Essay by Eric Worrall
The climate movement once again delivering us from the hope that the world has reached peak insanity.
Could a new wave of urgent theatre hold the key to tackling climate change?
Kate Wyver Thu 8 May 2025 17.00 AEST
From a New Forest giant inspiring an asthmatic teen to a herd of animal puppets walking to the Arctic Circle, theatre far and wide is taking action – but with energy and optimism, rather than doom-laden tales
Climate stories are typically defined by despair. The future we are told of is such a tragic, barren dystopia, it’s hard to look at head-on. But a flood of theatre-makers are writing their way past fear into something more useful, inspiring action through love, music, puppetry and folklore. “The ones who profit most from the idea that we’re doomed are the oil companies and the people massively polluting our planet,” reasons playwright Flora Wilson Brown. “If we allow ourselves to think there’s nothing we can do, we won’t do anything. There’s still time to act.”
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These plays seek to take what often feels invisible and lay it out for an audience to see more clearly. Abroad, a stampede of animals are confronting this challenge on even larger stages. In 2021, a 12ft-tall puppet of a 10-year-old Syrian girl, called Little Amal, walked 8,000km (5,000 miles) from Turkey to the UK to raise awareness of the urgent plight of refugees. This summer, the same team began a 20,000km (12,400 mile) journey, shepherding The Herds, a group of lifesize animal puppets, from the Congo basin to the Arctic Circle. “The people who depend on the forest are feeling the climate crisis now,” says David Lan, one of the core team and former artistic director of the Young Vic. “Animals are already moving from their ancient habitat because the Earth is too hot. We wanted to dramatise this to express the way life is already being strongly affected by what’s happening to the climate.”
The project leapfrogs people’s resistance to admit that the climate emergency is already making our home uninhabitable by placing it in front of them, in public spaces. …
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2025/may/08/the-beautiful-future-is-coming-hot-mess-bringing-the-outside-in-the-herds
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I don’t know about you guys, but I’m thinking a society which can afford to support a group of committed artists walking a giant herd of puppets on a 5000 mile journey probably isn’t down to its last rice cracker.
Real crisis involve food riots and people dropping dead in the streets. Fake crisis apparently require herds of puppets.
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Actually doing decent research apparently
involves skills the activists just do not have , or actively reject.
The latter
Or too lazy?
Everyone is jumping on board to make a buck from the Climate Apocalypse.
I need a beer.
Hopefully a locally sourced, NGO, organic, brewed with renewable energy and packaged in fully recyclable beer. If a portion of the profits go to progressive social policies, all the better.
Whenever you think they’ve gone way over the edge they go even further.
Urgent theatre?
For madmen only (Herman Hesse)
I understand that our new Pope is the same as the old Pope: Climate change forever.
I thought all the “Climate Change” characters were already just putting on a show.
Do they think using puppets would be more believable?
(They already tried that with Biden. It didn’t work.)
“(They already tried that with Biden. It didn’t work.)”
Who was replaced by the orange, destructive malevolent doll ‘Chucky’ …
( Mad in the USA ).
Some interesting times ahead !!
Your TDS is showing.
Trump is trying to fix all the damage Biden’s autopen crew did. !
There is a LOT to fix.
Biden & Trump should be sharing the same cell.
Also applies to the numerous lying, cheating, conniving bastards we call politicians.
Trump is a puppet?
Who’s puppet? Who’s pulling his strings? Who controls his “auto pen”?
With Brandon “The world wonders”.
I didn’t say Trump is a puppet … far from it;
I likened him to the ruthless, destructive, malevolent doll ‘Chucky’ who was a control freak with a dark hidden agenda.
We have three years to see how it all pans out !!
They’ve been pushing doom for how long now, and just now, they’ve “discovered” the doom messaging is backfiring. Riiiight. Like we haven’t heard that one before. They just can’t decide which tactic to use, so keep switching back and forth, as if THIS time will be different! Laughable, if it wasn’t so sad.
I’m sure the bard found the weather perfect in the little ice age.
Titania from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, ‘translated’ to modern speak!
“Because of you, the winds that used to playfully blow are now bringing up fog from the sea as a form of revenge. This fog has come ashore and made every little river overflow its banks. The hardworking farmer’s efforts have been wasted, the crops have spoiled before they could fully grow, and now fields stand empty while crows feast on dead livestock…..
People are longing for winter here; nights are no longer filled with joyful songs. The moon, who normally controls the tides, is angry and clouding the air with sickness. Because of this chaos, the seasons are changing unpredictably: frosty winter is showing up in springtime blooms and summer flowers are mocking winter’s chill. The seasons are confused and can’t tell which is which anymore.”
So crazy mixed up seasons, floods, crop failures, and disease. Sounds ideal!
Twas written at the height of the: Witch trials in the early modern period
Wikipedia has an entry with that title.
Witches = CO2
Where is Greta? Has she succumbed to CA – Climate Apathy? How dare you Greta!
She became disillusioned about things, particularly the lack of anything getting done at the annual Climate Parties, famously singing ““You can shove your climate crisis up your a**e” at one point. So, she is out of the Climate Biz, and has been for quite a while. I think she’s involved with the Free Palestine movement and other humanitarian causes now. We should give her a break. She’s moved on, and so should we.
There are people who think their bad art will save the world.
Green Day
I don’t know about you, but I, for one, would like to know just how many puppets are in this so called herd!? Do they belch powerful GHGs, like most other types of herds; or do they just require large quantities of fossil fuels for their journey, like a poorly educated and mentally challenged teenager would use to sail across the ocean to attend a Climapocalypse rave!?
All in all, it seems that the Climatistas are outdoing themselves at showing their ignorance and irrelevance; with dramatic actions like this and the ever-insightful XR saga, most thinking folks will be dismissing their endless emoting soon for being repetitive and rather banal!
It is a good way to do a self-mockery of their whole agenda, though.
Makes people realise they are total loonies. 🙂
They have had the full force of the government, trillions of dollars handed to them, the power to silence those who disagree and yet they have no proper science to show that we even have a problem. No wonder they are reduced to making puppets and holding parades. Apparently that is the best they have, they are on their way to irrelevance.
I suggest that they have been irrelevant all along! Like Chicken Little?
How do they propose to cross the Med and the English Channel?
How will their entourage travel?
You guessed it, good old reliable oil, gas and coal
Tom Sowell’s depiction of Barak Obama explained in one confined are. If any project is depicted with sufficient gravitas, no matter how irrational, disruptive or damaging, it will gain adherents; Institute all manner of schemes but never go back and check the statistics. O’Barmey played fast and loose with the constitution, impoverished black Americans and made a complete dog’s breakfast of social security, but got a Nobel Prize! Delivering nonsensical rhetoric with a Churchillian drawl enthrals its public, it works. It will take a life time to unravel the damage that Barak did but the Global Warming narrative is only in the foothills of being unravelled. Tom’s intellectuals are at the root of it. If they can gain prestige in one arena then they MUST be right everywhere? It seems that prestige only lends self-assurance and the ability to sell daft concepts without blushing. Would we be far from the mark in naming William Gates in this category? Such people should be retired. The undoubted good he did with his invention does not migrate elsewhere (as his ex wife will attest). But we are trained to defer to such people. So many liberal minds are trapped in the necessity of knowing the latest craze, possessing the latest lapel badge, terrified of being laughed at in their busy, tittle-tattle formicary. Perhaps we should laugh at them more often, them and their identarian obsessions. Theatre might be termed as the last resort of the self obsessed serving-up that of the planet ‘death cult’ as entertainment. I think they have misconstrued the power of the word. The rest is silence.
How about theater that depicts life in a net-zero imposed world? A world where puppetry would be both luxury and one of the few forms of entertainment left.
They hope that the audience will become the puppets.
Arts Graduates are trained to believe everything is provisional, everything is biased by the source, and absolutely nothing is to be trusted.
Except the wizards who do ‘science’.
If those wise men are approved by the State then they must be believed, uncritically.