¡Hola! My name is Vanessa Pereda, coming to you from the land of the Lenni-Lenape, Lenapehoking, aka Brooklyn. I’m a looong time artistic collaborator, BGT actor, BGT classroom leader, BGT enthusiast, BGT believer, and now the Director of the Bushwick Starr's Big Green Theater program.

This year we were honored to continue Big Green Theater by translating our beloved program into a digital offering. Not only did we change our approach in our curriculum for our students, schools, and the Zoom sphere, but we also re-centered and re-rooted ourselves in our mission of unleashing the creative voice of our students through the practice of playwriting, the examination of climate justice, and the creation of live performance.

Using the We See You White American Theater document as a guiding light towards anti-racist practices in all our theatrical pursuits, we bolstered our efforts in offering ALL collaborators, regardless of age, systems of support so we could move towards our goals in ways that felt collectively created and not decided by one person, or group.

We emphasized process over production, and gave each team the power to determine how their final sharing could best represent how their BGT team spent their time together.

Collective solution building, collective care and grace, with opportunities for open and transparent conversations about the stress of digital learning/facilitating, general anxieties, and the effects of environmental racism in NYC, especially on our students and families of color are all welcome in BGT.

The fearlessness and enthusiasm these young creatives continue to teach all of us is a gift in this time. A gift of hope in the movement towards justice through art.

We are so thankful.
I am so grateful.

Here’s to the wisdom and light of our young artists, and to all of the dedicated, generous, and brilliant adult collaborators this year!

Con Muchas Gracias,
Vanessa
BGT’s Biggest Stan

The 5th graders of PS18 were inspired to tell their narrative through the tales of our “stuff.” Weaving stories of the future with tales of the heroes journey, friendship, and bravery. The young artists asked big questions about: production and consumption, pollution in our neighborhoods, and gentrification. “A Message From Your League of Heroes”, aims to get creative with how we heal our planet and ourselves.

~Alcides & Hazel, PS18 Co-Lead Teaching Artists

At PS75 we used educational videos, pictures we found and the educational material provided by BGT as a source of inspiration and starting point for creativity. We created multiple stories with the students using a collaborative approach and through games. After that we started creating dialogues and a world in which these stories and characters could live. With the dialogues we got to the final script and prepared to create the presentation. One thing we made an effort to emphasize was the creativity of the children in all the processes from creating the stories, to creating the dialogues, to the artistic concept and even to the acting. We hope that our final showing honors their ideas and that our work plants a seed to inspire the students to talk, create and take action in regards to Environmental Justice.

~Jorge & Andrew, PS75 Co-Lead Teaching Artists

I think that the ethos we’ve tried to invoke in this class is very closely tied to the ethos of collectivism we use in our own lives. One of the things that we were both concerned about when coming into this round of BGT was making sure that we talked to the kids about the social inequalities that lead to climate injustice. Things that we tend to ignore. Like the fact that individual decisions will not save us from the effects of climate change if large corporations continue to pollute our world without any regulations. Assata Shaukur said it best, “You cannot appeal to the morality of your oppressor.” As long as that remains true we will likely have to start planning for the worlds that Octavia Butler wrote of; and with that in mind we decided to remember her words in the belief that, “There is nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns.” We worked with our students on imagining new worlds while simultaneously imagining a way of life that was worth fighting for. And more importantly we worked in a world where the everyday people are their own heroes and they acknowledge that no one else is coming to save them. They inadvertently remind us all that “We’re all we got.”

~Marisa & Amara, PS106 Co-Lead Teaching Artists

Over at IS77 we have been working hard on creating and populating a multitude of imaginary worlds that each have their own environmental issues. The students generated characters and explored how those characters are impacted by and fight against the environmental changes in their world. Taking inspiration from youth-led justice Instagram accounts, the students put together videos "spreading the word" about their imagined worlds' imagined issues. Through this, they show us how we are all interconnected and can support each other across different experiences under the common roof of environmental justice and climate restoration.

~Kelcey & Mukta, IS77 Co-Lead Teaching Artists