Abstract
This chapter explores the capacity of theatre and performance, ranging from protest performance (Cannupa Hanska Luger's Mirror Shield Project) to scripted plays (Climate Change Theatre Action, ongoing, organised by Chantal Bilodeau) and interactive installations and simulations (Mary Mattingly's floating Swale, Metis's simulation 3rd Ring Out, The Yes Men's "RefuGreenErgy"), to imagine alternative ways of being in relation to others and to our planet; to offer critique; to enable hope and inspire joy; and to offer an embodied ethics of care, compassion, and repair in a world that may be increasingly uninhabitable. Improvising solutions in participatory fashion can help us discover, not only the feedback loops from which we must divest, but the convivial tools in which we might invest. Performing stories, creating space for reflection and debate, and visualising data, theatre and performance artists engaging with transformative climate justice insist that there is no choice between zeroing emissions of greenhouse gases and dismantling extractive capitalism; white supremacy, anti-Blackness, and settler colonialism; heteropatriarchy; lack of access to jobs, housing, and health care; and income inequality. Transforming passive observers into spect-actors, artists-activists, or artivists, invite us to become who we must be to steward a just future for all human and nonhuman life.