Case Study: BIOSPHERE — Sustainability and Access Report

Written by Olivia Munk and Yusuf Osman - April 2026

This report details the approach that theatre company Part of the Main took to incorporate Environmental Sustainability and Accessibility for Visually Impaired audiences into our 2025 Rehearsal and Development period for the new play BIOSPHERE by Olivia Foan. 

About BIOSPHERE

Four scientists. One year. Sealed away from the world in The Biosphere – an airtight dome; a great glass ark humming with natural life, technology and ambition. Their mission: to prove life can survive beyond Earth. 

But as the atmosphere of their meticulously crafted world begins to change, passions fray and hunger bites, and the line between experiment and existence blur. What will they sacrifice to succeed? 

Inspired by the infamous 1991 experiment, BIOSPHERE is a new play about our relationship to nature, technology and the planet we call home.

History of the production

Director Olivia Munk and writer Olivia Foan began to work on BIOSPHERE in 2022, when Part of the Main curated a week of The Pleasance’s annual ‘Futures Festival’. Our week, entitled ‘The Future Is Too Hot,’ presented work that offered radical solutions to combating the climate crisis, including five work-in-progress performances of BIOSPHERE’s first act. These performances shed invaluable light on the future of the project, such as key staging and structural decisions. Since then, the play has undergone significant dramaturgy and several readings to create a performance-ready complete script. 

2025 R&D and GenFest Performance

In 2025, we were programmed to present BIOSPHERE at Royal & Derngate’s GenFest, an annual festival of new writing, in Northampton. Arts Council England generously provided funding to develop the play across 3 weeks of rehearsal in advance of introducing BIOSPHERE to a paying audience.

This R&D period, with both the opportunity to reach an audience for valuable feedback but without the pressure to produce a full-scale production, was crucial to developing key aspects of BIOSPHERE. This included exploring staging in thrust; developing movement, lighting, video, and auditory language; solidifying character and dramaturgical choices; and most importantly, meeting Sustainability and Access goals as foundational to the production’s development. 

Creating an environmentally sustainable production using Theatre Green Book

In embarking upon the R&D, it was vital that BIOSPHERE’s physical production matched its own internal philosophy of combatting the climate crisis. To do so, we first started by partnering with Theatre Green Book, the leading organisation providing theatre companies and buildings with free resources on how to calculate and minimise carbon emissions. In addition to utilising Theatre Green Book’s guidelines and calculator, producer Laura Sedgwick connected us with facilitator Talie Smith. Talie delivered an Introduction to Theatre Green Book workshop at Royal & Derngate a few weeks after GenFest, which served to leave a legacy of introducing sustainable practice to local interested artists and members of the theatre’s staff.

We set a goal of hitting Theatre Green Book’s ‘Intermediate’ standard, which meant 60% of our materials needed to be recycled or made from recycled materials, and 70% of these then needed to be recycled or used as recycled materials (source: Theatre Green Book’s Production Calculator). Theatre Green Book has many resources on its website guiding companies through how to use its calculator, which uses the source, material type, weight, and onward life of items to calculate a production’s target and emissions. 

BIOSPHERE posed both unique opportunities and challenges for meeting our target. The play takes place entirely within the biodome that the scientists live in for one year, but we meet the characters at several different locations within the dome, such as a farm, a doctor’s office, and even an ocean. To ensure swift scene changes within the scope of our budget and technical capabilities, we opted for a few impactful but moveable set pieces: a mobile laptop cart that became a laboratory table with the addition of test tubes, bright green planters that we put on casters to serve as the farm, and a trolley with 9 drawers filled with syringes, blood pressure machines, and tourniquettes to become the doctor’s office. We then relied primarily on movement, lighting, video, and sound to fill in the audience’s understanding of location. 

Certain niche props and costumes are vital to the delivery of the play, such as a severed finger, fake cockroaches, and matching jumpsuits. Items like these proved challenging and did warrant a few bashful Amazon orders; other more quotidian items, like goggles, a stethoscope, and soil were easily sourced freely or cheaply on platforms such as Facebook Marketplace and Gumtree. Budget, need and availability often resulted in happy accidents: for example, projecting video onto the floor of the stage necessitated sourcing a piece of linoleum that could contrast in color and light with the projector. We found a 4m x 4m off-cut of a Londoner’s bathroom renovation project on Facebook Marketplace, which was a delightful moss green; soon after, bright green metal flower planters from Gumtree followed, resulting in the sensation of a boxy, metallic, Silicon Valley-engineered forest floor, perfect for the setting of the biodome. Other times, we did have to reconcile with what we could find and use onstage: in scenes where a doctor is meant to take the scientists’ blood to test for health markers, we sourced wider syringes used to store colostrum and stained the insides red. With a sleight of hand this did the trick, and meant we didn’t have to purchase new fake syringes. 

Many of the props from the 2022 sharing were still stored with the director, and were able to be re-used for the 2025 performance. Mountview kindly lent us a number of props from its store room, and when we couldn’t find local items that directly suited the needs of the production, a number of secondhand and like-new items were able to be sourced from Ebay. The full BIOSPHERE company filled in the rest. It was very fun to see everyone embrace the ‘Theatre Green Book’ spirit; plus, given the cramped nature of many London flats, company members were thrilled to donate odds and ends from the back of their closets, such as paintbrushes, pots with long-dead plants, bandages, and bandanas. When we bundled up our set from our rehearsal room to send in the writer’s car up to Northampton for GenFest, we gleefully reused dance tape from the linoleum to secure boxes of props. 

The major surprise that we wish we had accounted for ahead of production was transportation costs. While many of us intrepidly hand or bike-delivered props from Gumtree and Facebook Marketplace, set pieces like the flooring and planters required Addison Lee couriers or Uber that could not be booked far in advance for a discount. In the absence of the convenience and low cost of ordering something online and have it delivered to a desired location, this added a few more hundred pounds than anticipated, and was illuminating for future financial projection. 

Other aspects of production considered by the Theatre Green Book Calculator include ethical and sustainable sourcing of technical components, and travel emissions. The majority of our team traveled to and from Northampton using trains, and we were able to hire key technical items like an ETC nomad and projector from local freelance artists and production companies. 

After the production, the major set pieces (flooring, mobile laptop stand turned lab table, trolley cart, planters) all found new homes via internet platforms (with the exception of the planters, which will make an appearance in the writer’s forthcoming wedding!). All of the props were either returned to lenders from the company or Mountview, or retained in storage for the next production. A few small single-use items, like alcohol wipes and cotton wool, had to be disposed of. 

Ultimately, we were very pleased that we exceeded our targets, achieving 87% of materials from recycled sources, with 100% achieving a recycled destination, putting us in range of the Advanced standard.

We acknowledge that we had some clear advantages in achieving such a target. Arts Council funding provided paid time to plan and procure production elements, significantly reducing the need for any last-minute Amazon Prime orders. We did not work with a set and costume designer for this stage of production, and therefore were more focused on achieving targets and reducing costs than ensuring aesthetically pleasing production elements; this may become more of a priority in the future. We also had the benefit of only performing for the public once; running costs may reduce these percentages. Mountview alumni were a part of the company, meaning we had access to their props store. Further, many members of the company had been participating in BIOSPHERE’s various iterations for several years; this buy-in meant they were very willing to chip in their own home items, costumes, and props, which is not a typical expectation of a professional production. Still, this R&D period proved that it was very much possible to create a version of BIOSPHERE that practiced what it preached, within our key budgetary and sustainability targets. 

To further connect our production and process to contemporary conversations about climate change, Imperial College London climate scientist Dr. Colleen Golja generously donated her time to participate in a talk-back after the GenFest performance. Dr. Golja also developed a complementary reading list for patrons who wanted to learn more about existing work and thinking surrounding the climate crisis, which can be accessed here. 

You can look through our full Theatre Green Book calculations here, and see photos of the production taken by Ophelia Fellhauer here. 

Embedding Access for Visually Impaired Audiences

For several years now, Part of the Main has focused on developing the accessibility of our work, in particular for visually impaired audiences. This has manifested in training in Audio Description with Roz Chalmers, working as Audio Describers for venues such as the National Theatre and the Pleasance, producing Visual Impairment Awareness Training and Audio Description Workshops, experimenting with new and different ways of offering Audio Description alongside our work (see our 2024 report about Bloody Mary: LIVE! here), and purchasing our own Audio Description radio equipment thanks to a Starting Out Award from Unlimited. 

When deciding what kind of Audio Description to use for BIOSPHERE, it was important to think through the different options available to describers and users. For ‘traditional’ audio description, audio description users wear headsets to listen to the show being described live by an audio describer, who typically sits in a different room to the performance space and watches the show on a live video feed to ensure that other audience members do not hear them speak. This type of complementary description relies on infrared or radio equipment, similar to the kind of technology used by walking tour guides. This is as opposed to ‘integrated’ audio description, where a narrator or actors describe actions and visual elements as an interpolated aspect of the play, or ‘open’ audio description, where an external audio describer delivers complementary audio description similar to traditional delivery, but out loud for every audience member to hear, with no individual headsets required. 

We ultimately decided to use traditional audio description for a number of reasons. Prior to even the 2022 R&D, writer Olivia Foan had been working on the script for several years; by 2025, its form was locked, and did not offer dramaturgical scope for adding a narrator or for characters to describe their own actions. Given director Olivia Munk and associate artist Jessica Bickel-Barlow’s skills as traditional audio describers, and the company’s own stock of equipment, it made sense to offer closed traditional audio description rather than open, as it would not be a budgetary constraint in the way that hiring equipment, which can range in the several hundred pounds even for short runs, would typically be. 

In the spirit of experimentation and development, we sought to better embed traditional audio description into BIOSPHERE by beginning the description writing process much earlier than is usual, and by working with an Access Consultant who is an Audio Description user in the rehearsal room to advise the process.

With traditional audio description, an audio describer usually does not begin writing their description until after press night, when a show is locked (i.e. staging, dialogue, lighting, design, etc. will now be the same at any given performance). The audio describer ideally attends a live performance, and the production provides them with a video of a performance upon which they can base their description. Careful calibration is required for artful audio description – whenever possible, a describer tries not to ‘crash,’ or speak at the same time as a character. This means that editorial judgement must be made as to which elements are vital enough to describe during potentially brief moments of silence between dialogue. Sometimes, this means only describing a few key actions or visuals and leaving others out, in the interest of not distracting audio description users from the primary language or music coming from the stage. 

For BIOSPHERE, we sought to approach rectifying issues such as crashing by bringing the audio description process into the R&D room. To begin, Audio Describer Jessica Bickel-Barlow distributed questionnaires to actors on the very first day of rehearsals. These questionnaires are important for the audio describer to write Introductory Notes for a performance, which is a longer description of actors, costumes, set pieces, and key props that audio description users receive access to days or weeks before a production. This ensures audio describers are not trying to cram too much into their ‘through’ description during a performance, and patrons can gain an understanding of key elements in advance of a performance. A truncated version is then repeated prior to a performance once the audience is seated. As many BIOSPHERE production elements such as props, set pieces, and props were in flux due to the experimental nature of the R&D and our Theatre Green Book targets, this questionnaire began an ongoing conversation with Jessica as she began to prepare her introductory notes.

Throughout the first week of rehearsals, the Director, Stage Manager, and Audio Describer were in frequent communication about new production elements as they were added and subtracted from the performance. The Audio Describer also was provided with an up-to-date script as textual changes were being made. When full run-throughs of acts or the full play were performed, they were recorded for the Audio Describer.

At the end of the second week and beginning of the third week of rehearsals, the Audio Describer joined rehearsals, accompanied by Yusuf Osman, a Visual Impairment Awareness trainer and Access Consultant who is an audio description user himself. Yusuf provided a brief introduction to audio description to the actors, and together, the full company and Yusuf were able to workshop audio description whilst developing scenes. This manifested in Jessica testing out descriptions of tricky moments, such as movement sequences, while Yusuf listened. Where description was unclear, Yusuf was able to flag this to Jessica, and the full company, including actors, were able to engage in a discussion about how to best verbally describe their actions and related visual elements. Where there was not enough space between dialogue for Jessica to adequately describe an action, the actors and director were able to add pauses to avoid crashing. This method of working meant that actors, audio describers, and audio description users were able to come together to collaborate on an artistic, accurate, and satisfying audio description, which, while not directly integrated, was well complemented by the performance. 

As our R&D was only 3 weeks, including technical rehearsals, an invited sharing in London, and the performance in Northampton, the major downside to this way of working is that it placed a lot of pressure on the Audio Describer. Audio Description is a very slow and deliberate process – creating the description for a 2-hour show may take 8+ hours including writing and practicing delivery to avoid crashing. Jessica did a heroic job of creating description for BIOSPHERE, which ran over 2 hours with an interval, in just a few days, including incorporating major changes as show development progressed. Collaborating with actors and an Access Consultant also meant that many voices had opinions on the writing, which, while valuable, significantly slowed down the writing process. 

Another major factor under consideration was where the audio describer would deliver the audio description. In well-resourced theatres, video feeds are set up in adjacent rooms, so describers can speak freely without worrying about non-audio description users hearing them; however, these sort of set-ups are very expensive and technically complex to maintain. In some smaller theatres, describers can sit behind a window in a tech box with the stage manager, but in others, there is no separation between where a stage manager sits and operates a show from the performance space. 

For BIOSPHERE’s sharing at BOLD Elephant in London and the GenFest performance in Northampton, we opted to use a tabletop mobile soundproof booth. Designed for voice actors and podcasting, this booth is easy to transport and can be set up on a table. It has three acrylic walls and adjustable sound absorption panels. This allows the audio description user to be physically present in a performance space, but ensures they are not distracting audience members when speaking aloud description. 

Director Olivia Munk and Audio Describer Jessica came across this method of delivery at EdFringe 2025, when we delivered audio description for several shows as part of  The Pleasance’s programming. As Fringe venues are not year-round performance spaces, many did not have appropriate places for audio describers to sit, nor did they have video links. This booth proved to be a solid way of absorbing sound on a budget and in multiple spaces. The sound absorption is not 100%, but across performances, it did not generate any audience complaints. 

For BIOSPHERE, we borrowed The Pleasance’s booth and used Part of the Main’s own ListenTALK radio audio description kit. Together, this allowed for successful audio description delivery at BOLD Elephant and Royal & Derngate’s Underground Studio, neither of which previously had dedicated protocols or location for audio description delivery. An audio description user at BOLD Elephant reported that the dialogue and music of BIOSPHERE, complemented by Jessica’s audio description, provided for a greatly enjoyable experience that allowed her to fully focus on the artistic aspects of the piece. 

In the future, an ideal process would see BIOSPHERE rehearsal for 2-3 full weeks prior to Yusuf and Jessica joining the rehearsal room out of a possible 4-5 weeks of rehearsal prior to performance. This would mean the show can undergo enough rehearsal to ensure key actions were not going to change significantly, but that elements were still malleable enough to be impacted by collaborative insights. 

Yusuf Osman’s own experience of working on BIOSPHERE: 

This is the second occasion on which I have worked with Part of the Main. I provided access consultancy as part of the Bloody Mary Live project in 2024. My involvement in Biosphere was designed in a slightly different way. Whilst I provided support with advertising – checking to ensure that the alternative tags for graphics were comprehensible to blind readers and finding potential audience members – as before, on this occasion I was also involved in the writing of the audio description.

I attended the rehearsal space during the second week of preparation in November 2025. The original intention was that I would attend once at the start and again in the second week. Unfortunately due to my ill health this wasn’t possible. This meant that both visits took place in the same week. During those visits I was able to listen to scene work, both with and without audio description delivered to me. This meant I was able to make suggestions about where audio description was needed, where the dialogue/sounds from the performance space meant that it wasn’t and help to fine tune the words used. In addition to this, having direct access to the creative team – director, sound engineer, movement director and actors – meant that I was able to clarify thoughts, intentions and movements. This was extremely important in that it helped to clarify the most appropriate words for the audio describer to use.

This was a unique experience for me. Whilst I have provided feedback on delivered audio description, I’ve never been involved in the rehearsal room where I can have a say on the writing of the description. In addition to what happened within the rehearsal space I provided written comments on the audio description script and the script of the pre-show notes. I felt genuinely included and listened to by everyone with whom I interacted and had a wonderful experience.

Going Forward

I think it is very useful to have someone like me in the rehearsal space to help with the creation of the audio description. It is important that the person comes in at the right point. Too early and they risk having little to do and so time and money are wasted, too late and they have little say over the description and no time to talk with the performers and creative team.

I wouldn’t want to be prescriptive in terms of number of visits as each show will have slightly different requirements. I would say that a minimum of two visits to the rehearsal space plus time allocated outside to provide feedback on scripts, both play and audio description and pre-show notes are needed.

Separate to the above there should be time set aside to provide Visual Impairment awareness Training for performers and creatives. It has become clear to me that drama schools do not include training around accessibility including audio description and touch tours and so when students become professionals and are confronted by an audio described performance, they do not understand what it is, why it is important and what they can do to support the process.

Finally, Visual Impairment Awareness Training for staff at the performance venue is extremely important. This ensures that the performance is correctly marketed, that the process of purchasing tickets and arranging support is as painless as possible and that staff are prepared to provide the best possible experience when Blind and Visually Impaired People turn up.

Conclusion 

Improving the social impact of a piece of theatre, whether that is environmental sustainability or reaching audio description users, will always be an ongoing process. We were excited by the promising opportunities we discovered for achieving sustainable targets and integrating access for visually impaired audiences using our BIOSPHERE R&D. It was interesting to see how audio description and sustainability can intersect and impact each other – for example, some props, costumes and set pieces looked and felt very different than described in the script due to their being what was available on local marketplaces, rather than searching for the perfect item and ordering it online. Ultimately, flexibility and collaboration ensured we met our sustainability and access targets, and we look forward to applying what we learned during this R&D to raise our standards even higher when BIOSPHERE eventually achieves its full-scale production. 

If you would like to discuss anything mentioned in the report, please don’t hesitate to get in touch via hello@partofthemain.com. Thank you for reading!