On the day a group of Dutch climate scientists announce that we are not going to make 'Paris', A Play for the living in a time of extinction premieres. How do you make a play about the biggest crisis threatening us? How do you make sure you keep making theatre and not agitprop? Or maybe it's not so bad to put down a piece of propaganda at all, if we do listen.
A play for the living was written by Miranda Rose Hall. Katie Mitchell further developed it into a play that travels with a set of rules and the text. Thus, on stage, it should be possible to see how the energy needed for the performance is generated. Consequently, the women do not tour themselves; that goes against energy efficiency. In the Netherlands, the thread was picked up by Floor Houwelink ten Cate, who, together with actress Joy Wielkens, made it an exciting work.
The first of the set of rules provides an interesting backdrop.
The energy needed for the light is generated by pulleys and a treadmill. The playing surface looks like a playground with a pulpit. At first it is funny, Joy Wielkens constantly having to interrupt her monologue to give a crank to the pulleys. Then it becomes irritating, and finally it's just like that, the new reality.
Theatre about theatre
Wielkens plays a dramaturge who unexpectedly has to take over the performance due to a dying mother of one of her actresses. What follows is an exposé on how to make theatre, what a dramaturge actually does and what it is about. The fuss with the pulleys provides the air not to make it dramedy or pedantic. Gradually, her text becomes brighter, more personal and political.
In the second half, a choir of ten performers led by composer Annelinde Bruijs takes to the stage. Their singing, with percussion by Mei Yi Lee, is at times moving, at other times the cheerleader for Wielkens. They push the treadmill forward, so there is a change in the light and thus the stage image.
The sixth mass extinction
Wielkens tells the story of the five previous mass extinctions and how absurd it is that we humans caused the current one. Actually, her actresses would show this with a whole chorus of extinct animals, but that is so not possible. She makes the story more personal and urgent by making it painfully clear that the climate crisis does not affect everyone equally, but institutional racism is inextricably linked to it. You can't drive a Tesla if you have no money and were born in NieuwWest. You can't eat organic meat if you don't have money. You can't give up your third flying holiday for the climate if once every four years Centerparks is your holiday.
White discomfort
She said her friends thought it weird that she didn't vote Green Left because climate crisis, but ignored that other glaring problem. And also immediately mentioned the white discomfort in the audience "Why does it have to be so angry, why does she have to scream like that?". And this, for me, was the moment the performance really grabbed me. The personal became political, the political personal. Because how do you translate your own woke thoughts - which she also named, she did not spare her audience - into change? How do you avoid going out as a largely white and privileged audience nodding benevolently and then doing nothing? Wielkens does not give the answer, nor is that her job. That is up to us now.
I get on my bike, while above my head a plane makes noise every two minutes. I am not made more optimistic by this performance. More angry, though, and that can't hurt at all.
Also read this evening's other review:
Turning against the dying of the light at the direction of Katie Mitchell #HF22
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