Books, arts and culture
The drama of climate change
Feb 16th 2011, 18:54 by The Economist online
WHERE are the good plays about climate change? At More Intelligent Life Robert Butler writes about two plays on the subject that opened in London recently: "Greenland" (pictured top), at the National Theatre, got panned, and "The Heretic", at the Royal Court, got raves. If you go and see both, you could come away fairly confused about climate science.
Highly divisive issues have generated some important plays: think of McCarthyism and Arthur Miller’s "The Crucible", or AIDS and Tony Kushner’s "Angels in America", or political correctness and David Mamet’s "Oleanna". Yet 20 years after the first report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and five years after "An Inconvenient Truth", no major playwright had written a play about the subject. Many reasons have been suggested for this. The science is complex. The links between cause and effect (on which plays depend) are hard to show. Arts organisations get sponsorship from Big Oil. And everyone has made up their mind anyway...
Jim Thompson, author of "The Grifters", once wrote there are 32 ways to write a story (and he had used every one of them), but there is only one plot: "Things are not what they seem." The problem with climate change is that the scientific consensus is a bit of a bore. It just doesn't catch our imagination. As an audience, we are naturally drawn to deception and mystery, the half-hidden and the shadows. The theatre may be the one place where we hope our trust in authority figures will prove to be misplaced. The authors of "Greenland" might have had more fun if they had concentrated on the smooth and powerful authority figures who deny the science, rather than the earnest folks who fret over it. That's where the action is. As David Mamet told an interviewer, "Drama is basically about lies, somebody lying to somebody." It's the impulse audiences had in Ancient Greece, when characters were portrayed with masks. Whichever way you tell the story, we want to see the mask slip.
Named for the hero of Shakespeare's "The Tempest", an expert in the power of books and the arts, this blog features literary insight and cultural commentary from our correspondents, and includes our coverage of the art market.
Advertisement
Over the past five days
Over the past seven days
Advertisement
Subscribe to The Economist's free e-mail newsletters and alerts.
Subscribe to The Economist's latest article postings on Twitter
See a selection of The Economist's articles, events, topical videos and debates on Facebook.
Advertisement
Readers' comments
The Economist welcomes your views. Please stay on topic and be respectful of other readers. Review our comments policy.
Sort:
One does not need a NEW play about Climate Change.
An adaptation of Ibsen's "The Enemy of the People" will do nicely.