Eschewing a narrative is a bold choice. But as the title suggests, that’s what playwright David Finnigan does. We’re offered separate short scenes, all set in a world in which climate change is a very real challenge. (Our world.)
Sometimes these scenes are set twenty years in the past, sometimes twenty years in the future, sometimes now. Here’s a few examples: a young couple consider the environmental impact of having a baby; an expert is told before a TV interview that hope is compulsory; a woman speaks to her counsellor about her climate related fears; a man tends the last living member of a dying frog species; a family in Penrith face the horror of 55 degree heat.
Finnigan’s script is both humorous and moving. Director Carissa Licciardello gives her cast a beautiful open playing space and their creation of the multifarious characters is brilliant.
Many of the scenes forgo subtext; they’re about what they’re about – unless, that is, we’re actually being invited to consider them through the lens of a recurring motif. This motif is that our response to climate change has four stages: denial, the seeking of solutions, despair and then, finally, hope.
And though these four stages might offer an approach to each individual scene, I don’t think they’re the work’s overriding structure. But maybe they are. Does it matter? What do we expect theatre to offer in terms of an issue such as climate change? (To start with, climate change is so big, so wide reaching, while theatre’s strength is the particular and the specific.) Do we want theatre to offer solutions? Are we seeking motivation? Or will we settle for a snapshot of the phenomena as it is experienced by our species?
If we decide our goal is consciousness raising, then we get stuck on the snag that drama is fiction. The audience doesn’t know if anything the characters say is true. You could argue that’s the case in reality (and so Art imitates Life) except that drama’s forte is to present individual perspectives, usually in conflict, and its characters speak in order to achieve something, and that something is rarely the propagation of Truth. (Is the artform fundamentally cynical? No, it simply acknowledges that Pass the salt is a more common use of language than This is the salt.)
This piece will certainly prove fuel to plenty of post-show conversations about climate (and, as is often case with such conversations, about the choice of fuel.)
Paul Gilchrist
Scenes from the Climate Era by David Finnigan
Belvoir until 25 June
image by Brett Boardman
Theatre Red 