In our very first episode, we celebrate the launch of Podcast 13 by completing the Climate Change Theatre Action 2025 project with the final three plays: SCARY-Scary by Klae Bainter, UNDERTOW by Keith Barker, and We’re Running Out of Chairs by Kirby Vicente. Alongside these readings, co-directors Ian Garrett and Vanesa Kelly reflect on the whirlwind of Venue 13’s debut season as the first fully vegan Fringe venue, the premiere of A.I. Campfire, and what it means to carry the spirit of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe into a year-round conversation on theatre, climate, and collaboration.
CCTA Plays Featured:
SCARY-Scary
By Klae Bainter
Read by Alex St. Onge & Emily Swartz
UNDERTOW
by Keith Barker
Read by Harshani Ajanthlal and Katherine Mackenzie
We’re Running Out of Chairs
by Kirby Vicente
Read by Wai Liu
Show Links
- Climate Change Theatre Action – https://www.climatechangetheatreaction.com/
Transcript
Vanesa Kelly: Hello and welcome to the very first episode of Podcast 13. I’m Vanessa Kelly.
Ian Garrett: And I’m Ian Garrett. We’re your hosts and the co-directors of Venue 13 Fringe Limited, which focuses on bringing you amazing shows at the heart of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe
Vanesa: That’s right, Ian, Venue 13 has just wrapped a spectacular August of programming at the Edinburgh Fringe. Venue 13 became a thriving community hub. Its program included workshops, tastings, pilates classes and Market 13, which was a collaboration with Edinburgh’s top vegan businesses. This made Venue 13 the first fully vegan fringe venue, earning praise from the vegagnuary, from local influences, and delighted audiences. The venue also produced AI Campfire, one of the first fringe shows to use generative AI, blending live performance with AI-generated Scottish folklore.
The show was recommended by Edinburgh Fringe Reviews, earned three stars from the Scotsman, and was celebrated for its inventive mix of technology and myth. Now, as part of the Climate Change Theatre Action 2025, the venue presented different climate plays every day from this year’s anthology, and now completing the full set of 50 with the last plays released in today’s episode.
Ian: Yes, in this episode, we’re sharing the final plays from the CCTA for 2025. That means that together with all of you who joined us live in Edinburgh, we’ll have completed the full set, 50 plays in total.
Podcast 13 launches today as the natural next step. It begins by completing the CCTA project and will continue weekly with play readings, interviews, debates on theater and sustainability, and updates on Venue 13’s programming, keeping the spirit of August alive all year round.
Vanesa: Ian, for people who don’t know you yet, tell us a bit more about why you care so deeply about this intersection between theater, sustainability, access and technology, and why Podcast 13 feels like the next step for Venue 13.
Ian: ah Well, so my background is in performance design and sustainability. I spent the last couple of decades building organizations that look at how culture can be a driver for climate action. I co-founded the Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts in 2008, and I’m a producer for Toaster Lab, a collective exploring mixed reality and live performance, especially focused making work which reveals underrepresented stories and those that are lit related to climate issues. I also teach ecological design for performance at York University in Toronto. For me, Podcast 13 is about continuing the conversation we’ve started here at The Fringe by presenting accessible shows about climate action in new hybrid ways, so and then also exploring what sustainability in the arts really means. That includes talking to playwrights and producers about how they’re making work responsibly, sharing tools and knowledge, and connecting audiences to the ideas shaping a more sustainable, accessible, and hybrid creative sector.
Vanesa, your own journey to this point is fascinating. You’re a long-term vegan who went from pharmacology to major hydrogen vehicle launches, to co-directing a theater venue and writing and co-producing your first show. Why was creating a podcast about art and climate action important to you?
Vanesa: um that That’s true, Ian, when you put it like that. My career path has taken me from the lab to large-scale corporate events to also create creative production. Working in ah hydrogen technology in green tech, and that was a sector that really opened my eyes to how innovation policy and culture ah generally intersect and how new ideas, um like from startups, for example, are presented globally and whether they are accepted. and It depends on how they are presented.
And I wanted to bring that same system, that same energy ah into the arts. With Venue 13, my goal has been to create a wraparound platform that supports artists and audiences by having those meaningful conversations about the climate emergency and access to the art and inventive way of rethinking how we present work.
Now, this podcast is an extension of that. It’s a space where we can go deeper. share weekly um sort of like the play readings from past CCTA anthologies, and also invite some guests, some guest readers and playwrights to talk about why these stories matter and why these topics matter.
Ian: That’s right. And we’re not going to stop at the play readings.
Vanesa: No, we are not. You can also expect interviews, debates about theatre, art, sustainability and climate action, emerging technologies, plus news about upcoming workshops, news about vegan food pop-ups that may happen in Edinburgh or in Scotland in general, or even in the UK, and of course, more programming for Venue 13.
Ian: So today’s episode is both a finale and a beginning, a chance to complete our 2025 CCTA journey and to launch Podcast 13 as a platform for a climate, hybrid, and accessible storytelling.
Vanesa: Exactly. So let’s dive in. Here are the final plays from CCTA 2025. And thank you, special guest on the other side of the headphones. Thank you for joining us as we start this new chapter together.
Ian: And stick around after the readings for a little chat in which we reflect in our past fringe.
And now we’ll bring to you the final three plays from the CCTA 2025 at the New 13. We spent the entire month of August presenting all 50 of the plays across 20 different events with dozens of partners. These three were recorded by students from York University, which is in Toronto, which is where I teach, And they were at the Fringe’s part of the class, but came over to help us get these last three plays recorded.
The final plays we’re going to hear are Scary Scary by Clay Bainter, Undertow by Keith Barker, and We’re Running Out of Chairs by Kirby Vicente. Here they are. First up, we’re going to hear Scary Scary by Clay Bainter. You’ll hear it read by Alex St-Oonge and Emily Swarz.
Reading of SCARY-Scary by Klae Bainter
Ian: For our next selection, have Undertow by Keith Barker. This is read by Harshani Anjalfali and Katherine McKenzie.
Reading of UNDERTOW by Keith Barker
Ian: And closing out the CCTA 2025 at Venue 13, we go to We’re Running Out of Chairs by Kirby Vicente. This is read Wai Lui
Reading of We’re Running Out of Chairs by Kirby Vicente
Ian: Okay. Well, that’s a relief. We set out to get all of the CCTA plans read at Venue 13 this year, and we did it. Now, when we started with the relaunch of Venue 13, I had thought that using the CCTA plays and bringing on partners would be an easy way and to bring in the first year of programming.
I was surprised and perhaps I shouldn’t have been that coordinating a couple dozen partners all doing different shows was a lot more work than I thought it would be. But I’m glad that we got there. Starting up is always full of surprises. Vanesa, what was one of the biggest surprises for you this August?
Vanesa: I was actually surprised by the number of people who came to the launch of ai Campfire. At some point, we started having conversations at the end of the show and sitting with the audiences for a few minutes to discuss what they thought, you know, what they thought was really interesting.
A lot of people weren’t really familiar with the stories which were featured about the Kelthys and the Selkies or so much Scottish folk were at all. um And even those that knew the stories felt that they were reintroduced to the stories for the way that we told them in a contemporary way and in a contemporary setting.
Ian: Yeah, that was something that I hadn’t suspected would happen either. And I think that it actually became a bit of a highlight for me. Are there any other highlights or standout moments that you wanted to share before we sign off?
Vanesa: I think it was, you know, it’s important to say that it was the number of people who asked us if we will be back next year or what we were doing next. You know, it was kind of like that they were seeking that continuity because they enjoy themselves so much in the space that we’ve created.
There was a great community feeling where people felt welcome and comfortable. And that was always the goal, you know, but having people to actually come and ask, saying that they wanted us to come back and to provide this type of place at the Fringe, felt like they were really, that we have really accomplished something important.
Ian: Yeah, fringe. it’s um It’s never a dull moment. I think that’s actually what keeps me coming back. It’s always different. And I don’t know if I’m really ever going to figure it out.
So that brings us to the end of our first episode of podcast 13. We’ve closed a loop on climate change theater action 2025 for venue 13. It will continue through the autumn through a global array of events that you can find at climate change theater action.com. It’s also opened the door to a new way of staying connected beyond August.
Vanesa: And we’d love to hear from you. but What was the highlight your 2025 festival? What surprised you the most about the launch of Venue 13 this year? Share your thoughts with us on social media or drop us a message you through the Venue 13 website.
Ian: Make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss our future episodes. Coming up, we’ll be talking with playwrights, producers and artists about sustainability, accessibility and creativity at the Fringe and beyond.
Vanesa: Thanks again for listening and thanks for helping us carry the energy off the fringe into the rest of the year.
Ian: so that’s us signing up for now. This is Ian.
Vanesa: And I’m Vanersa. See you next time on Podcast 13.
