May 4,5 & 6, 2023

Feel the power of the ocean through an immersive image-and-sound design that envelopes the audience in an awe-inspiring underwater world.

Linking below-the-surface mystery with above-the-surface climate issues, Ocean Filibuster puts audiences in the middle of a human/ocean showdown. The Ocean gets the chance to tell its side of the story in this new music theater experience from Assistant Professor of Theater Katie Pearl’s Obie-winning company PearlDamour in collaboration with the Center for the Arts, the Wesleyan Theater Department, the College of the Environment and the Allbritton Center. Using large-scale projection, songs, science and stand-up, Ocean Filibuster explores the intimate, critical relationship between humans and the ocean in an epic battle of wits and wills, smarts and sass, facts, and anthropocentric fiction. Set in a future Global Senate, performer Jenn Kidwell embodies two rivals: Mr. Majority—who introduces a bill to end the ocean as we know it—and The Ocean, arriving in human form to filibuster the bill. Originally commissioned by American Repertory Theater in collaboration with Harvard University’s Center for the Environment, Ocean Filibuster plunges us into the most heated debate of our time.

$25 general public; $15 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff/alumni, non-Wesleyan students; $8 Wesleyan students, youth under 18