I tell people all the time that I think imagination is our most powerful political tool.

And I think it is actively suppressed by the structures and the society that we live in a lot of the time.

Many people who should have access to play and imagination are systemically prevented from having access to those things, and that is directly connected to people's ability to dream about and advocate for a better life and a better future for themselves.

My name is Lani Fu.

I am one of the co-directors of Super Hero Clubhouse.

Superhero Clubhouse is a creative community of people making art, making performances and theater centered around climate and environmental justice.

It feels incredibly important to have the voices of young people present in any conversation about climate crisis, because young people are very much on the front lines of those impacts.

We are at the LMCC Arts Center on Governor's Island.

It's a beautiful space, beautiful island.

Today is our dress rehearsal for our Big Green Theater show, "To New Drowsy: A Ferry Tale."

It was written by Harbor School students over on the island, who got together with a group of adults, professional collaborators, and are putting up a show this weekend.

We can take my watercraft.

I'm one of the adult actors, or the elder actors, as we refer to ourselves in the room.

I'll be playing Trash the Rebel Artist, among other characters.

It's been so great to work with the students here at the Harbor School.

They're so excited.

They're so enthusiastic.

Like the amount of, like, big risk choices that they're taking is really inspiring as an actor working in a professional context to, like, off the wall choices.

"To New Drowsy" begins on the ferry in the heart in New York City harbor.

It follows a ferry worker and various commuters on the ferry, including students who are now in kind of like a half cyborg, half human existence in this future world.

The students created the characters, and then from there we found the story of the rats and began to write this play about some rats trying to find a home in the face of climate catastrophe.

If only you fools knew the real generator is powered by my phone.

My name is Draco McCall.

I am playing Luke in To New Drowsy.

I was actually shown it by one of my close friends, Damien.

Pretty cool dude.

And I wanted to join from the beginning because I love theater and I've been in theater programs my entire life.

Close the gates.

We have to leave.

Wait, there's still people in the streets.

We were last working on heading to Big Tech, Big Bros headquarters to take down the evil villain Luke, who is trying to turn New York City into an underwater amusement park.

Not on my watch!

We did a couple of puppet workshops with the students who had never puppeteered before.

I gave them a chance just to put on the puppet, just to get comfortable with the feeling of it on their hands.

Maybe we just need to accept our fate.

Aw.

Let's hug.

Something else we would do is give them prompts.

What does the rat look like when he is sad?

What is the rat look like when he's happy?

How does the rat swim?

How does the rat laugh?

How does the rat dance?

I would try to interpret the mood of what's going on in the story and apply that to my puppet.

So, like, if I'm shocked, I'm probably, I'm just going to have, like, Mike's jaw just drop.

Something that struck me working with high school students on play about climate change was how much of a challenge it was to get them to think more hopeful and more imaginative.

The world we live in is frustrating and sad, and their anger and disappointment is valid.

Part of Big Green Theater is how can we imagine solutions?

Climate is like, I guess, a very important topic.

Since I go to the Harbor School, where it's like, a lot of the lessons are on that type of thing.

We learn about, like how these rising sea levels are affecting us, especially like Governors Island and Manhattan.

In lower Manhattan, the biggest climate impact that we're facing is really flooding.

Past flooding that's happened because of major storm events and also future flooding that is sure to become worse and worse as the years go on.

We try very hard to approach each of our programs and productions with a circular design process.

So really thinking intentionally about where the resources that we bring in come from, can they be mostly recycled, reused, borrowed, and then where do they go?

But I think that the vision we have for our work is much more holistic than that.

The vision we have for our work is very much about building new, systemic relationships that foster more possibility for justice and more possibility for regenerative ways of being together.

So the materials sustainability piece is very important because that is our relationship to resources, and it's our relationship to the more than human world around us.

And I would say also that we actively model our organization and our core members and everyone who works with us as a thriving ecosystem.

And when you think of it and frame it that way, what does that mean?

What does that mean in terms of how people can come in and out of projects, or how we work together and how we support each other.

What we give and take.

We're not taking this academic or clinical approach that is kind of removed.

We're very much trying to learn from each other's experiences and the experiences of those that have been dealing with this firsthand on the front line.

We do a lot of intergenerational work.

Part of what we feel that we do really specifically is build bridges across different kinds of communities that are often siloed from each other.

The Living Stage is another project that took place in the Lower East Side.

The goal was to build a community garden that doubled as a performance space.

And through the process of building that, really activate different people engaging with this very underutilized brown space.

We worked with an ensemble of seniors, along with some students from a nearby school, to create an original performance that was then showcased at this festival that also invited local artists and the seniors from the senior center, and anyone who wanted to come in the neighborhood to come and celebrate the space.

When you start to work on stories that are involving climate, it becomes very zoned in on place.

The work that Superhero Clubhouse does requires of their audience to go to a place.

It is interactive.

It is being in that environment.

There Will Be Monsters is a hybrid theater and gaming experience, so participants are invited to play a character within a magical version of reality that mirrors some of the different climate crises we're facing now.

I play the Dungeon Master, so it is set up like a Dungenos and Dragons kind of tabletop RPG or role playing game.

We're starting to focus in on the bio region of the Hudson Valley.

So all the way from New York City, up through the Hudson River into Upstate New York.

We're still working on how to incorporate the flora and fauna that are specific to that area.

It's just amazing what people come up with.

Oftentimes, storytelling is what shows us what's possible.

I always say that each new piece or each new project is... we're building a new world, and we get to decide how that world functions, and we decide what's in it and how we want to live in it, and how we want to live with each other in it.

Repeat after me.

We're going to say this three times, okay?

I will lift you up.

I will not let you fall.

I will lift you up, I will not let you fall.

I will lift you up, I will not let you fall.

I will lift you up, I will not let you fall.

I will lift you up, I will not let you fall.

I will lift you up, I will not let you fall.

Woo!

There's something about opening up a playful space and opening up an imaginative space that makes it possible to be more hopeful and activated.

I hope people really enjoy it and find the entire thing to be funny and humorous, because that was the main point.

But I also hope people realize, oh, climate change is not going to be something that hits us in an instant.

It's going to be a slow, gradual progression that slowly makes things worse and worse if nothing gets changed.

I hope that our viewers of our play want to see and want to help make the world a better place so that our play doesn't become a reality.

They're going to look at the message and probably, hopefully, they'll act on it because like, this is our world.

We have to take care of it, you know.

I think I was surprised by my students ability to find some hope in the midst of our current climate crisis.

I'm a parent of two young kids.

And I don't always feel a lot of hope.

So, I feel a lot of gratitude for the ways the students can think creatively about how to keep thriving together.

I just hope the students feel so loved inside of it.

I think they've created a beautiful and hysterical world, and it's been a joy to bring it to life, so I hope that they get to feel really accomplished and proud of themselves in the work.

There's something really empowering about having a thing that only exists here or here, and with the other brains in the room, and then it's alive, and it's something that other people can come and see and touch and feel and be with.

It's a real, actual experience of like, oh, this thing that didn't exist that I didn't know if it was possible, now exists and people are living in it.

On a small scale.

that is so important because that's what we're trying to do collectively in the world right now.

The things that we're told are impossible, the things that we're told can't be, actually, we need to figure out a way to be able to imagine them and like, envision them, so that they can be.

And then you're going to take a bow off Jackie.

Everyone bow!

And then you're all going to gesture towards Juni.

And then you're going to take the last bow off of Jackie.

And then Adama is going to lead us back to the dressing room.

Go ahead, Adama.