160: METRA - A Climate Revolution With Songs
ART IS CHANGE: Strategies & Skills for Activist Artists & Cultural Organizers · Bill Cleveland
Audio is streamed directly from the publisher (episodes.captivate.fm) as published in their RSS feed. Play Podcasts does not host this file. Rights-holders can request removal through the copyright & takedown page.
Show Notes
What if a Musical Could Help us Tell the Truth
About Climate Change?
In this episode, Bill Cleveland sits down with theater director Emily Hartford and composer–storyteller Ned Hardford to explore Metra: A Climate Revolution with Songs—a nine-episode musical audio drama that reimagines an ancient Greek myth as a near-future climate story.
What starts as a conversation about craft opens into deeper territory: imagination as resistance, music as pedagogy, and why genuinely new stories don’t come from algorithms—they come from people doing long, human work together.
In it, we explore three big questions at the heart of Metra and the moment we’re living in now:
- How music, story, and the human voice reach places that facts, lectures, and policy arguments can’t
- What it looks like to tell a climate story without fear-mongering or “disaster porn,”
- How artists can build work that others can actually use,—turning art-making into cultural infrastructure rather than a one-off production.
Listen in to discover how art, music, and story can help us practice a different future—and why Metra just might be the kind of narrative infrastructure we need right now.
People
Host of Change the Story / Change the World and founder of the Center for the Study of Art & Community.
Theater director, writer, and producer; founding member of Flux Theater Ensemble and co-creator of Metra.
Composer, songwriter, audio engineer, and co-creator of Metra, focused on musical storytelling and audio drama.
Folklorist and field-recording pioneer whose work capturing the emotional power of the human voice is referenced in the episode.
Old-time banjo player recorded by Alan Lomax in Virginia; referenced through a story of lineage, listening, and musical transmission.
Climate activist and author referenced for framing distributed solar power as a metaphor for bottom-up social change.
Writer and activist whose work on emergence and collective power informs Metra’s worldview.
Philosopher referenced for his concept of relational connection (I–Thou), via the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Organizations & Collectives
New York–based theater company where Metra was developed and premiered, known for ensemble-driven creation and an aesthetic of liberation.
Audio production studio that supported the transition of Metra from stage work to musical audio drama.
Climate and democracy organization referenced in connection with Ned Hartford’s activism.
New York Communities for Change
Grassroots organization cited as part of the movement ecosystem influencing the creators’ thinking.
Climate justice organization referenced as an example of movement-based learning and narrative change.
Works & Publications
Metra: A Climate Revolution with Songs
Official project site for the nine-episode musical audio drama.
Source text for the myth of Erysichthon and Metra.
Here Comes the Sun by Bill McKibben
Referenced for its account of decentralized solar power as a model for social transformation.
Political concept discussed in relation to climate disinformation and long-term narrative shifts.
Novel recommended by Emily Hartford for its imaginative interrogation of manifest destiny and power.
The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Recent book recommendation connecting ecology, reciprocity, and community.
Writer recommended for his grounding reflections on land, ethics, and community.