Chantal Bilodeau is the Fourth Speaker in the Mudd Lecture Series   Chantal Bilodeau, the founder and artistic director of The Arctic Cycle, will give a lecture on Nov. 11 at 5 p.m. 

By Connie Okeke ’23
October 15, 2021

Chantal Bilodeau, a playwright and the founder and artistic director of The Arctic Cycle, will give a lecture on Nov. 11 at 5 p.m. as part of Washington and Lee University’s Mudd Center for Ethics series on “Daily Ethics: How Individual Choices and Habits Express Our Values and Shape Our World.”

Bilodeau’s lecture, which is free and open to the public, is titled “Living in the Questions of a Climate-Changed World.” The event will take place at the Stackhouse Theater, and tickets are not required. The lecture will also be available to view via Livestream here.

Bilodeau’s lecture will address how theatre is used as a tool to engage with and raise questions about climate change.

“Chantal Bilodeau has devoted her career to exploring relationships between art and science; the ‘rich intersection where facts and emotions meet,’” said Karla Murdock, director of the Mudd Center. “She notes that although science has helped us to understand the effects of climate change, empirical data has fallen short in moving people to act against it. Through writing and coordinating the production of plays that tell stories of the impact of climate change, Bilodeau hopes to engage the critical reflection and empathy that will move people to action.”

Bilodeau, now based in New York City, is originally from Tiohtiá:ke, the Indigenous land where Montreal, Canada, is located. Her work focuses on the intersection of science, policy, art and climate change. Bilodeau’s plays and translations have been presented in more than a dozen countries around the world. She has earned several playwriting awards, including the Woodward International Playwriting Prize, as well as first place in the Earth Matters on Stage Ecodrama Festival and in the Uprising National Playwriting Competition.

In addition to curating HowlRound Theatre Commons’ only recurring blog series, “Theatre in the Age of Climate Change,” Bilodeau has written on the same subject for American Theatre Magazine, the Center for Energy and Environmental Research in the Human Sciences, Future Earth and the World Policy Institute. She has contributed to several academic volumes, including most recently “International Climate Protection” and “Extraordinary Partnerships: How the Arts and Humanities are Transforming Society.”

As artistic director of The Arctic Cycle, she has been instrumental in getting the theatre and academic communities, as well as diverse audiences in the U.S. and abroad, to engage in climate action through programming that includes live and online events, talks, publications, workshops, national and international convenings, and a worldwide distributed theatre festival.

In 2019, Bilodeau was named one of “8 Trailblazers Who Are Changing the Climate Conversation” by Audubon Magazine. She is currently writing a series of eight plays that examine the social and environmental changes taking place in the eight Arctic nations.

The Mudd Center was established in 2010 through a gift to Washington and Lee from award-winning journalist Roger Mudd, a 1950 graduate of the university. By facilitating collaboration across traditional institutional boundaries, the center aims to encourage a multidisciplinary perspective on ethics informed by both theory and practice. Previous Mudd Center lecture series topics have included Race and Justice in America, The Ethics of Citizenship, Markets and Morals, Equality and Difference, The Ethics of Identity and The Ethics of Technology.

For more information and a complete schedule of events, visit the Mudd Lecture Series webpage.