Lea Bossler, a student at the University of Montana in Missoula, majoring in Environmental Science and minoring in Climate Change. She is the daughter of Jeff and Bonnie Bossler.
Local artist-educator Sharon Abreu will preview her new musical one-woman show about climate change, The Climate Monologues, at the Orcas Grange on Sunday, May 16th at 7 p.m. Orcas Island Prevention Partnership is sponsoring this free show, which will also offer a community question, answer and comment session afterwards.
Abreu’s Climate Monologues brings to the stage the voices of real people across the U.S. and beyond, with monologues taken from interviews with people impacted by, or working to solve, climate change. A short original song follows each monologue.
The show includes a woman from the Yupik tribe in Alaska and a Jesuit priest in India. It highlights the horrors of mountaintop removal coal mining in West Virginia.
Geared for adults and young adults, from high school on up, the show, while entertaining, is meant to educate, inspire compassion and spur action to curb human impacts on the environment, empowering individual citizens and helping them put themselves in the picture as part of the solution to this monumental challenge.
“All the good information we have has not been enough to make the needed changes in energy use and energy production,” said Abreu. “I believe a more heart-centered approach is needed. That is why The Climate Monologues combines good information with personal stories and songs.” For this premier showing, Abreu is asking for input on this “work in progress” – so the viewing community will have time for questions and comments after the show.
Abreu and partner Michael Hurwicz have created a variety of environmental musical shows over the years, including Turn the World Upside-Down, performed in the New York City Public Schools; The Great Climate Caper, performed by local middle school students at the Orcas Grange; and Penguins on Thin Ice, performed by students from New York’s High School for Environmental Studies (HSES) at the United Nations for the U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development in 2007.
The Climate Monologues is a project of Irthlingz Arts-Based Environmental Education and more information is available at https://www.ClimateMonologues.com. More information about the Irthlingz organization can be found at https://www.irthlingz.org.
Contact Abreu at 376-5773 or sharmuse@gmail.com for more information.
