About the Play:

Forward is a full-length drama by Chantal Bilodeau. Presents a poetic history of climate change from the initial passion that drove Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen to the North Pole, to the consequences of over a century of fossil fuel addiction. Set in Norway, the play progresses backward from 2013 to 1895, and zeroes in on 40 characters whose day-to-day lives illustrate how the choices we make often have unintended consequences.

Forward was partly inspired by a ten-day sailing expedition around the Svalbard Archipelago, located halfway between Norway and the North Pole. Spanning a hundred years and thousands of kilometres from the sixtieth parallel North to the top of the world, Forward presents a poetic history of energy development in Norway from the initial passion that drove explorer Fridtjof Nansen to the North Pole, to the consequences of decades of our addiction to fossil fuels. A blend of theatre and electropop music, the play progresses backwards from 2013 to 1893, and zeroes in on close to forty characters whose day-to-day lives illustrate how the choices we make often have unintended consequences. Woven through this history is the passionate love affair between Nansen and sea ice, embodied as a character in the play. Expressing herself only through song, Ice, who has waited for millennia for the arrival of her lover, is bracing to meet her destiny. A relay race through time, where each generation passes the baton to the next, Forward takes a compassionate look at the legacies we leave behind, and at what we are willing to do for love. Ultimately, Forward is about climate change. It's a story about how an Arctic explorer fell in love with Ice (embodied as a character in the play), and unwittingly opened up the Arctic for development. A story about people having good intentions that led to unintended consequences. A story about who we are in all our glorious imperfection. But Forward is also a story of hope. It is an invitation to collectively grieve for what we lost, for what we continue to lose every day, so that we can forgive ourselves. It is a reminder that if we come together as a community, we will find a solution.

Forward premiered in 2016 at the Purple Masque Theater on the Kansas State University campus. Forward is the second play of the planned Arctic Cycle, a series of eight plays that examine the impact of climate change on the eight countries of the Arctic circle – Canada, the United States, Greenland, Iceland, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Russia.

Cast: 4 female, 5 male

About the Playwright:

Chantal Bilodeau is a Québec playwright and translator now based in New York City whose work focuses on the intersection of science, policy, art, and climate change. She is the Artistic Director of The Arctic Cycle, an organization that uses theatre to foster dialogue about our global climate crisis, create an empowering vision of the future, and inspire people to take action. Her plays and translations have been presented in theatres across the U.S., as well as in Canada, Mexico and Italy. She is currently at work on a series of eight plays that look at the social and environmental changes taking place in the eight Arctic states.