AGOURA HILLS, Calif. — Monica Miklas is quite familiar with an outdoor theater. Her afternoon begins with setting up and testing an intricate sound system, but she's not in a recording studio.
She is in a Marmot two-person tent.
"This is where we broadcast," she chuckled as she unzipped the flap and ducked inside.
Miklas is the writer of "Fire Season," an experiential theatre piece she performs from the small green structure, where she cannot stand up.
"Check, check. One, two," said Miklas, who's also the sound engineer and tech team.
"I end up calling almost all the cues while I'm performing," she said, while stage manager Christina Bryan, at a nearby picnic table, checked the receivers to make sure they were ready to go.
As if Miklas needed to wear more hats, she's also one of the co-founders of Capital W. The company describes itself as a radical theater collaboration that is looking to build community and "create a more compassionate world." All of their work is site-specific, and that site can be anywhere.
"We've done shows in a converted cargo van," Miklas said. "We've done shows in bars and sidewalks, so all over. All the world's a stage."
"Fire Season" is a very personal piece for Miklas. Her parents live in Ventura County and had to evacuate their home during the Thomas Fire. For days, they had no idea if their house had survived. The whole experience got her thinking about topics that are often on the minds of Southern Californians: wildfires, nature and climate change.
Understanding there is no escaping these issues, she decided to address them head-on, resulting in this piece. She performs it at Paramount Ranch, just a few yards away from what used to be Western Town. In 2018, the Woolsey Fire consumed most of the structures that made up the historic movie and TV set.
Only two buildings remain.
As they arrive, each audience member is outfitted with headphones and a receiver, plus a hiking chair and sent to explore the grounds.
"While they wander, or while they sit still and just bask in nature, they listen to a series of essays, stories, retold myths that I perform live from this tent," Miklas explained.
It's almost a guided meditation, but as soothing as her voice is, the content isn't always comforting.
"I think in 'Fire Season,' we take people all the way down into climate anxiety and climate anguish," she admitted, "but then try to pull them back out."
People like Steve Ryan, a fan of immersive theater, traveled from Los Angeles to Agoura Hills, his first visit to the park, part of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.
"I'm absolutely, you know, worrying about climate change for my future generation," he said. "I've got a 15-year-old daughter and so she's going to have to grow up in this world and we all have to try to protect this fragile blue planet."
After the hour-long journey, each participant leaves with a zine that lists individual steps they can take and ways to lobby the government.
But she also hopes they take away something deeper, a renewed sense of their emotional connection to nature. Living amid climate change and a seemingly never-ending fire season, she admits it's easy to feel things like fear, shame and even guilt, but she said it's vital to explore those feelings as honestly as one can.
"We can't get stuck in the mire of negative emotion," she said. "But we also can't get out by ignoring it."
Even if she can only broadcast that message to a handful of people at a time, she's determined to do it, sitting in a tent on the Earth she is trying to save.