Taking theatre off-grid
Daniel Nelson
“Let’s take this show off the grid”, says Lydia West as a signal for the Barbican Centre lights to switch off and for 10 on-stage cyclists start cranking up the power.
They pedal away for the full 70 minutes of A Play for the Living in a Time of Extinction, with the fluctuating wattage they are generating displayed in green as a permanent back-drop.
It also boasts an innovative theatre model, in which the play tours while the people do not. In each city the production is brought to life by a different team of theatre-makers, “a ground-breaking international experiment in reimagining theatre in a climate crisis”.
It couldn’t be more right-on for a production about the Sixth Extinction and human destruction of the natural environment. And perhaps we’ll gradually see more eco-conscious theatre: next month the Gate presents Hot In Here - “featuring the first energy-harvesting dancefloor in live theatre … bringing people together to imagine a more equitable future for our planet.”
Calling the Barbican production a play is stretching the term. It’s a cross between a Ted Talk and stand-up, buttressed by photos of endangered animals on lowered screens and moments of audience participation as we are asked to wave our arms to represent trees or shout if we have a favourite body of water.
It’s a valiant effort to make mass extinction a subject for theatre-goers,for some of whom it may be a powerful introduction and even a motivational spark. But by the end I felt slightly manipulated, and put off by the experience of being shouted at through a microphone - a device that tends to turn the personal into hectoring.
My most vivid memory of the production is the ceaseless whooshing noise of the bikes, a sound that symbolised action and innovation and not just outrage.
* A Play for the Living in a Time of Extinction is at the Barbican Centre, Silk Street, EC2 on 26-29 April, and then Belgrade Theatre in Coventry, the Shakespeare North Playhouse, the New Vic Theatre in Stoke-on-Trent, The Drum in Theatre Royal Plymouth and the York Theatre Royal in September. Info: https://www.barbican.org.uk/whats-on/2023/event/katie-mitchell-headlong-a-play-for-the-living
About A Play for the Living in a Time of Extinction
The original production of A Play for the Living in a Time of Extinction directed by Katie Mitchell was created at the Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne as part of the project Sustainable Theatre?, conceived by Katie Mitchell, Jérôme Bel and Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne, with the collaboration of the Competence Centre in Sustainability of the University of Lausanne, co-produced by STAGES - Sustainable Theatre Alliance for a Green Environmental Shift (NTGent - Théâtre de Liège - National Theatre of Croatia in Zagreb - MC93, Maison de la culture de Seine-Saint-Denis - Trafo House of Contemporary Arts - Piccolo Teatro di Milano, Teatro d'Europa - Lithuanian National Drama Theatre - Teatro Nacional D. Maria II - Maribor Slovene National Theatre - The Royal Dramatic Theatre, Dramaten, Stockholm - National Theater & Concert Hall, Taipei) and co-funded by the European Union. Sustainable Theatre? includes two shows and a workshop touring in the form of scripts recreated locally.
A Play for the Living in a Time of Extinction
A Play for the Living in a Time of Extinction was commissioned and developed by LubDub Theatre Company, Caitlin Nasema Cassidy, and Geoff Kanick, Co-Artistic Directors, Robert Duffley, Dramaturg.
Written By Miranda Rose Hall
Directed by Katie Mitchell
Co-produced by Headlong and the Barbican
On tour
Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, from 10 May 2023
Directed by Nyasha Gudo
Shakespeare North Playhouse, Prescot, from 16 May 2023
Directed by Nathan Powell
New Vic Theatre, Newcastle-Under-Lyme, from 19 June 2023
Directed by Ellie Taylor
Theatre Royal Plymouth, from 28 June 2023
Directed by Kay Michael