Street theatre performance can make hidden water systems visible again

Evidence

Matrix Theatre Company involves teachers and students in schools, community organizations, local residents, and artists from all over the world in socially and ecologically engaged theatre with a specific goal of revitalizing the community. The company uses hand-crafted puppets and often performs on the streets. An example of this transformational theatre is their original show “Ghost Waters.” This performance directly draws attention to the undermining of local water systems by modern culture while calling for the rise of lakes, streams, and marshes that were made invisible by industrialization in Detroit. — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education, 1830

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Ghost Waters evocatively pairs with the trees-as-infrastructure piece: both make buried living infrastructure visible, here water that industrialization made invisible.
• STORYSTEM: The River Resurgence Pageant with hand-crafted puppets summoning vanished lakes and streams is a strong image for a magical-realism story about a city whose buried waters return.
• SEED: ‘Ghost Waters’ names a public-performance pedagogy for making hidden ecological damage felt rather than merely explained.
• XREF: connects to: Streams have invisible underground flows connecting channel and forest — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 1086; Water concerts could emerge from sculptor-designer collaboration — Schafer, Murray R, The Soundscape- Our Sonic Environment…, 839

Broader Connections

• Streams have invisible underground flows connecting channel and forest #exemplifies (0.85) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 1086
• Water concerts could emerge from sculptor-designer collaboration #exemplifies (0.75) — Schafer, Murray R, The Soundscape- Our Sonic Environment…, 839