Ian Garrett is a designer, producer, educator, and researcher specializing in sustainability in the arts and culture. He is an Associate Professor of Ecological Design for Performance at York University, the producer for Toasterlab, a mixed reality performance collective, and the Director of the Centre for Sustainable Practice in the Arts. His work focuses on the intersection of ecology and accessible mixed reality technologies.
Recent projects include the off-Broadway production of The Pocket Park Kids with NYC Children’s Theatre at Theatre Row, The Laundry List with the Vintage Taps at the Al Green Theatre, and I am a Child of… with Keaja d’Dance at the Harbourfront Centre. He was responsibility for the exhibition design for World Stage Design 2022 in collaboration with Patrick Rizzotti, and completed the latest versions of the locative immersive media projects Parkway Forest Time Machine and STEPS’ From Weeds We Grow, both in Toronto parks. His XR work also includes multiple collaborations with DLT Experience, such as Spectators’ Odyssey at TO Live, The Right Way at the Venice Biennale, and The Stranger 2.0 at the Columbus Centre in Toronto. His documentary Groundworks, broadcast nationally on PBS in the U.S. during October and November 2022, explores four contributing artists to the locative and site-specific performance of the same name, presented on Alcatraz during San Francisco’s first Indigenous People’s Day with Dancing Earth Creations.
Other notable interactive projects include the mixed-reality piece Transmission at the FuturePlay Festival in Edinburgh and the Future of Storytelling Festival in New York, Theatre Panik’s durational performance Peep at Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, Erika Batdorf’s Micro-theatre for Burnish at the Theatre Centre and Venice Biennale, the set and energy capture systems for Zata Omm Dance Projects’ Vox:Lumen at the Harbourfront Centre, and Silo No. 5 on Maria Island, Tasmania. Ian has also worked on installations such as DTAH Architects’ Ravine Portal and on the lighting team for the Crimson Collective’s Ascension, a 150-foot-wide origami-style crane sculpture at the 2010 Coachella Music Festival.
Ian co-directs the Climate Change Theatre Action initiative with Chantal Bilodeau and has written extensively on the intersection of arts and sustainability. His publications include Arts, the Environment, and Sustainability for Americans for the Arts, The Carbon Footprint of Theatrical Production in Readings in Performance and Ecology, and Theatre is No Place for a Plant in Landing Stages from the Ashden Directory.
As a producer, Ian has worked on the premiere of Richard Foreman and Michael Gordon’s What to Wear at REDCAT, the Prague tour of Torry Bend’s puppet adaptation of Aimee Bender’s Loser, and at least four dozen shows at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, including the physical theatre piece on aging and memory At Sundown. He was also an associate producer on The Medea Project, a cross-cultural production of Medea in Athens and Los Angeles.
Before joining York University, Ian taught at the California Institute of the Arts and developed curriculum for the University of Houston. He has been a visiting instructor at the National Theatre School, where he teaches courses on sustainability in design and production. His previous roles include Executive Director of the Fresh Arts Coalition, a Houston-based arts service organization, as well as consultant and staff positions with the LA Stage Alliance. He has also worked at Stages Repertory Theatre, DiverseWorks Art Space, the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, and in the lighting departments of the Williamstown Theatre Festival and the Public Theatre in New York.
Ian holds MFAs in Lighting Design and Producing from CalArts and a BA in Architectural Studies and Art History from Rice University.
Originally from Los Angeles, Ian has also called Houston home and is now based in Toronto.