What Can Artists Do? Creating Theatre in a Time of Climate Change

How can theatre help us imagine, confront, and respond to the climate crisis? Join playwrights Pedro Chamale, Elaine Avila, and Chantal Bilodeau for a conversation about the role of storytelling, performance, and artistic practice in a rapidly changing world. Together, they will explore how theatre can amplify overlooked voices, foster empathy, and inspire action while grappling with the complex realities of climate change. This timely discussion asks what artists can create—and what audiences can learn—when the future of our planet is at stake.

This event will take place in person at the library and be streamed live on Zoom. All registered attendees will receive the Zoom link shortly before the event.

Chantal Bilodeau is a playwright and the founding artistic director of the Arts & Climate Initiative. For the past two decades, she has led projects at the intersection of storytelling and the climate crisis, encouraging artists, students, and audiences to engage in climate action through live performances, talks, publications, workshops, artist convenings, and a worldwide distributed theatre festival. Her plays have been presented in a dozen countries and translated into French, Norwegian, Greek, and Portuguese. Her ongoing project – The Arctic Cycle – is a series of eight plays about the social and environmental changes facing the eight Arctic states. She is currently pursuing a PhD in English at the University of Victoria and is a trainee in the Coastal Climate Solutions Leaders program. In 2019, she was named one of “8 Trailblazers Who Are Changing the Climate Conversation” by Audubon Magazine.

Pedro Chamale (he/him) is a Latiné-Canadian director, playwright, & performer who was born and raised on the unceded, ancestral, and traditional territories of the Treaty 8 Nations, in Chetwynd, BC. He completed the acting program at Douglas College and BFA in Theatre Performance from SFU’s School for the Contemporary Arts. He’s a co-founder and Artistic Director of rice & beans theatre and is a founding member and current board president of CALTAC (The Canadian Latinx Theatre Artist Coalition). Pedro was the Artistic Resident at Neworld Theatre in 2014, the guest curator of the 2018 rEvolver Festival, and was one of the playwrights in the 2019 Playwright’s Lab at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. He was recently the supporting playwright for the 2025 East Van Panto and will be the lead playwright for the 2026 Panto. His play Peace Country was published by Playwrights Canada Press. You can find out more about Pedro’s work at www.pedrochamale.com and www.riceandbeanstheatre.com

A Fulbright Scholar and co-founder of the Climate Change Theatre Action involving 75,000 participants worldwide, Elaine Ávila is described as “a wonderful writer, tremendously gifted, and innovative” (Suzan-Lori Parks), “fully engaged with the immense political, cultural, and aesthetic complexity of fado’s history” (Jeff Parker); her writing as “gorgeous…a piercing cry to the soul” (Katherine Vaz). Her award-winning plays have been produced in over forty cities/countries, from Panamá City to London, Lisbon to Los Angeles. Best New Play Awards include: Jane Austen, Action Figure (Festival de los Cocos, Panamá City), Lieutenant Nun (Victoria Critics Circle), and Café a Brasileira (Disquiet International Literary Program, Lisbon). Her books are available from NoPassport Press and Talonbooks. She is currently commissioned by the Lortel, an off-Broadway theatre, to write about seaweed’s astonishing potential to mitigate the climate crisis and a historic female scientist who founded the first seaside research station in B.C..

This event is also part of Climate Action Week in BC Libraries