Alanna Mitchell

Award-winning Canadian science journalist.

HowlRound series on doing theatre in an age of climate change

Alanna Mitchell

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April 28, 2015

HowlRound is an influential website devoted to fostering conversations about theatre. It calls itself a commons. It’s feisty and smart and it pushes a whole bunch of boundaries. Yippee.

So when Chantal Bilodeau, who wrote the extraordinary play Sila — it’s won several major awards, including the Woodward International Playwriting Prize, 2014 — asked me to contribute a post about making my play Sea Sick, I felt incredibly honoured. And when I saw the company she had put me with in the series of posts she had curated, I felt like maybe this was the beginning of something, a new aesthetic, as Chantal says. A shift from the despairing to the hopeful, as Tanja Beer notes.

I hope you read the whole HowlRound series. It’s called Theatre in the Age of Climate Change. Chantal kicks it off here.

Mine is here.

Birds and bees and pesticides

Alanna Mitchell

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September 25, 2014

TRES 2013 130For the last several months, I’ve been working on a huge series for Environmental Health News, an online publication, about effects of man-made chemicals and climate change on birds. It’s been a riot – the perfect combination of new findings, sleuthing scientists, puzzles and, of course, gorgeous creatures. Some of the pieces, including this opening essay and this one on how mercury affects birds’ songs, have also run on National Geographic’s site. So a huge honour.

Today, it’s my final piece in the series, on whether the newest class of insecticides, neonicotinoids, is affecting the populations of birds that need bugs for food. Fun times, travelling to Saskatchewan to take a look at some hungry baby tree swallows.

Sea Sick

Alan King

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September 16, 2014

Alanna’s acclaimed play, Sea Sick, is coming to stages across Canada.

So, I’m a science journalist and the most exciting thing I had done until this year was research a book on how we’re altering the chemistry of the global ocean. Sounds a bit dull, right? But it was a tale of grand adventure and marvelous discovery with a good dollop of humour, peopled with some of the most fascinating scientists in the world.

So I started giving talks about it and that – to my surprise and ultimately horror – ended up in my being commissioned to create a play, with the help of Franco Boni and Ravi Jain of The Theatre Centre in Toronto, and perform it. Live. In person. In front of people. In a theatre. The results were interesting. This thing was nominated for a Dora. And now, we’re back on stage in Toronto and taking it on the road.

It’s a non-fiction play performed by a non-actor. And it’s all about what I found out about the ocean over 13 journeys in three years. Go figure.

We’ve performed at Montreal’s Usine C, Calgary’s High-Performance Rodeo and Vancouver’s PuSH festival. Now we’re heading for the National Arts Centre’s Ontario Scene festival in Ottawa in May. Details here. Then it’s off to the Uno Festival in Victoria for two shows. Details here.  We’ve got more exciting dates and places coming up. This show is going international! Wow.
Here’s how critics described my play: “Shockingly honest”. “Passionate”. “Unconventional theatre”. “A thrilling, yet highly disturbing cautionary tale”. “Riveting and mentally stimulating”. “Unsettling information aimed at provoking change”. “Life-changing”.

Interviews about Sea Sick, the book

ABC-100pxInterview with Alanna on ABC (Australian Broadcast Corp.) show The National Interest. Transcript is downloadable.

radio-NZ-100pxInterview with Alanna on Radio New Zealand National.

CBC-100pxInterview with Alanna on CBC’s Quirks and Quarks.

greenInterview-logo100pxThe Ocean in Peril. To purchase the full, hour long video ($3.99) click here.

Sea Sick – book

Alan King

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September 11, 2014

sea sick“It is often said that our oceans are less understood than the surface of the moon. Alanna Mitchell’s informative and deeply moving book gives a wonderful portrait of a global marine ecosystem that desperately needs both greater popular understanding and international protection against looming catastrophe.” —-Mark Lynas, Environmentalist and author of ‘Six Degrees’.”

 

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