Indiana University Northwest School of the Arts is proud to invite Jeff Biggers, an award-winning historian, journalist, author, and playwright, to serve as the campus’s Climate Narrative Playwright-in-Residence.
Biggers will play a central role in the Climate Season project, a yearlong initiative combining the arts, climate change awareness and campus-community outreach and engagement.
The project will address a global call for climate education and action through a series of theater and community events, combining a multidisciplinary collaboration between the sciences, humanities, and the arts.
“The School of Arts commitment to addressing environmental and climate change issues—by way of the Climate Season project—places IU Northwest at the forefront of climate change education on American campuses,” said David Klamen, dean of the School of Arts and chancellor’s professor.
Original play: “Kaminski’s Lot”
Through his playwright-in-residence role, Biggers was commissioned to write an original play entitled, “Kaminski’s Lot.” The production opens 7:30 p.m., Thursday, November 4 in the IU Northwest Theater at the Arts & Sciences Building.
“Kaminski’s Lot” follows the journey of a vanload of IU Northwest students and their professor, who must take refuge in a greenhouse in a seemingly abandoned lot in present-day Gary, Ind., when a disastrous storm rolls through the area.
“Drawing from a broad range of interviews, stories and field research collected from IU Northwest students, faculty, and community members in Gary, this production is intimately connected to the Northwest campus, and Northwest Indiana, and fairly unique in the country as a place-based theatre production on climate change and environmental justice,” Biggers said. “In a celebration of storytelling, led by an urban farmer and her niece, this production places the questions of legacy, culture, family and personal histories on stage, in a time of climate crisis.”
Biggers is the founder of the Climate Narrative Project, an arts and advocacy project for schools, universities and community organizations. Over the past decade, he has given lectures, readings and performances at over 100 universities and schools across the country, from the University of California in Berkeley, the University of Mississippi, Yale University to the University of Rome (La Sapienza).
Theatre Northwest invites the public to “Kaminski’s Lot” performances set for 7:30 p.m., Thursday, November 4; Friday, November 5; Thursday, November 11; and Friday November 12, or at 3 p.m. on Saturday, November 6 and Saturday, November 13.
General admission tickets are $10/person. Online reservations are strongly advised: https://go.iu.edu/47NX.
Additional Climate Season events information
Additional Climate Season events include sustainability speakers, a guided tour of Historic Midtown Gary and a microplay fall workshop and spring festival.
For information about the Climate Season project or the School of the Arts, contact Erin McHugh at 219-980-6810 or [email protected].
About Indiana University Northwest
One of seven campuses of Indiana University, IU Northwest is located in metropolitan Northwest Indiana, approximately 30 miles southeast of Chicago and 10 miles from the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. The campus has a diverse student population of approximately 4,000 degree-seeking students and 1,500 dual-credit students. The campus offers Associate, Baccalaureate and Master’s degrees in a variety of undergraduate, graduate and pre-professional degree options available from the College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Health and Human Services, the School of Business and Economics, the School of the Arts and the School of Education. The campus is also host to IU School of Medicine-Northwest-Gary, which actively involves students in research and local healthcare needs through its four-year medical doctorate program. IU Northwest emphasizes high-quality teaching, faculty and student research and engagement on campus and in the community. As a student-centered campus, IU Northwest is committed to academic excellence characterized by a love of ideas and achievement in learning, discovery, creativity and engagement. Indiana University Northwest is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer committed to achieving excellence through diversity. The University actively encourages applications from women, minorities, veterans, persons with disabilities, and members of other underrepresented groups.
