heavily on didactics to get the point across. The strength of our movement isn’t just in its plurality or its purposefulness in telling both celebratory and cautionary stories; it also lies in artists learning to transcend these narrative challenges, creating universal works of stunning power and beauty.

In this same spirit of glocality, I’ve kept my feet wet in local mud while staying tuned to transmissions from afar. Florida was named for its flora—Spanish explorer Ponce de León^[1] is said to have called it La Florida, or “land of flowers.” I am keenly attuned to shifting winds, shade availability, water levels, the oceans and the position of the sun. The smell of mineral-rich and razor-sharp oyster beds. The winding labyrinth of shallow mangrove trails, perfect for canoeing. The lithe steps of great white egrets fishing at low tide. And the deafening sound of powerboats, or the violent pounding of construction pilings crashing through our delicate and brackish coastal spaces to make room for human occupation and recreation.

Geologically speaking, the Florida Peninsula is relatively young compared to other parts of the American continent and formed mostly of limestone, sand and porous wetlands. The areas we humans can inhabit exist just inches from disappearing, whether temporarily or altogether. What’s inhabitable is as unforgiving in its harshness as it is breathtaking. The blade of the saw palmetto. The descent of a mosquito swarm at dusk. The sandy soil, a farmer’s curse. Alligator-ridden waterways. The fiery offgas of red tide. Perhaps this harsh yet fragile beauty is what drives our impulse to tame and consume this place so voraciously—the frantic building, the endless escape-seeking, the way the land stings and burns us even as we demand it surrender to our visions of resort efficiency and happy-hour reverie.

In modern history, Florida has been a favored and profitable setting for the manufactured paradise; the one-stop-shopping dream of a retirement lifestyle; a refuge for the “shopper” who may have aged into retirement or been forced into hiding. But no one hides from a changing climate. While Floridians are no strangers to hurricanes, what we are now experiencing with extreme weather events, rising temperatures, the slow decay of our water quality and unsettling changes in the insurance industry have made even the hardest among us stiffen.

Florida has been on the frontlines of climate change’s most visible and devastating effects—increasingly destructive and deadly hurricanes, sea level rise, saltwater intrusion into freshwater aquifers and the rapid collapse of coral reef ecosystems (“Florida”). Yet, it has also been home to some of the nation’s most entrenched structural climate denialism.^[2] For decades, state leadership has gone so far as to prohibit the terms “climate change” and “global warming” from policy-making language and official documentation. The threat to conventional profit-driven industries—mining, construction, real estate development and industrial agriculture—is so great that lobbyist-backed and ideologically tendentious elected officials have used legislative power to suppress public discourse on the subject (Inskeep and Green).

Once, only the hardy and ecologically responsive could survive here. Now, only the wealthy, commercially dominant and politically compliant can thrive.

Except, perhaps, for artists—if we choose to support them.

I live on Florida’s Gulf Coast, in a region that brands itself the Culture Coast—an urbanized stretch whose economy depends on the vitality of both the arts and the environment, yet both are imperiled. In spite of the fact that the arts have long been recognized as a marker of societal well-being and progress, Florida’s state arts budgets are vanishing along with accelerated and deliberate national underfunding of arts and humanities, precisely when we most need the arts’ capacity for healing, innovation and creative reimagining. For the last decade, impact studies have shown that Floridians value living in culturally vibrant communities—and for good reason. The arts fuel imagination, innovation and freedom of expression. They also generate increased tax revenue and create jobs. Yet, despite overwhelming evidence of the economic and social benefits that cultural industries provide, state leadership continues to strangle public funding for the arts.

In the face of these ongoing and recent challenges, artists are stepping up not only to create but to advocate, provoke and rebuild our relationship with the world around us.

Siren Jones Sounds the Alarm

As an artist, I have approached these urgent issues through the creation of site-specific ecoperformance which is interactive, satirical and always free of charge. Enter Siren Jones, my alter ego: a mermaid who speaks from the absurd perspective of an extinct species, warning us about ocean pollution and imminent biodiversity loss. Originally conceived to motivate audiences to care for Florida as a vital and sustainable bioregion, the character has since evolved into an advocate for the non-human, making appearances at conferences, schools, festivals and beaches.

Taking advice from a mermaid might seem unreasonable in the best of times—and in the worst of times, downright unadvisable as policy, social or cultural strategy. But that’s precisely the point. Florida artist and environmental activist Houston Cypress once posed a provocation during a climate arts gathering that has stayed with me as I’ve facilitated mermaid narratives and ecoperformance events in contrasting social spaces such as South Florida, Cuba and Brazil. During a work session where the group was interrogating urgencies and artivist tactics to create impacts towards climate-forward policy change, and as we wrestled with how to move beyond the familiar echo chambers of climate discourse, someone raised concerns that art—too whimsical, too futuristic—wasn’t offering the concrete solutions needed to shift policy and public behavior. Houston responded with a simple but powerful question: “But what’s the use of sounding reasonable?”

A mermaid, if asked, might compare our climate emergency to that eerie low-tide moment before a hurricane storm surge, when pressure, temperature and barometric intensity sucks everything out from the shore and the air is heavy and sticky. In that brief, breathless pause, the anatomy of the ocean floor is laid bare as far as a human eye can see from what used to be the shore. Like that moment, our climate emergency is now fully seeable. It defies our understanding of the “reasonable” at the same time as being undeniably tangible and terrifying not just to the experts but to the masses. Like the moment before the waves come rushing back, we are now collectively gazing upon the wreckage, the causes and the strange, tangled debris that have been exposed by the retreat of the protective and mysterious ocean. In anticipation of the incoming surge, a mermaid would completely understand the confusion, fear, skepticism and, yes, even the hope that something radically new and better might wash in. The “we” here is humanity. But depending on which shore you’re standing on, conclusions about responsibility and repair may look very different.

I understand that ephemeral nature and the intangible effects of performing arts often render them suspect in non-arts problem-solving circles. When catastrophes occur, theatre artists are rarely considered first responders. Yet, decades of arts practice in war zones and in the aftermath of major twentieth- and twenty-first-century disasters, health and environmental crises have demonstrated that theatre plays a critical role in how societies process and heal from shock events and stressors over time. Theatre moves us to mourn, question, articulate agency and generate both small- and large-scale solutions as we reconfigure communities and share information.

The principles of theatre and performance practice have long been applied in global social change, peace and reconciliation efforts. Consider Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed and Forum Theatre, which empower participants to rehearse real-world action against systemic injustice (Boal and McBride). Or the “Acting Together: Performance and the Creative Transformation of Conflict” project, co-created by Dr. Cynthia Cohen and Theatre Without Borders, which has supported truth, witnessing and restorative justice for victims and perpetrators of war crimes through arts (Horwitz). Many remember how Tony Kushner’s Angels in America cracked the code on our society’s homophobic denial during the HIV/AIDS crisis, transforming public empathy and making it clear, through masterful storytelling, that the pandemic was not just a tragedy for the marginalized and disenfranchised but a shared moral and political reckoning. Though widely known as a film, it was first an electrifying piece of theatre—a visceral, immediate document of a pandemic that remains one of humanity’s most potent and accessible testaments to that era.

Despite this proven and transformative agency, the arts remain an afterthought in climate discourse. A few years ago, I was invited to submit a proposal for a global think tank’s prestigious gathering in Miami, which had designated climate change as the conference 2022 central theme. The organizers, working with a local arts council, claimed they wanted the arts to be “part” of the program. But logistical decisions quickly revealed how under-prioritized cultural intervention remained. High-profile international dignitaries, executives and states persons required heightened security measures, and thus performances were not allowed in the main conference spaces where discussions were taking place.

Instead, artists—renowned culture workers with decades of expertise—were relegated to the outdoor park areas, their work scheduled to be experienced between sessions or after hours, as an accessory rather than an integral voice in the conversation. While I am delighted that artists were still able to represent the community, the underlying message was clear: even in a conference dedicated to climate change, professionally produced, emotionally resonant ecoperformance was not considered primary content. If self-appointed and industry-anointed thought leaders and policy-makers still fail to grasp the intelligence, impact and strategic potency of ecoperformance, then they are overlooking a powerful tool for shifting public consciousness and catalyzing change.

Further proving the relevance of cultural arts, especially ecoperformance and its modalities, within the climate emergency feels redundant, yet I continue to insist on its repositioning. Ecoperformance practice must not remain a mere auxiliary tool in service of other climate-forward disciplines; rather, it should be recognized as a central component of problem-solving efforts—equal in authority, value and impact. Too often, artists are treated as consultants, brought in to enhance activism and policy planning with aesthetic flourishes rather than being recognized as essential contributors to systemic change. This sidelines ecoperformance and performance makers, reducing their role to marketing strategies or “special event” entertainment—window dressing for cocktail hours after the so-called serious conversations have taken place.

Let it be clear: performing artists concerned with ecology, climate and environmental justice engage in credible creative research that exerts powerful social influence, whether or not they hold formal training in the hard sciences. Their work exists in a zone of science adjacency where they absorb, interpret and translate scientific knowledge into metaphor, movement and narrative, rendering the abstract tangible, the data visceral. Yet, despite this, they are often denied “research” authority.

The most significant collaborations between scientists, industry leaders, government agencies and artists are those built on mutual exchange, where legitimacy and impact flow in both directions: one grounded in established scientific method and quantifiable data, the other in aesthetics, concept, sensorial design, audience engagement and emotional stimulus. When approached equitably, such collaborations have the power to disrupt the entrenched science/arts divide—a divide that not only marginalizes artistic contributions but also dismisses traditional knowledge systems. Bridging this gap doesn’t just elevate the role of the arts; it expands the roadmap for accessible, culturally resonant climate action.

*A Little Bird Told Me the World Is Ending*, part of Words in Action conference, New College of Florida (2023)

The Mermaid Gaze

If artists are to reclaim their rightful place in climate discourse—not as embellishments but as architects of transformation—then we must also embrace the mythic, the unreasonable, the radical. It is here that mermaids swim into view, not just as fantastical creatures but as vital metaphors for survival, adaptation and the dissolution of boundaries.

My ecoperformance practice has employed and enjoyed mermaids as traveling companions and narrative devices, guiding audiences through explorations of habitat loss, extinction, vanishing beauty and revolutionary strategies for what’s to come. I propose the mermaid as both a reference point and a structural model for interspecies emergency planning. As enduring figures of myth—and a species that has long faced extinction—mermaids make fitting allies in the work of radical transformation.

One of the most critical exercises in imagination for climate arts and justice is to grasp, articulate and reimagine intersectionality for more holistic stories that remove the illusion of separation between environmental, racial, gender, species and economic justice—an illusion that has long hindered coalition-building and systemic change. These struggles are not distinct; they are deeply interwoven. Yet, when rigid Aristotelian hierarchies or what Vandana Shiva calls eco-apartheid dominate our thinking,^[3] we fall into the trap of ranking them in competition rather than embracing their interconnectedness (Shiva; Shiva and Mies), thereby limiting the way we think about building the future and the coalitions that lead the building.

Which brings us back to Houston Cypress’s so-called “unreasonable.” Art has never been in the business of being reasonable. It has never owed the world practical solutions or even hope, as if utility were a prerequisite for its existence. Instead, art operates as a site of psycho-emotional triage, a laboratory for futures that do not yet exist, an imaginary and visceral factory for what Marc Bamuthi Joseph calls “manufacturing empathy.”

As we have obviously outgrown the limits of what we held to be “the reasonable,” we must move beyond its constraints in our social strategies, our imaginings, our performance practices and cultural policies. The mermaid, as a symbol, makes space for the unreasonable, the desire of what may come. The mermaid gaze allows us to see through a lens that pushes us past the duality of Global North and South, toward an interdependent, entangled reality that dissolves hierarchies and binds thesis to antithesis in a queer, multi-species communion. A fête where science, spirituality, design and storytelling can finally strip off their imposed divisions and merge into something wholly new.

Naomi Klein has warned us that there are no “non-radical options left” (qtd. in Winship). If fear of the radical has kept us from taking the leap, we have now squandered the time that might have allowed us to build safe passage. The wave is upon us. We no longer have the luxury of hesitation. We must discard our fear of the radical, embrace the unreasonable, and grow metaphorical gills.

SunHAT Eco-Performance Fest: Cultural SPF for Times Ahead. Sarasota, FL (2024)

Ecoperformance: Eco-Poetics and Arts Evolution

Ecoperformance is part of an emergent genre of theatre engaging with ecology, climate change, social practice and environmental justice. Other visionary terms in circulation include ecotheatre, environmental performance,^[4] greenturgy, econarratives and green theatre. The field has expanded to include eco-opera, eco-puppetry, eco-circus and eco-symphony. A friend of mine has written an eco-libretto; a composer colleague has coined the term eco-classical. The world awaits the emergence of eco-reggaetón. This proliferation of eco-naming signals a growing body of environmentally focused performance, yet such distinctions may soon become unnecessary. In five to ten years, what we call ecotheatre today may simply be known as theatre, reflecting a world in which the climate crisis frames every aspect of life, work and death.

The value of a theatrical experience in this context, whether dealing comically or tragically with related topics, doesn’t necessarily provide more accurate information or any immediate practical solutions. Rather, it creates a space for shared recognition—of loss, confusion, disappointment, forgiveness or inspiration—reminding individuals and communities that they are not experiencing these crises alone. Emotional resonance and empathic recognition provide a catharsis that raw data cannot. The impacts of climate change are often so unprecedented that they lack language. Through representation and storytelling, we find ways to name what is happening, to give shape to our grief, fears and hopes, so that we can begin to understand how to feel, think and act.

Climakaze Miami and Models for the Future

Florida has long been a culturally, politically and linguistically plural state, one where climate issues and denialism frequently make national headlines. Nationally, no one would think of Florida as a hotbed of ecoperformance or avant garde climate arts activism, but it may be where we need it the most and where existential necessity breeds futuristic solutions. Florida is home to the United States’ largest coral reef system, which is a marker of ocean vitality for fisheries and all species that support a delicate scaffolding of cyclic abundance for ocean life, humans and what we love about this peninsula.

In 2014, recognizing the need for artistic interventions in the climate conversation, I set out with FUNDarte and like-minded environmental and activist organizations in South Florida to create a platform for artists to engage with these urgent themes. From this effort, Climakaze Miami was born: a gathering designed to bring together scientists, artists and curious citizens through ecoperformance, offering an expressive depth that data, scholarly articles and policy conferences^[5] often fail to reach.

More than a decade later, Climakaze Miami^[6] has evolved into a replicable model, influencing other cultural institutions, artists and organizers and proving that ecologically conscious, responsive and politically engaged performance is no longer a fringe concern but is rapidly becoming an essential part of cultural programming. Its growth reflects a broader national and international shift: the climate crisis has moved from the periphery of artistic discourse to the center of cultural institutions’ mission.

This ethos extends into my recent work designing and producing the SunHAT EcoPerformance Fest at The Ringling Museum in Sarasota, Florida,^[7] along with other collaborations to this same end. SunHAT, like Climakaze Miami, celebrates the creative force of the non-human and our connection to the natural world while stimulating conversations about climate emergencies through artist-driven stories. The festival-like grouping of live arts and activities honors the surrounding Florida green spaces, investigates “glocal” climate realities and dreams up resilient Florida futures. Artists and collaborators include a national and international lineup of performers, scholars, and speakers. Local collaborations with non-arts science and environmental organizations, schools and families proved successful with a “pay what you will” open access ticketing model. It turns out that Florida citizenry is primed for this programming and collective action.

Cultural Collaboration at the Intersection of Climate and Eco-justice

Besides adapting crucial narrative devices for climate centered stories, ecoperformance must prioritize accessibility, reaching audiences who may not frequent traditional performing arts spaces. Open-air venues—streets, plazas, parks, beaches, abandoned lots and farmers’ markets—offer opportunities for unexpected encounters, where passersby can be drawn into dialogue and discovery. In Florida, multilingual experiences are another critical means of inclusion, ensuring that climate storytelling resonates across diverse communities.

Co-locating and co-producing eco-art projects alongside non-arts events, including sustainability conferences, environmental justice campaigns, public health initiatives and civic forums, extends the reach of the arts into spaces where they can build bridges between activism, science and community engagement. Making art in the age of climate change requires acknowledging that humanity’s largely non-reciprocal relationship with other species has fueled this emergency. Ecoperformance, by reframing this relationship, urges a shift in narrative—one that is essential if we want the effects of the crisis to abate. This used to be a difficult concept to surface with audiences, but we have reached an informational tipping point where these stories are ready to be heard and processed.

At the same time, environmental movements in both the Global North and South are increasingly forming intersectional alliances that recognize climate change and ecological collapse as direct outcomes of colonialism’s extractivist logic, slavery-based economies, land occupation, genocide and displacement of Indigenous people, among other structural mechanisms of capitalism and globalization. Florida’s own geographic location is symbolic of an historic crossroads of these difficult histories and the potential reconnection of socially engaged bio-regions by literally and figuratively bridging legacies of migration by humans and other species for new outcomes. Today’s environmentally inspired artists can no longer focus solely on “nature,” conservation or hard science without also addressing the socio-political structures that have enabled planetary climate change. Where traditional environmentalism once positioned the crisis as a conflict between humans and the non-human world, eco-artists now articulate the complexities of human-non-human hierarchies. Not all human impacts are equal—something Raj Patel and Jason Moore underscore in their analysis of the Capitalocene. As a result, artists are increasingly generating metaphorical responses to climate emergencies and environmental injustice that reflect these intersectional values and complicated questions.

The research and practice of ecoperformance draws on the social equity and identity work that the theatre field has historically pioneered to apply a climate justice framework to performance making. However, it must resist the pitfalls of didacticism and what Nathaniel Rich calls “narratives of crusading optimism,”^[8] stories that pressure us to remain hopeful while denying our right to grieve. There are profound losses ahead, and our art must make space for mourning as well as for action.

Concluding Thoughts

Florida, at the crossroads of multiple cultures and ecologies—Indigenous and non-Indigenous—offers a powerful site for this work. Local artists exploring climate resilience can contribute credible creative research and social influence to radical shifts that will support Florida’s ecological, economic and cultural vitality without necessarily being trained in the hard sciences. This agency allows artists to absorb and reinterpret scientific knowledge through metaphor, aesthetic design, sensorial experience and emotional stimulus—creating an understanding that data alone cannot provide. In fact, significant and prolific collaborations between scientists and artists have led to reciprocal exchanges of legitimacy and impact: one grounded in scientific method and quantifiable data, the other in storytelling and embodied experience. These partnerships disrupt the traditional science/arts divide and offer cultural pathways for translating knowledge into action in service of climate justice.

Endnotes

^[1] This is ironic as his arrival in what is now Florida in the early fourteenth century can be considered one of the kick-off moments for resource extraction capitalism in the Americas.

^[2] Many industry leaders and businesses are worried that giving too much attention to climate change in Florida is bad for business. Others worry that discourse on climate change is irrevocably tainted by liberal politics and prefer party over objective problem solving. An article by Kate Yoder points to the current Governor’s latest attempt to silence climate conversations. The proposed legislation in this article was signed into law in May 2024. DeSantis’ efforts seem to be a taking a page out of of similar playbook put into motion in the past by Florida Governor Rick Scott (2011–19)—see Sherman.

^[3] Vandana Shiva describes eco-apartheid as “the separation of humans from nature” through objectification of the non-human, which allows us to divide it into “fragmented, separable parts to be exploited, owned, traded, destroyed and wasted” (Oneness vs. the 1% 16) instead of seeing ourselves pertaining to and part of nature.

^[4] Not to be confused with the movement identified as Environmental Theatre by experimental theatre director Richard Schechner.

^[5] Despite regressive efforts by gubernatorial leadership in Florida over the last decades, there has also been visionary organizing for purposes of local sustainability strategy and collective action. The Southeast Florida Climate Compact is an network and organizational outgrowth from a time with four SE Florida counties realized they couldn’t rely on the State of Florida to consistently fund, advocate for or be objective about the short and long term climate and environmental needs of the Counties’ territory and residents. This visionary model is a “despite the odds” story of Florida, and the Compact was so effective at combining forces and research data from university and local governments that federal agencies began relying on its databases to understand sea level rise, among other climate emergencies, and applying the Compact’s findings to other national regions with similar concerns: southeastfloridaclimatecompact.org/what-is-the-compact/.

^[6] Climakaze Miami’s mission is to respond to climate emergencies with with live performance. We build generative human networks in Florida and beyond through arts and cultural expressions which create greater empathy for other humans and other species. By supporting eco-performance and climate arts, and adjacent participatory dialogues, we are crafting visions of a shared and just future for the Americas. We value connectedness, equity, principles of deep ecology and the discipline of collaborative theatre making. Climakaze and subsequent ecoperformance organizing has four main features:

We use live performance and artistic practice to examine and tell stories about the state of our world under accelerated resource extraction economies, climate change and globalized realities.
Allowing art to drive the agenda, we engage pods of diverse artists, educators, scientists, local government workers, as well as the broader community, in participative dialogues about climate change elevated circumstances of environmental, social and species injustice.
We remind ourselves of our connectedness to the larger biosphere by facilitating participant contact with diverse green spaces, and partnering with organizations whose mission it is to protect and cultivate green-space health and access for all humans and non-humans.
We act as thought partners in our local region and as a physical meeting space for individuals and communities who want to activate their agency and projects with other cultural practitioners and allies.

^[7] SunHAT EcoPerformance Fest included 10 live performances by five distinct artist companies from New Orleans, New York City, Madagascar and Saulsalito, California and Melbourne, Australia. Besides performances indoors and out on The Ringling’s 66 acre arboretum campus, the event featured a performative keynote, a native herb walk, a mushroom dinner, a waterkeepers gathering, artist post show talk backs, in-school vegan cooking workshops with local schools and an inaugural gathering of the EcoPerformance Institute, which is a global network of ecoperformance practitioners who organize climate activism through the arts. Event website: SunHAT Eco-Performance Fest—The Ringling.

^[8] The phrase “narratives of crusading optimism” has been attributed to Rich, though the original source could not be verified at the time of writing.

Bibliography

Bilodeau, Chantal. “Theatre in the Age of Climate Change Series.” HowlRound Theatre Commons, 2014–2025. Accessed 5 May 2025.

Boal, Augusto, and Charles A. McBride. “Theatre of the Oppressed.” The Improvisation Studies Reader: Spontaneous Acts. Routledge, 2014, pp. 79–86.

Chaudhuri, Una, and Holly Hughes, editors. Animal Acts: Performing Species Today. U of Michigan P, 2014.

“Florida: Ground Zero in the Climate Crisis.” Union of Concerned Scientists and ReThink Energy Florida, 2019.

Horwitz, Simi. “Cynthia Cohen Encourages Global Peace Through the Arts.” American Theatre Magazine, Theatre Communications Group, 1 May 2013. Accessed 5 May 2025.

Inkeep Steve, and Amy Green. “Florida Gov. DeSantis Signs Bill that Deletes Climate Change from State Law.” nrp, 17 May 2024. Accessed 5 May 2025.

Joseph, Marc Bamuthi. “Americas Cultural Summit 2021: Day Three—Diversity and Inclusion,” YouTube, uploaded by National Endowment for the Arts, 24 Mar. 2022.

Moore, Jason W. “The Capitalocene, Part I: On the Nature and Origins of Our Ecological Crisis.” The Journal of Peasant Studies, vol. 44, no. 3, 2017, pp. 1–38.

Schechner, Richard. Environmental Theatre: An Expanded Edition Including Six Axioms for Environmental Theatre. Applause Theatre and Cinema Books, 1994.

Sherman, Amy. “Fact-checking Rick Scott on the Environment and Sea-Level Rise.” PolitiFact, 11 Mar. 2025. Accessed 3 May 2025.

Shiva, Vandana. Oneness vs. the 1%: Shattering Illusion, Seeding Freedom. Women Unlimited, 2018.

Shiva, Vandana, and Maria Mies. Ecofeminism. Zed Books, 2014.

Winship, Michael. “Naomi Klein: ‘There are no non-radical options left before us.’” Salon, 4 Feb. 2016. Accessed 7 May 2025.

Yoder, Kate. “Florida Is About to Erase Climate Change from Most of Its Laws.” Route Fifty, 25 Mar. 2024. Accessed 3 May 2025.

*Elizabeth Doud is the Curator of Performance at The Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida, and has overseen the museum’s Art of Performance program since 2019. As a Florida-based arts professional, scholar and multi-disciplinary theatre artist, she has over 20 years experience and presenter, educator and performance maker, with an emphasis on international cultural exchange and climate arts. She has worked extensively throughout the U.S., Latin America and the Caribbean in the performing arts, and created Climakaze Miami with FUNDarte in 2015, an annual climate performance and dialogue platform. From 2005-2018, she led the Performing Americas Program of the National Performance Network, an international cultural exchange initiative between networks of cultural presenters and producers in the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean for performing arts touring and residencies, and was the Artistic Director of the Cultura del Lobo Series at Miami Dade College from 2009-2011. Among many other climate arts efforts, she recently produced the SunHAT EcoPerformance Fest at The Ringling. She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Miami, and a PhD in Performing Arts from the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil. She has published several articles in English and Portuguese about climate arts, performance and bilingual composition.