Go Vegetarian: Save the World (working title)

A show/presentation about what climate change is, how our food system works, how the two are related and what you can do about it. I will probably upload in parts- part 1 up so far

-Upbeat music plays to welcome guests and keep them in a good mood. A projector is set up and slide with show logo on screen.

-Lights fade but aren’t completely dark on audience, focus on center of black box theater.  Host enters (mic?)

-Grace greets Audience: Hello thanks for coming! Etc

Most of you probably already know me.  Otherwise I’d love to know how you heard about this show.  Tell your friends.  Anyway, for those who don’t, my name is Grace.  I will be graduating, hopefully, in May with a Bachelor’s Degree in theater arts and a minor in sustainability.  “What? That’s a weird combination, how did you end up picking those things? (What the hell is sustainability?)”  Well I came here, to the U, wanting to do musical theater.  You see I have been in theater since I was about 7 years old.

-Slide of little Grace at different ages in shows or dance performances

I loved to perform, and when I was maybe 12 I was like “wow, I can do this as my job!” So when I finally came here I was set on this career path. Unfortunately we don’t really do a lot of musical theater specifically here, so I took the theater classes, some dance classes, was on track to graduate early.  All is good.

-Pictures of high school and college theater stuff

But let’s rewind a little

-Embarrassing baby photo

Whoops, too far

-Elementary school

There we go.  So, I’m not going to lie, I was kind of a weird  little kid.  And one of the things I did that I don’t think a lot of other little kids did was get so caught up in my own thoughts that I got dizzy and fell down.  For example I was once looking into a mirror and couldn’t started thinking about how that person in the mirror was the person looking at it and thinking the thoughts I was thinking�"basically I was high most of my childhood.  Anyway, already a little weird thinking. Now I always loved animals and at one point wanted to be a veterinarian, a zoologist, but one day when I was 13 I had this thought: “I am eating an animal.  And it’s dead.  What?! Why am I doing this? That doesn’t make any sense.”  So I told my parents I wasn’t going to eat meat anymore.  Any like any important decision any 13 year old has ever made, they did not take me seriously.  At first, they eventually came around. Of course I didn’t quit cold turkey.

-Ba dum tss/rimshot sound effect

It took a couple years to really settle, I’d make exceptions, eat fish, whatever.  But the older I got the more serious I got. Like my parents, my friends didn’t really “get” why I was doing it, so I mostly kept the idea to myself unless I had to do a persuasive essay or speech or something.

Fast forward to my junior year of college

-Slide of something

I am about to go to my Shakespeare class and decide to grab a fancy holiday themed drink at Starbucks, which I never do because caffeine gives me jitters. Sitting in class I finish my coffee and like 10 minutes later my brain explodes.  I start to have a full blown manic episode in the middle of Shakespeare.  My brain starts racing about how doing theater isn’t enough and there are so many problems in the world.  So I start frantically writing this list down of things I need to do.  Looking back on it I’m sure I either looked like I was really into the lesson, or that I was going completely crazy.  But part of that list was to talk to my advisor about minoring in vegetarianism. �"See this whole story is coming full circle, I swear--Of course minor in vegetarian activism is obviously not a thing.  So in my semi-manic state I’m trying to explain what I want, and he kinda guided me towards environmental sustainability.

-Slide of something

And that is how I got here.  I decided to combine my two loves and create this show, this presentation about sustainability, and food, and climate change.

Author's Note

This is the introduction, read it like it would be spoken aloud.