Originally published in Canadian Theatre Review, Volume 186, Spring 2021
Hero is the last remaining human on earth, stranded on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Castaway-style, she has populated the is- land with garbage-puppet citizenry to keep her company and with ingenious—if improvised—inventions to keep her alive. But the doomsday clock is ticking down to the end of the world, and she is running out of time. Wastelands is an apocalyptic comedy about garbage and the pieces of trash who produce it: a one-woman show performed with junk in an immersive/interactive environment.
My name is Savanna Harvey. I’m a creator-performer based in Treaty 6 and 7 territories: Amiskwaciywâskahikan-Edmonton and Mohkínstsis-Calgary. My new show, Wastelands, opens in March 2022. I’ve been creating and producing performance in Alberta since 2014, and three years ago, I transitioned out of my ‘pay-the-rent’ job and into a ‘can-usually-pay-the-rent’ arts career. ‘Arts career’ is a fun card to pull in a game of Balderdash. Right up there with ‘dramaturgy.’ For me, an arts career means I make art and contract out any spare time to producing other people’s art: indie artists and small-to-mid-size arts organizations. I’ve got one finger in each pie, so to speak—art and administration—which makes sense for a collective creation glutton prone to sticking all her fingers in all the pies.
I started audience development for Wastelands almost as soon as I started writing it. Even though I’ve worked in audience development for a while now, the late-night dread that no one will come never seems to go away and in this case is perhaps not completely paranoid. For my purposes, I’ll define audience development as the branch of arts administration responsible for ‘bums in seats,’ a.k.a. bringing in an audience. Audience development is a more varied practice than mere ticket sales. It encompasses audience enrichment, education, outreach, and community build- ing. For this article, however, I’m going to focus on the numbers game as my entry point into this larger discussion. As Wastelands is a cautionary tale about plastics (petroleum product) and green- house gas emissions debuting right in the heart of oil country, the ‘bums in seats’ aspect is a legitimate night terror.
In cultivating this future audience for our March 2022 open- ing, it can be complicated trying to explain the show to ‘outsiders.’ By ‘outsiders,’ I mean people who don’t typically attend theatre or do not have theatre training/background. In introducing the show, after covering the basics (character, plot), I next have to tackle what it is. In conversations, social media, emails, and the like, I insert variations of “It’s a show with garbage puppets!” “Wastelands is an experience on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch with an immersive environment!” “It’s a really cool, interactive event with alternative endings determined by the audience!” “It’s going to be a participatory experience, where the audience gets to build (and destroy) the world.”
