Join NAU Theatre and their warring departments in a struggle for survival in the next Great Survival Debate!

Which discipline will win the coveted GSD Axe and proclaim their own discipline to be the TRULY indispensable discipline!

Thursday | March 19 | 2026 | 6 PM

Clifford E. White Theatre in the Performing and Fine Arts Building

The GSD focuses on a scenario where great upheaval has occurred and humanity clearly needs to set up a new world. This years’ debate takes place 10 YEARS after where we left off last year.

Our mission now is bold and strangely hopeful: to become the first beings of Europa, Jupiter’s enigmatic moon. We seek a place where all can feel respected, heard, and safe from authoritarian violence. Europa—long imagined as a world that might harbor life—now calls to us as a site of new beginnings. There is one seat left on the convoy. We will decide who joins us on March 19 at 6 PM in the Clifford E. White Theater—moments before we depart for our new world.

Each academic participant is asked to argue that their area of study/research/creative activity is the indispensable area that the new civilization MUST have to flourish. At the conclusion of the debate, the audience votes who will win the coveted axe, the bragging rights, and the seat to Europa!

The winner will receive the coveted axe for one year and the encouragement to proudly display the axe in their discipline’s main office for all to see. They will also receive a theme related trophy that they may keep long after the innitial year of gloating.

This is a fun evening—free and open to the public!

#CALisTheatre #DebateisDrama