Shellharbour teens and environmentalists helping craft a script for climate change play

Shellharbour teenage drama students and those connected to environmental issues are helping craft the script for a climate change play by Darlinghurst playwright, producer, actor and climate activist Izabella Louk.

Izabella is partway through a four-week Incubator Artist Residency at The Imaginarium in Shellharbour, where she is also putting on free drama workshops for teenagers and talking to climate enthusiasts in the region.

“Often what I write is about climate activism, and so I thought I’m interested in using this time to develop a full-length play, but I would love it to be in response to the area and in response to the people I can work with,” she said.

“So while I’ve been here, I’ve been interviewing local climate activists, or people who are involved in the environment and climate change in different ways.

“I’ve also been running workshops for teenage drama students and developing the ideas I’m finding in interviews or common threads I want to tease out into a script.

“I’ve been developing these ideas with the students, and then I’ve been compiling all that and creating a script out of it.”

The recent finalist in the Martin Lysicrates playwriting award held her first workshop on 10 August for Years Seven to 10 students and will conduct another for Years Seven to 12 this Saturday (17 August).

“I gave them the first 20 pages of a script I’d written last week from going through these interviews,” she said.

“They were really responsive to the material, but they were also full of ideas.

“The play is about climate change, which I think is a super confronting and scary topic, but also a topic that’s going to affect us young people.”

She said the students had a lot to say after reading the script and were really engaged in the topic.

“They had so many ideas for how the characters could stand up for what’s right and what we need to be doing,” she said.

“I am not a teenager anymore, and I don’t have any younger siblings, so it’s great to hear how they speak and how they interact with the script in mind.”

She said the workshops involved breaking into groups and taking on different roles to act out a scene from the play, before performing it to the wider group, along with doing improvisation and fun drama games.

“Once I’ve got a full script out of this residency, I want to get it on stage next year somewhere,” she said.

“We’re at a really pivotal time in the climate fight, especially with an election coming up next year, and teenagers can’t vote, but they’re the ones who are affected by this.

“I think having teenagers on stage saying to the adults, ‘You need to look after my future. You need to safeguard the world for us and for my children and for my grandchildren’, it feels like a really important time to get that message on stage.”

No stranger to the Illawarra, she worked with Wollongong-based theatre company Rising Arts Productions for the play The Wolves last year about a teenage girls’ soccer team.

Before that, Izabella studied theatre at Drew University in New Jersey, graduating in 2020 and returning to Australia where she worked as a dresser on the wardrobe team for major musicals such as Come From Away and Frozen.

She said she had since started her own theatre company, Blinking Light, with a focus on sustainability due to the theatre industry being notoriously bad for the planet.

“We use props and costumes once and then we throw them out, or we source them from either places that aren’t ethically sourcing them or we’re using toxic materials,” she said.

“I’ve taken to popping in skip bins and dumpsters and digging for secondhand wood when we need to build a set piece.

“It’s not glamorous, but I know that a tree hasn’t been cut down to help me make this window frame or this door.”

Funded by Shellharbour City Council, Incubator residencies run for four weeks and are open to artists and creative practitioners. Artists receive access to The Imaginarium during the residency period and a $5000 stipend towards artist fees and material costs.

Book a spot for the free drama workshop for Years 10 to 12 students on Saturday (17 August) from 12 to 4 pm at The Imaginarium, Wentworth St, Shellharbour.