The Story Lives in the Body: Theater-Making as Movement-Building in the Pro-Worker Clean Energy Transition
Photos by Valerie Terranova
A New Collaboration With Working Theater
This winter, the Climate Jobs Institute (CJI) embarked on an exciting collaboration with Working Theater (WT) to develop an innovative training and community-building program for rank-and-file union members. Working Theater is an award-winning off-Broadway theater, with the mission to bring theater to the people and people to the theater. For the past forty years, WT has commissioned, supported, and produced over seventy culturally diverse world-premiere plays about working people’s issues, and offered union members interactive opportunities for growth and connection through its Theaterworks! playwriting and performance classes.
Our shared vision for the pilot program was to create an intimate collective storytelling space, where union members had the chance to explore the complexities of their relationship to climate change and how it will impact their communities at work and at home. In addition to providing rank-and-file workers with an opportunity to hone their written and oral storytelling skills, we wanted to facilitate an experience that allowed participants from a wide array of backgrounds and professional identities to connect meaningfully.
We began our five week Theaterworks! course in mid-February with a cohort of eight participants, including members of IUPAT District Council 9, 32BJ, Laborers Local 79, and more. Theater artist, writer, and performer Lanxing Fu guided the creative process. Now the Co-Director of HERE Arts center, Fu served as Co-Director of Superhero Clubhouse for ten years: an interdisciplinary collective making theater for climate and environmental justice, bringing people together across differences and disciplines to model a regenerative society in response to the climate crisis. During twice-weekly meetings, in person at our Lexington Avenue conference center and over Zoom, Fu led the group in writing and performance exercises designed to create an environment where participants could be playful, honest, and curious and receive each other's stories with close attention and care. By the second class, the room was already bubbling over with enthusiasm and generosity of spirit.
In the final weeks, Fu led the participants through a rehearsal process, and professional union actors joined them to prepare for the public performance. The ensemble performed the forty-minute script they had created together in a black box theater at Theatre Row on 42nd street. The piece evoked the sorrow, fear and hope of navigating our era of climate change as a working person. It also spoke to the beauty and humor inherent in our interconnectedness—with the people we love most, as well as with the world's entire ecosystem. After the show, the friends, family and union colleagues in attendance joined us on stage for a lively reception. In reflecting on the program, participant Jenny Karlsen (IUPAT DC 9) shared, “Working with everyone at Theatreworks! with CJI, I was able to connect with myself and others in a way I hadn't been able to in years. This workshop was like medicine. To come together and experience the raw talent of everyone, discuss very serious issues, and still keep it excitingly exuberant in a comfortable, supportive environment was perhaps the highlight of my year.”
United Association of Labor Educators Conference 2025
Eager to share the success and future possibilities of this model with our wider labor community, several members of the CJI team presented the WT/CJI collaboration at the 2025 United Association of Labor Educators conference this month. Melissa Shetler, assistant director of Labor Outreach and Workforce Equity, facilitated an energetic breakout session that included an overview of our pilot program, as well as a chance for participants to get on their feet and experience several exercises created by famed Theatre of the Oppressed pioneer Augusto Boal. The audience of labor educators – from institutions like the AFL-CIO Organizing Institute, Berkeley Labor Center, and CUNY Labor Studies – immediately jumped into a discussion about the powerful effect that these and other theater exercises could have in a wide variety of movement-building contexts. Participants were especially excited and curious about the prospect of applying this model to challenges such as: helping workers encode emergency protocols in their bodily memories, hosting dynamic performance events that tie into specific campaigns, fostering community among workers that extends beyond a single issue, and building the trust necessary for difficult conversations.
The Climate Jobs Institute and Working Theater are already in discussions about how to build upon the pilot program's success in the coming year, and ways to potentially scale and share it with the larger labor community. Stay tuned!
