"Whose side are you on?"
Artist, activist and academic Lori Shyba wants Albertans to move beyond the stereotypes and start talking about solutions that work for our energy needs and our environment.
By Erin Carpenter
“I love the smell of bitumen in the morning.”
On cue to that confrontational statement, Tarzana, a die-hard devotee to fossil fuels, swaggers onstage amid the sounds of idling diesel trucks, screen projections of belching oilsands smokestacks, and the buzz and flash of a giant-sized computer pinball game. Tarzana is a character, a player in Lori Shyba’s interactive one-act play, “Spies in the Oilsands,” which forms part of Shyba’s PhD research in the U of C’s Interdisciplinary Graduate Program.
“Spies shows the extremes of both sides of the oilsands story through two characters: Tarzana, the oil slut, and Terra, the wing-nut environmentalist,” says Shyba, BFA’79, MFA’04. “Being forum theatre, the play has a beginning and a middle but no end, and it’s up to the audience to decide whose side they might be on by jumping in on the action with other ideas.”
This unique blend of theatre art and digital games demonstrates the broad reach of Shyba’s project, which includes a downloadable computer version of “The Pipeline Pinball Energy Thrill Ride Game.” Like the players onstage, people at home can decide how to play this game, which comes complete with a twanging banjo soundtrack and a cacophony of bells and whistles. Players score fossil fuel points to ramp up oilsands progress, or alternative energy points to curb carbon emissions.
Shyba says both the game and the play form the substantive underpinnings of her research.
“When I entered this PhD program, my aim was to work with some of the best minds on campus to make original art exploring how interactive theatre and digital play spaces, especially computer games, can help us understand urgent social and political issues.”
But it’s not always fun and games.
“The performances and games don’t stand alone. They sit on inspirational foundations of creativity in ritual and theatre and games, as well as in cognitive science and political activism, including, importantly, humour as subversion.”
While she admits to an initial bias toward the side of Terra’s environmental zealotry when she started this project, Shyba says her perspective has now moved toward finding balance.
“It’s easy to pay lip service to environmental concerns and it’s equally easy to fall into the status quo position of business as usual. Finding a workable balance and then taking action is a tough thing to do.”
So far, Calgary’s oilpatch has not responded directly to Shyba’s work. But she has challenged them to get in on the dialogue by helping with a “Spies in the Oilsands” Alberta community road show to explore the issue across the province.
Describing herself as an artist, activist and academic, Shyba says the ultimate goal of her interdisciplinary research is to get people to go beyond the stereotypes, and start talking about serious solutions.
“My discoveries include not only ideas about the complex problems of climate change and environmental sustainability, but also about how activist theatre can inform the development and study of social-issue computer games.”
While her webpage (www.sundialmedia.com) is rife with humour, it belies a serious tone to her work.
“I’m a fourth generation Albertan and as proud as they come about our windfall of energy wealth,” she says. “But what does it mean overall to us as Albertans? How about to the world?”