Join us as we collaborate once again with the Players Circle Theater, and FGCU faculty, students, and alumni in a global festival of short plays about envisioning a world beyond the climate crisis, with two productions in December.

“The Time is Now” is this year’s theme for Climate Change Theatre Action, which marks its 10th anniversary after launching in 2015 as a global festival of short plays by playwrights worldwide, all focusing on the overarching theme of climate change.

Produced by Players Circle co-founder and producing director Carrie Lund Cacioppo, a selection of plays will be staged at SCCF’s Bailey Homestead on Sanibel on Dec. 3 and at Players Circle Theater on Dec. 8.

Throughout the evening, the audience will be invited to take part in a community conversation and interactive elements about climate change with ideas for taking action, led by members of the cast and SCCF staff. 

In 2023, SCCF Adult Education Director Jenny Evans reached out to Cacioppo about partnering on performances in Southwest Florida. FGCU Associate Professor of Theater Kristin Mellian — who performed in and directed one of the plays in 2023 — joins the collaborative effort once again as well.

“Live theater creates a connection to climate change that traditional education alone often does not achieve,” said Evans. “The emotional impact audiences experience through powerful performances resonates deeply, staying with them long after the curtain falls and motivating them to take meaningful action for their communities and the environment.”

The Climate Change Theatre Action plays are presented every other year to coincide with the United Nations Climate Change Conference, which is taking place now through December. Fifty professional playwrights, representing all inhabited continents as well as several cultures and Indigenous nations, are commissioned to write the collection of plays.

Cacioppo is excited to add teens to the troupe of actors she is organizing to perform the plays this year.

“I was recently listening to an interview with Jane Goodall at age 88, and she said something that stayed with me: every one of us makes a difference in the world. Her impact on how we think about nature demonstrates what we as individuals can do, using the best we have to do it,” said Cacioppo. “That spirit is at the heart of this partnership and Climate Change Theatre Action performances by theatres and institutions internationally — opening minds, sparking conversation, and ultimately making a meaningful impact.”

This year’s festival features ten new plays written under the theme “The Time Is Now,” and 40 of the greatest hits from the last decade. FGCU students will also be cast in the selection of eight of those plays — ones that invoke both humor and poignant realities.

“Southwest Florida is a region of stunning natural beauty — and rising environmental vulnerability. My contributions to this event serve as small acts of love and alarm for the places we call home. Theatre can be abstract, but climate change isn’t — it’s knocking at our front doors,” said Mellian.

The local production is one of many being performed globally, from Manitoba to Turkey, and is the only one currently planned for Florida.

A limited number of tickets are available for $10. To order tickets for the SCCF event on Dec. 3 at 7 p.m., please click here. To order tickets for Players Circle Theater, Dec. 8 at 7 p.m., please call 239-800-3292.