Reducing SCR's Carbon Footprint

One of the enduring messages from You Are Cordially Invited to the End of the World! by Keiko Green is the damage we are causing to the planet. Green spotlights that message in a humorous, yet penetrating, manner.

Tomorrow is Earth Day, which has us reflecting on the theatre’s carbon footprint and how SCR reduces its ecological impact through re-use—and the important role our Production Center plays in this effort.

Located 2 ½ miles from SCR’s Costa Mesa theatre complex, the Production Center provides an important space for painting the sets you see on stage and for storing costumes and props, including those for SCR’s annual production of A Christmas Carol. Many of those items are now stored off-site, after a January storm collapsed the roof above the paint shop and caused water damage from a broken sprinkler. Roof restoration will begin soon.

SCR reduces its negative impact on the environment through re-use of costumes, props, and furniture, hundreds of thousands of pieces—organized and stored at the Production Center. Staff and designers are able to go into the Production Center and find items ideal for the shows and that reuse factor also helps keep costs down and ticket prices reasonable.

Amy Hutto, SCR’s Costume Shop Manager, said that the theatre may re-use upwards of 50% of the “stock,” or costumes that were stored at the Production Center, on other shows. For a Youth Conservatory production, it may be upwards of 75%. She said the majority of rehearsal pieces come from the Production Center. For A Christmas Carol, that figure is closer to 95%.

“We build one to four new pieces per year to replace worn-out costumes, widen the range of sizes or to freshen the storytelling,” she said.

Surprisingly, when it comes to re-use, the most valuable costumes, props and furniture pieces are often the most generic or non-specific. The most re-usable pieces tend to fly under the radar—items like the place settings on a dining room table, a galvanized steel watering can, that simple side table that fits in with a variety of set designs. A detailed Elizabethan gown is certainly beautiful and costly to construct, but it's the humble petticoats that get used on stage time and time again.

The ability to reduce our carbon footprint by re-using our costumes, props and sets make the Production Center an invaluable resource. Plenty of work remains to restore the roof.