Theater has long been a catalyst for political change. The earliest Greek performances brought forth controversial topics such as power and greed of government, while today radical theater companies such as the San Francisco Mime Troupe and Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed work to present an alternative view of human history on both street and stage.

But because performing under hundreds of bright lights, handing out paper playbills, and serving coffee to patrons in foam cups is in no way forward-thinking, the Green Theater website now tracks the ways theaters around the world are incorporating environmental concerns into their everyday practices.

For example, the site details the initiative Green Theatre: Taking Action on Climate Change, launched September 9 by London Mayor Boris Johnson. The plan estimates that London’s theater industry creates 55,000 tons of carbon emissions per year, the equivalent of 9,000 homes.  It concludes that if all actions recommended in the plan were taken, such as redesigning internal lighting systems, writing “green” policies into employee contracts, and implementing a battery recycling program, the industry could reduce carbon emissions by almost 60 percent by 2025—the equivalent of converting more than 5,000 London homes to zero-carbon.

Back in the states, Broadway is searching for ways to clean up its act without losing its signature lights. On June 11, a Town Hall meeting affectionately titled “It’s Easy Being Green” was held at the Gershwin Theater to give folks in the industry a chance to bounce ideas off each other. Though many ideas might seem trite, such as reusing water bottles and e-mailing memos, Charlotte St. Martin, executive director of the Broadway League, announced the development of a committee to disseminate information for Broadway to go green. Melissa Wright of the New York City mayor’s office also announced that the city was in the process of putting together carbon inventories and an energy analysis of the Broadway community.

The site offers simple advice that any theater, or professional building for that matter, can follow to save both resources and money—especially important in an age where funding for the arts takes an unfortunate back seat. Terrence Jones, president and CEO of Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts, said in an interview on the site, “If you’re answering to a board of directors or shareholders—in our case, a board of directors—that’s pretty compelling evidence that not only is it good for people and good for the earth, it’s good for the budget.”

If you’re planning to see a show in the upcoming winter months, don’t rely on the theater to turn up the thermostat. Bring a sweater. It looks like they’re catching on.

Image by  John Kannenberg , licensed by Creative Commons.

In an insightful piece for the U.K.-based Prospect magazine, David Goldblatt laments professional sports’ absence from the high culture canon of Western society: art, theater, music, and literature. In an attempt to explain our collective confusion about where sports belong in the cultural hierarchy, Goldblatt describes sports as, among other things, “a religion without a god.” On a whim, I typed “Michael Jordan is god” into Google, and almost a half-million results came up. Keep in mind that Jordan reached the apex of his career more than a decade ago. If Google had existed in 1996, when he led the Chicago Bulls to an NBA-record 72 wins and a championship, I suspect the same search would have easily brought up a million hits. So in the arena of public opinion, at least, sports and professional athletes are a vital, perhaps even sacrosanct, part of our cultural identity.

Renowned musicians sing the national anthem at baseball games, followed by the traditional presidential first pitch of the season. Sports are the subject of award-winning novels and plays. Countless famous pieces of visual art feature athletes. Think of the iconic image of Muhammad Ali standing triumphantly over Sonny Liston. Maybe the idea of sports as being too “common” to truly be art is a uniquely European conceit, as Goldblatt suggests. Yet it seems—when flipping through a history book or strolling the halls of a museum—that this dichotomy of art about sports but never as sports is part of the way Americans view culture as well.

Goldblatt exhorts us to treat sports with “the same seriousness that is accorded to the performing arts.” Although this approach would certainly bring a breed of blue-blooded respectability to such tarnished organizations as the NFL, NBA, and MBL, in practice, it would ultimately damage the accessibility of the game. And as any sports fan will tell you, it’s the game that really matters.

—Morgan Winters