Robert Butler of the Ashden Directory notes William Sidelsky’s review of the Oxfam-produced short-story collection Ox-tales: Air, Water, Fire and Earth in yesterday’s Observer. The review recognises that climate change is becoming a something recurring theme for modern writers:
A masterclass in this respect is offered by Helen Simpson’s “The …
Go to RSA Arts & Ecology
Later today I’ll be putting up our own review of Steve Waters’ new double-bill of plays about climate change The Contingency Plan, but in the meantime take theatre critic and environmental blogger’s Robert Butler of the Ashden Directory’s word forf it. These plays, he says, are “terrificâ€.
If there’s one line I had to choose from The Contingency Plan, Steve Waters’s terrific new double-bill of plays about climate change, now on at the Bush Theatre in London, it’s the moment when Will Paxton (Geoffrey Streatfeild), a young glaciologist, explains the concept of displacement to the new Tory minister for climate change. Having spelled out that ice is ‘basically parked water’, Will warily predicts that the enormous West Antarctic Ice Sheet may well melt (much like the smaller Larsen B ice shelf).
‘But this is thousands of miles from us,’ chuckles the smooth Old Etonian minister (David Bark-Jones), whose schoolfriend, David Cameron, has become prime minister. Will replies with patience, ‘If you pour water in the bath, it doesn’t stay under the tap.’
Read Robert Butler’s review of The Contingency Plan at The Economist’s Intelligent Life.
Read the Ashden Directory blog on The Contingency Plan.
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At the Ashden Directory blog Robert Butler writes about Mohammed Yunus, founder of Bangladesh’s Gameen Bank, and deliverer of Thursday night’s Ashden Awards lecture:
Impossible not to compare two bankers – Sir Fred Goodwin and Mohammad Yunus – two world views: one that works, one that doesn’t.
There’s something almost Wildean about Yunus’s stories. He overturns the assumptions by which a society operates. The Grameen Bank has loaned money to tens of 1000s of beggars and his bank still flourishes. Other banks that only lend to the rich (because of ‘economic realities’) have crashed.
The BBC is being accused of moral dishonesty over its decision not to screen the appeal from the Disasters Emergency Committee – which includes Oxfam, Save The Children and The Red Cross. The ever-sharp Robert Butler of the Ashden Directory reminds us that during the broadcast of Live Earth the BBC insisted that Jonathan Ross remind viewers that “climate change may not have been caused by human activity, as the broadcaster tries to stay neutral on current affairs.”
Robert wonders what kind of neutrality it is that contradicts the Royal Society, the National Academy
of Sciences and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Go to RSA Arts & Ecology Blog
With reference to the post below and the brickbats thrown at the Young Vic, here’s a month-old blog post from Robert Butler The Ashden Directory who have years of experience looking at the shortage of engagement of performing arts in environmental issues:
Six Reasons Why Theatres Don’t Touch Climate Change.
Number seven might now be a fear of publicly falling on their arses. Which is, of course, the worst reason of all not to do something.
The nature of climate change (how it affects other people in other countries and how it will affect other people in other centuries) makes it a unique challenge to theatre.
The impact of individual actions spreads out, very diffusely, across time and place. It’s hard to see how this can be addressed within the classical dramaturgical model of cause and effect. It’s one reason whyno major theatre has staged a play on the subject.
But there are five other reasons why theatres don’t touch climate change.
1. Theatres think climate change is about science and so it’s going to be extremely technical. But it isn’t. It’s about drama’s core themes: human relationships, the way we live, what we value.
2. Theatres are worried they’ll be accused of hypocrisy, so they are going to need to get their house in order first. But this is not a ‘them and us’ subject where you have to be whiter-than-white before you can talk about it. Everyone’s implicated, everyone’s involved. Theatres should be open about that.
3. Theatres are holding off engaging with this subject (as one theatre director told me) because they’re not sure what they think about it.But not knowing what you think about something is the perfect moment to engage with it.
4. Theatres imagine the plays will either have to be agit-prop orapocalyptic and they don’t want to do either. But climate change is driven (as the great American biologist E.O. Wilson has said) by our high levels of per capita consumption: where stuff comes from and where it goes. Climate change is about everyday life.
5. Many of the leading fossil fuel companies are prominent sponsors of the arts. Oh yes, good point.
Originally Appeared in the Ashden Directory Blog as Posted by Robert Butler