14-16 May 2025
A 3-day conference of keynotes, talks, workshops and performances at three locations across the globe.
Let us know if you’ll be attending!
Performance and the Environment is an international conference jointly hosted by
- LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore
- National University of Theatre and Film I.L Caragiale (UNATC)
- University of the Philippines Diliman (UPD)
This conference will have a student exchange component from 5-9 May 2025 where students engage in site-specific workshops in Singapore, Bucharest and Manila.
The hybrid academic conference will run from 14-16 May 2025.
Keynote Speakers
14 MAY 2025 (3PM SGT/ 10AM ROMANIA)
Lisa Burger & Paddy Dillon
Co-founder of Renew Culture and the Theatre Green Book
Making Theatre Environmentally Sustainable – Why isn’t this easy?
In the first part of our keynote we will consider why given our knowledge of the looming crisis going back over 30 years and an intention to play our part in minimising our environmental impact, we failed to make change in theatre over many decades. We will review some of the approaches which were tried and explain why in our view they didn’t succeed in changing practice in the performing arts sector.
In the second part we will talk about the Theatre Green Book (TGB). We will talk about why the particular circumstances of COVID were crucial to its creation and the key principles underpinning its success. We will cover the impact and reach of the Theatre Green Book networks. We will conclude thinking about why theatre makers and professionals are by the nature of our work, so well placed to make change, and to be a working model of how to approach the transition to decarbonisation, in other industries.
We will then hand-over to Ang Xiao Ting so delegates can directly hear from a non-UK based speaker how the TGB is already being applied in Singapore.
15 MAY 2025 (8PM SGT / 3PM ROMANIA)
Nisha Sajnani
NYU Steinhardt, Associate Professor and Director, Drama Therapy Program; Co-Director, Jameel Arts & Health Lab
The Living Stage: Performance at the Crossroads of Climate and Public Health
This keynote explores how performance can confront the health impacts of climate change, drawing on findings from a new WHO policy brief on the arts, climate, and health. From site-specific rituals to digital interventions, it examines how artists foster environmental awareness, community resilience, and sustainable futures—positioning performance as a vital practice in planetary and public health.
16 MAY 2025 (2PM SGT / 9AM ROMANIA)
Dennis D Gupa
The University of Winnipeg, Assistant Professor, theatre director, applied theatre practitioner, and Performance Studies researcher.
At the Center is the Grassroots: Applied Theatre, Climate Change, and the Fishers’ Knowledge of Ecological Stewardship
Reflecting on the burden and the unexpected apprehensions of applied theatre as a mode in generating knowledge and mobilizing discourse on the impact climate change within countries in the Global South, this keynote speech aims to respond to these questions: How inclusive are we when promoting and generating knowledge on ecological stewardship? Who gets to be part of the conversation? To what extent we are able to engage performance and theatre in ecological stewardship? What happens when grassroots ecological knowledge inform performance making? And what are the limitation of performance and theatre in the promotion of ecological stewardship within the context and the challenges of climate crises?
In attempting to answer these questions, I will take advantage of narrating my personal experiences of conducting research in island communities heavily impacted by climate crises. Using autoethnography, I will draw on the possibilities of re-imagining these crises into epistemology of collaboration emerging from island community that has long histories of vernacular oceanic creativity that demonstrates its refusal from the continuing violence of war and climate injustice. Relevant in this presentation will highlight my encounters and collaboration with the fishers in Tubabao Island, Guiaun Eastern Samar, Philippines which underpins how Indigenizing performance practice results to ecologizing theatre of a post-anthropocentric world-making.