Undercurrents

Abstract

Coastal communities, including those surrounding the Gulf of Maine, are facing considerable challenges in adapting to increased flood resulting from sea-level rise, and these challenges will remain well past 2050. Over the longer term (decades to centuries), many coastal communities will have to retreat inland away from the coast and toward something new. To date, there appears to be little consideration of how arts and humanities could be leveraged to encourage learning and experimentation to help communities adapt to our changing climate. In this article, we describe an interactive theater model that seeks to address the challenge of bridging scientific knowledge and community conversations on managed retreat and serve as an innovative tool to encourage more productive community conversations about adapting to rising sea levels. The interactive theater workshop consists of two components. The first is a set of short intertwining monologues by three characters (a municipal leader, a climate scientist, and a coastal property owner) who share their thoughts regarding the prospect of managed retreat. Each character provides a glimpse into the attitudes, values, motivations, and fears related to distinct and authentic perspectives on managed retreat. The monologues are followed by a professionally facilitated interactive session during which audience-participants are invited to probe characters’ perspectives and even redirect and replay scenes in new ways to seek more constructive outcomes. The workshop is designed for all session participants to examine their own strengths and weaknesses when engaging others on this subject, to be more prepared to accommodate a range of emotional connections to the subject matter, and to anticipate social dynamics at play. The workshop has now been piloted at four different events. Initial feedback from post-workshop voluntary surveys suggest that the workshop is useful for improving the capacity of resilience professionals to encourage more productive conversations about difficult climate adaptation actions.