Finding the Point of Encounter: Chantal Bilodeau

Chantal Bilodeau is a Montreal-born, New York-based playwright and translator whose work focuses on the intersection of storytelling and the climate crisis. She is the founding artistic director of the Arts & Climate Initiative, where she has spearheaded initiatives for nearly two decades, getting theatre and educational communities, as well as audiences in the U.S. and abroad, to engage in climate conversation and climate action through programming that includes live events, talks, publications, workshops, artist convenings, and an award-winning distributed theatre festival.

Playwriting awards include the Woodward International Playwriting Prize as well as First Prize in the Earth Matters on Stage Ecodrama Festival and First Prize in the Uprising National Playwriting Competition.  Her plays have been shown in a dozen countries and translated into Greek, Italian, Norwegian, and Portuguese. 

She curates the HowlRound Theatre Commons’ essay series Theatre in the Age of Climate Change, has written for American Theatre Magazine and Canadian Theatre Review, and contributed to several academic volumes including Decentered Playwriting: Alternative Techniques for the Stage (Routledge, 2023). She is the editor of four anthologies of short plays, one of which earned her an Honorable Mention from the Patrick O'Neill Award for Best Edited Collection given by the Canadian Association for Theatre Research. 

She is currently writing a series of eight plays – the Arctic Cycle – that look at the social and environmental changes taking place in the eight Arctic states. She is a Creative Core Member of the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics, and in 2019 was named one of “8 Trailblazers Who Are Changing the Climate Conversation” by Audubon Magazine.