Why write plays about climate change? Well let’s talk about Aristotle. Theatre in ancient Greece was a communal and sacred event. The idea was that a group of people would experience a dramatized story together, and together would be changed by it. If there is anything our community needs to be changed about it’s our understanding of climate change. Climate change doesn’t work like any other disaster. There is no spectacular or satisfying explosion, like Pompeii blowing its stack. Instead, it is a slow-moving change, one that is literally boiling us like the frog in the fable. How do we imagine the world we are heading for and help the audience experience a fundamental shift in the mind and heart? This is ideal work for the theatre. It takes place in a room, with human beings, who share the same space and breathe the same air. It allows for that catharsis Aristotle was on about.
Tom and Marsha love Utopia. They believe in Utopia. They helped build Utopia. You can be anything you want in Utopia. You can travel to the past, the future, outer space, Middle Earth … meet Einstein and Walt Whitman, be or do what you like. But their daughter Robin has different ideas. The children of Utopia are learning to read, and a mysterious Poet wants them to destroy the paradise their parents built.
“Scattershot” is about Timothy who is a pirate who isn’t a pirate, who visits an island that isn’t an island, and the home of a witch who isn’t a witch. He’s on a mission that he doesn’t believe in and that’s all very well until he meets a girl. Then something happens to change the fate of the witch, the girl, the pirates and Timothy, in this fairy tale that isn’t a fairy tale, but a story of love and hope in a future that could be our own.
Link on website: http://www.climatechangetheatreaction.com/event/climate-change-theatre-action-in-chicago/
