Climate Dramaturgy

Workshop led by British director and the artistic director of Metis Arts Projects (UK) Zoë Svendsen*, held as part of the Příběhy změny symposium.

→ When: 22. 4. 2026

→ Where: ARCHA+ (Na Poříčí 1047/26, Praha 1)

→ Registration HERE

Climate dramaturgy is a holistic approach to theatre-making that centres artistic practice, treating climate crisis as a context for all artistic and practical considerations (regardless of whether the content specifically addresses climate/ecology). This workshop focusses on the politics of form and approach to the process, arguing that there’s as many ways to develop a climate dramaturgy as there are theatre aesthetics: as a mindset and a politics of attention, connection and relation, rather than a ‘how-to’ list.

It will begin with a talk followed some short interactive discussion-based exercises, ending with discussion among all participants of the case study of Zoë Svendsen and Roman Senkl’s current practice-led performance research, ‘Transit’* as an example of climate dramaturgy.

The workshop will address the following questions:

• How can we develop climate careful practices that centre artistic process: attending to the rapidly changing world around us, ecologically, socially and politically?

• In what ways can we, as theatre makers - directors, writers, designers and devisers, align our work with climate justice?

• What mindset (rather than to-do-list) will make us effective artists of the climate era?

*TRANSIT is an audio-visual cityscape interactive app-based performance work that plays out in your home, on the streets and in cafés and hotel bars. It is built on the new interactive ‘story.glitch’ platform. To demonstrate how climate dramaturgy can be embedded in artistic practice, Zoë will share the early-stage practice-led research behind this new hybrid performance that brings together the digital (chatbots, online forms that mutate, audio-visual story-telling via a smartphone interface) with the analogue (letters, suitcases, spaces of limbo: cafés, hotel bars, waiting rooms) to explore questions of control, power, ethics and surveillance at the intersection between themes of climate crisis, AI, forced migration/displacement, and love. In advance of the workshop, participants will receive a link to download Transit to have the chance to read/play it before the workshop.

*Zoë Svendsen is Artistic Director of Metis Arts Projects (UK) – metisarts.co.uk – making participatory theatre performances and installations exploring ecological crisis and capitalism. She works as dramaturg to reimagine classic texts for the contemporary stage with London theatres including the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, The Globe, the National Theatre, the Young Vic and the Royal Shakespeare Company. Zoë is Associate Artist at Cambridge Junction, and lectures on dramaturgy and performance at the University of Cambridge, undertaking practice-led research. Zoë’s book, Theatre & Dramaturgy , was recently published by Bloomsbury. As Associate Artist at the Donmar Warehouse in 2022 Zoë developed the concept of ‘climate dramaturgy’, a holistic approach to climate conscious artistic practice.