Day: April 10, 2022

Sultry musical “Cabaret” and fantastical literary adaptation “Life of Pi” were among the winners Sunday at British theater’s Olivier Awards, which returned with a live ceremony and a black-tie crowd after a three-year gap imposed by COVID-19.

The celebration of London theater, opera and dance came back to London’s Royal Albert Hall for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic shuttered Britain’s performance venues more than two years ago, weeks before the scheduled 2020 Oliviers show.

Kit Harington, Tom Felton, Emma Corrin and Jonathan Pryce were among the stars who walked the sustainable green carpet, made from reusable grass, before the glitzy, music-filled ceremony.

An intimate production of “Cabaret” that transformed London’s Playhouse Theater into the Kit Kat Club in 1930s Berlin had 11 nominations for the Oliviers, Britain’s equivalent of Broadway’s Tony Awards. Eddie Redmayne and Jessie Buckley are nominated in musical leading actor categories for their roles as the Emcee and Sally Bowles.

“Cabaret” director Rebecca Frecknall took the directing trophy and said the war in Ukraine gave John Kander and Fred Ebb’s musical about the collapse of democracy and rise of fascism added poignancy.

“In a way it’s quite sad that every time it’s on it feels like it’s been written for today,” she said.

“Life of Pi,” adapted from Yann Martel’s Booker Prize-winning novel about a boy adrift at sea with a tiger, was named best new play. Hiran Abeysekera was named best actor in a play as title character Pi, while — in a first — the supporting actor prize went to seven performers who collectively play the show’s puppet tiger.

Fred Davis, one of the seven, said it was “a landmark moment for puppetry.”

Redmayne is up for best actor in a musical alongside Olly Dobson for “Back to the Future – The Musical;” Arinze Kene for “Get Up Stand Up! The Bob Marley Musical;” and Robert Lindsay for “Anything Goes.”

Buckley is competing for best actress in a musical against Sutton Foster for “Anything Goes;” Beverley Knight for “The Drifters Girl;” and Stephanie McKeon for “Frozen.”

Knight said the theater community was ready to celebrate after a difficult couple of years.

“We have been bereft of theater for so long, just had nothing. And people only realize the importance of the place that theater and live entertainment played in any society when it was taken away,” she said.

“We bring in multi-millions and that’s week in, week out. So we are part of giving the economy buoyancy, but more than that, we feed the nation’s soul,” she added.

The contenders for best new musical are “Back to the Future – The Musical;” “The Drifters Girl;” “Frozen;” “Get Up Stand Up! The Bob Marley Musical;” and “Moulin Rouge!”

The show also paid musical tribute to a theater titan — composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim, who died last year at 91.

The last Oliviers ceremony, held largely remotely in October 2020, awarded work done before the British government ordered U.K. theaters to shut down in March 2020.

Venues began reopening in mid-2021, and shows are largely up and running again, although the number of international visitors, vital to sustaining West End shows, remains well below pre-pandemic levels.

The awards were founded in 1976 and named for the late actor-director Laurence Olivier. Winners in most categories are chosen by a panel of stage professionals and theatergoers.

Source: Voice of America

Facing an existential threat from climate change, Mumbai, India’s financial hub has embarked an ambitious climate action plan that aims to make the city carbon-neutral by 2050.

It is the first city to set a timeline to reach zero emissions in South Asia, one of the world’s most vulnerable regions to rising temperatures.

In recent years, the coastal city has witnessed more bursts of torrential rain, storm surges and cyclones, in addition to rising sea levels.

Built on a narrow strip along the Arabian Sea, the city’s low-lying areas where millions of poor people live in shanties, and the city’s southern tip, home to glitzy office towers, the stock exchange and legislature, are especially vulnerable, according to climate scientists.

“Mumbai will become a climate-resilient metropolis,” Maharashtra state Chief Minister, Uddhav Thackeray said last month, unveiling the plan. Mumbai is Maharashtra’s capital.

The goal is ambitious — Mumbai wants to achieve net zero emissions 20 years ahead of the goal set by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the country. In this decade alone, authorities aim to reduce carbon emissions by 30%.

The target is not easy. Skyscrapers have mushroomed in recent decades as the city’s population has swelled to 20 million, its green spaces have shrunk, and urbanization is continuing at a relentless pace.

The city plans key changes in the way it manages energy, transport, water, waste, and green spaces.

A beginning has been made with the transport sector, which contributes about 20% of the city’s greenhouse gas emissions. The goal is twofold: a huge push for “green” vehicles and encouraging a switch from private to public transport that is being expanded with new metro projects and more buses.

So far 386 electric buses have replaced diesel buses and about 2,000 more will be added to make half the city’s fleet green by next year.

“Fares are super cheap, and a single card can be used in buses and metros to ease travel,” said Saurabh Punamiya, a policy adviser on the climate action plan.

“Hotels and industries will also be encouraged to switch to electric vehicles,” he said.

Experts say shifting to electric mobility has become feasible.

“The price gap between electric and petrol cars has narrowed significantly in India. The only thing authorities need to ensure is that they make enough charging stations,” Vaibhav Chaturvedi, a fellow at the Council on Energy, Environment and Water, a think tank, said.

However, persuading more people to use mass transit will be far more challenging, he said.

“The trend we are observing is that people are moving from public transport to buying two-wheelers and then cars as they move up the income ladder. Across states and cities, we have been super-unsuccessful in stopping this because people are aspirational,” Chaturvedi said.

In a city where much of the emissions come from air-conditioned glass and chrome skyscrapers, there will also be a move to shift to green buildings.

“We propose that all new structures constructed after 2030 need to become zero-emission buildings,” said Lubaina Rangwalla, with the World Resources Institute, which is the technical adviser on the city’s new plan.

“This can be done by putting up solar panels, using energy-efficient products such as LED bulbs, recycling wastewater, building percolation pits to conserve rainwater and having enough tree cover to reduce the need for cooling,” she said.

Officials also plan to protect trees and mangroves and rejuvenate urban forests that the city has lost in recent decades.

Climate scientists have in particular flagged the huge loss of mangroves that not only act as carbon sinks but are buffers against coastal erosion and flooding.

Skeptics point out that trees are still being felled to make way for coastal freeways and underground car tunnels are being built to cut congestion in the city, known for its slow-moving traffic. Authorities say that the losses are being compensated for by transplanting trees and point out that the new roads will cut emissions by speeding traffic flow.

The biggest challenge, however, will be to phase out the nearly 70% of emissions generated by the power sector. Much of the city’s electricity comes from coal-based power plants, and demand in coming decades is set to soar as Mumbai’s population expands. So far there is no clear plan on how do produce more electricity and reduce total emissions at the same time.

India has set a goal to meet half its energy from renewable sources by 2030, and while progress is being made, hurdles have emerged, such as finding enough land to put up solar parks in a densely populated country.

Proposals are being considered to put floating solar panels on lakes formed behind dams on the city’s outskirts.

“Thirty years down the line, a lot of teething troubles that the renewable energy sector is facing will smoothen out and a lot more renewable energy will be generated. Besides solar, there are also options of wind and nuclear energy. Mumbai has set a challenging goal but there are ways for the city to achieve this target by 2050,” Chaturvedi said.

Setting a goal, he said “pushes decision makers to think along those lines and make policies accordingly.”

Source: Voice of America