Baldwinsville — Before heading to their classes Monday morning, Baker students heard the Styrophonics perform songs about rising sea levels and witnessed their costumed classmates’ “die-in,” representing the many animal and plant species being driven to extinction by climate change.
From Nov. 30 through Dec. 4, Baker High School students in Kathy Pickard’s Stage and Screen class and the Baker Environmental Club are teaming up for the Climate Change Theatre Action (CCTA) initiative. Throughout “Climate Week,” the students will perform skits, songs, poems and presentations in more than a dozen classrooms and “pop-up” performance areas around the school to warn their peers about the consequences of global climate change and offer suggestions on going green.
Across the globe, more than 20 countries will host 100 CCTA events like Baker’s, performing the works of 50 playwrights. Baker is the only school in the U.S. and one of only three K-12 schools worldwide to participate in CCTA.
“It’s an important issue, and lots of kids don’t pay attention or seem like they don’t care,” said Riley Carlucci, a Stage and Screen student. “If you do something in their face it will make them care. Maybe with their classmates telling them it’ll really make a difference.”
Climate Week coincides with the United Nations Paris Climate conference, which is ongoing through Dec. 11. While President Barack Obama and other world leaders work on a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Baker students will celebrate Walk to School/Carpool Day, Wear Green Day and Conserve Energy Day.
After the drama students’ performances, members of the Baker Environmental Club will present on the global warming, its causes and its deadly effects on the environment.
Carlucci, who plays both basketball and volleyball, decided to branch out and take on a one-woman play, “Tess Talk,” in which a weary bartender rants about the do’s and don’ts of being environmentally friendly.
continued — “I was kind of hesitant at first,” Carlucci said. “But I thought my personality could take on this play and I wanted to challenge myself a bit.”
Guitarist/vocalist Kyle Micho, bassist David Millen and percussionist Nate Piazza make up the Styrophonics, a band they formed for CCTA. Micho wrote four songs to highlight the effects of climate change.
“[The song ‘Styrofoam’] is to use a real-world example so people can relate to climate change, notice the change and do something about it,” Micho said.
“Underneath the Sea” deals with rising sea levels, and “It’s Not Too Late” tells kids what they can do to prevent further damage to the environment.
“It’s a song to encourage people rather than to say the world is ending,” Micho said.
Micho said he wrote the songs specifically “to get stuck in people’s heads.”
“The great thing about these songs is they don’t sound like it’s about climate change,” Millen said of the catchy tunes. “I’m very happy that people were so receptive to it.”
Piazza said the Styrophonics’ songs would be played over Baker’s morning announcements. The band recorded their songs at Hobin Studios with the sound engineering help of their classmate, Shane Patterson.
Anna Capria wrote a series of poems about the decline of coral reefs and helped create a sculpture of discarded Styrofoam trays to show the high school’s unfortunate contribution to landfills.
“As high school students, it’s really crucial for us to talk about it because it’s our future,” Capria said.
Pickard, whose son, Jeremy Pickard, is one of the CCTA playwrights, worked with her classes for about a month to prepare the performances. Jeremy Pickard even visited his mother’s classes to workshop their performances and scout out locations for the pop-up plays.
“I absolutely think that their generation is incredibly significant because they’re going to be most affected if we don’t do anything,” Kathy Pickard said. “They have the energy and the attitude to effect change. I think they’re more involved and aware than people give teenagers credit for.”
continued — Pickard’s students were wrapping up their work on the Baker High School Drama Club’s “Café Murder,” a dinner theater murder mystery held last month, when they received the invitation to participate in CCTA. The students selected the plays, researched global warming and created costumes, posters and sheets of statistics affixed to Styrofoam trays to display the information they’d gleaned.
“They’ve been using what they can find, which is what being a good environmentalist is all about,” Pickard said.
The students said they have learned a great deal about the detrimental effects of climate change, which include heat waves, more intense tropical storms and the loss of sea ice, which threatens the habitat of polar bears.
“I’ve never thought of it like that, in the way of plays [solving problems],” student Cat Ficarra said. “This is actually happening.”
According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Northeast is experiencing a disruption in weather patterns with serious consequences.
“Heat waves, heavy downpours and sea level rise pose growing challenges to many aspects of life in the Northeast,” a section of NASA’s website reads. “Infrastructure, agriculture, fisheries and ecosystems will be increasingly compromised. Many states and cities are beginning to incorporate climate change into their planning.”
The Styrophonics’ Micho said his generation must take action to slow the deadly progress of global warming.
“If we don’t, then no one will,” he said. “It’s a pretty imminent danger.”
