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Drama Canadian

Forward

by (author) Chantal Bilodeau

foreword by Una Chaudhuri

introduction by Tael Naess

Publisher
Talonbooks
Initial publish date
Oct 2017
Category
Canadian
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781772011838
    Publish Date
    Oct 2017
    List Price
    $18.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781772013030
    Publish Date
    Sep 2020
    List Price
    $18.95 USD

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Description

Forward was partly inspired by a ten-day sailing expedition around the Svalbard Archipelago, located halfway between Norway and the North Pole. Spanning a hundred years and thousands of kilometres from the sixtieth parallel North to the top of the world, Forward presents a poetic history of energy development in Norway from the initial passion that drove explorer Fridtjof Nansen to the North Pole, to the consequences of decades of our addiction to fossil fuels. A blend of theatre and electropop music, the play progresses backwards from 2013 to 1893, and zeroes in on close to forty characters whose day-to-day lives illustrate how the choices we make often have unintended consequences. Woven through this history is the passionate love affair between Nansen and sea ice, embodied as a character in the play. Expressing herself only through song, Ice, who has waited for millennia for the arrival of her lover, is bracing to meet her destiny. A relay race through time, where each generation passes the baton to the next, Forward takes a compassionate look at the legacies we leave behind, and at what we are willing to do for love.

Ultimately, Forward is about climate change. It’s a story about how an Arctic explorer fell in love with Ice (embodied as a character in the play), and unwittingly opened up the Arctic for development. A story about people having good intentions that led to unintended consequences. A story about who we are in all our glorious imperfection. But Forward is also a story of hope. It is an invitation to collectively grieve for what we lost, for what we continue to lose every day, so that we can forgive ourselves. It is a reminder that if we come together as a community, we will find a solution.

Forward is the second play of the Arctic Cycle – a series of eight plays that examine the impact of climate change on the eight countries of the Arctic. The play takes its title from Nansen’s ship Fram, which is the Norwegian word for “forward.”

With a foreword by Una Chaudhuri, a professor at New York University who studies the geography of drama, and an introduction by Tael Naess, a Norwegian writer and playwright.

About the authors

Chantal Bilodeau is a Montréal-born, New York-based playwright and translator whose work focuses on the intersection of science, policy, art, and climate change. She is the founding artistic director of the Arts & Climate Initiative (formerly The Arctic Cycle) and over the past decade has been instrumental in getting the theatre and educational communities, as well as audiences in the US and abroad, to engage in climate action through programming that includes live events, talks, publications, workshops, national and international convenings, and a worldwide-distributed theatre festival. Awards include the Woodward International Playwriting Prize as well as First Prize in the Earth Matters on Stage Ecodrama Playwrights Festival and the Uprising National Playwriting Competition. Her plays and translations have been presented in a dozen countries around the world and she had edited or co-edited three anthologies of short plays about the climate crisis. In 2019, she was named one of “8 Trailblazers Who Are Changing the Climate Conversation” by Audubon Magazine.

Chantal Bilodeau's profile page

Una Chaudhuri is a Professor of English, Drama, and Environmental Studies at New York University.

Una Chaudhuri's profile page

Tael Naess is a Norwegian writer and playwright.

Tael Naess' profile page

Editorial Reviews

“Chantal has cleverly intertwined social change with climate change. The subtle messages are very powerful reminder of the impacts of our economic actions at the personal and the global level.”— Charles (Chuck) W. Rice. Chair, Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources, National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine

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