National Sierra Club Creates Website Promoting Fraser's "EcoTheater" Book

Genevieve Fraser aka G. Thomson Fraser

National Sierra Club Creates Website Promoting Fraser's "EcoTheater" Book

The national Sierra Club has created a website devoted to Genevieve Fraser’s environmental theater book, “EcoTheater for the Global Village,” as part of their web-based John Muir Exhibit.  The book features Fraser’s environmental play, “Giants in the Wilderness” whose characters include the Scottish naturalist, John Muir as well as Gifford Pinchot, the founder of the USDA Forest Service and Charles Sprague Sargent, author of the environmental classic “The Silva of North America.”  The play is set in the late 1800s at the birth of the conservation movement, now referred to as the environmental movement.  John Muir is the founder of the Sierra Club.

According to Fraser, “Harold Wood, education chairman for the Sierra Club, was the inspiration behind the book. He read my play, ‘Giants in the Wilderness’ and suggested that it be published, along with children's dramas with an environmental theme.”  The play was originally developed as part of the centennial celebration of the Massachusetts State Forest and Parks System and was funded by a grant from the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities, a state program of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and matching funds from the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Management's Conservation Trust Fund.

Drama critic Richard Duckett, writing for the Worcester (MA) Telegram and Gazette, characterized "Wilderness" as a history lesson. "By 1896, the destruction of America's forest wilderness had become so rampant many people believed that unless something was done soon, there wouldn't be any wilderness left... Three naturalists - John Muir, Charles Sprague Sargent and Gifford Pinchot - had divergent opinions on the best way to save them." 

Along with Fraser’s play, “EcoTheater for the Global Village” includes MacKenzie Louise Coffman's children's theater piece, "Forest Hideout," the story of two children, a brother and sister, who take matters into their own hands to save the family farm. Coffman is a freshman at Quabbin Reginal High School. A televised production of her play was developed for AOTV.  The third play in the trilogy is Rebekah Lovat Fraser's "The Tree and the Village,” an environmentally instructive fable, a mythological saga that engages the audience and is a visual feast for children of all ages. Lovat Fraser is a graduate in Film Studies from Yale University and mother of MacKenzie. 

The Sierra Club website can be located by typing “EcoTheater for the Global Village” into a Google search.  Or clicking EcoTheater.

Genevieve Fraser is the artistic director of the Drama Circle and director of Michael Riccard's "Lincoln: The Musical" which was produced at the Orange Town Hall in July.