Drama Prof Laments the Difficulty of Writing Plays About Climate Change
“The speed of the effects of climate change, George said, was only one obstacle”
Maybe this shouldn’t be the focus for students who are paying to study theater. I’m just thinking out loud, here.
The College Fix reports:
Drama professor says writing plays about climate change is hard
The 21st century is proving to be difficult for one playwright, due to the challenges of writing plays focused on climate change.
Madeleine George, a professor at Bard College, was a featured panelist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Kelly Writer’s House, where she explained that a number of issues made writing plays about climate change difficult.
The event was moderated by Penn senior Samantha Friskey, “who wrote a play about sustainability for her senior thesis,” The Daily Pennsylvanian reports.
George, a Pulitzer Prize for Drama finalist, said that “verb tense issues, material waste created by theatrical productions, and the human-centric nature of plays” made writing plays centered on climate change very difficult.
She said she started writing a play in 2010 – written in the future tense with dialogue about glaciers melting – that had become outdated by the time it was produced in 2019, when unspecified glaciers actually were melting.
The speed of the effects of climate change, George said, was only one obstacle to writing about the climate in the theater, while the human aspect of plays created yet another:
George added that theatrical productions tend to focus on the “human scale part of the problem, like questions of guilt, questions of complacency, or questions of betrayal.” Plays are also not a sufficient media for crafting systemic solutions to societal problems, George added.
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Comments
Tennessee Williams had no comment.
They could have an evil conman telling them world that the sky is going to fall in unless we give him half of our wealth.
We’ve got trouble right here in River City.
With a capial T that rhymes with C which stands for Climate (and Celsius!).
In other news YouTube is being asked to Farenheight 451 any vid skeptical of “climate change”.
Perhaps they can turn and reverse the Michael Mann trial into “Inherit the Windmill”. With Bloggerman replacing Radioman.
Seriously, the stage is not the optimal medium for sci fi.
See, the problem that they don’t get is that we are paying to be entertained, not to be lectured at about what they feel is the crisis of the moment. I remember going to see Jackson Browne during the Reagan years, and getting a fifteen minute lecture about stopping Reagan’s policies and how evil he was. By about five minutes into this most of us were at the “just shut up and sing already” point.
A play about climate change? I don’t see a Tony award anywhere in their future.
Why not do one about menopause as an analogy for climate change? Things co from cold to hot in an instant amidst a global meltdown. Just sayin.
My old roommate used to say that Karla Bonoff opening for Jackson Browne was an good excuse to bring a razor blade to the concert