2071

Actor John Gaden in Duncan Macmillan's 2071 at the Seymour Centre.  (supplied image)

By Elissa Blake

In 1948, George Orwell dreamed up a vision of the future: 1984. It was the sum of all fears in that post-war world, a picture of a dystopia ruled by an all-seeing Big Brother.

A lot has changed since then. Now humankind is faced with a different threat, that of anthropogenic climate change. What, from the vantage point of 2017, can we imagine our future to be? What will the planet be like in 2071?

In 2014, the British theatremaker and playwright Duncan Macmillan sat down with leading climate scientist Chris Rapley of University College London to consider the direction the planet is heading in. After 10 months of discussions and thousands of pages of transcribed notes were distilled, a dramatised lecture titled 2071 emerged. It had its premiere at London’s Royal Court.

Now 2071 is about to be staged for the first time in Sydney. “It is the most ambitious thing I’ve ever done, and one of the most difficult,” says the Australian production’s director Tim Jones. “It is the facts of climate change, shaped by a playwright, with an original music score and incredible original 3D projections that artfully illustrate the content, and the idea is to make it all as simple and clear to people as possible.”

It’s a vastly complex subject, Jones acknowledges. “It can seem so overwhelming that your instinct is just to bury your head in the sand. But one of the drivers of the piece is to make it so that everyone understands the science and what it means for the planet. Rapley makes it so clear that even climate change deniers can’t find a wormhole through the logic of his argument.”

Theatre is an underused medium when it comes to helping people get to grips with real world issues, Jones believes. “In theatre, you can cut through the noise, you can communicate information in new ways. For people who don’t want to sit down and read the evidence themselves, or feel they don’t have the time to wade through a book, theatre can be a very effective and entertaining way to engage with the subject matter.”

With climate science described as “fraud” by President Donald Trump and the United States threatening to withdraw from the 2016 Paris Agreement, you could be forgiven for imagining Rapley’s view of the future as a bleak one. Not so. One of Rapley’s key messages is that human ingenuity can be harnessed to limit the increase in Co2 levels in the atmosphere while ensuring people can continue to enjoy stable, comfortable lifestyles in the developed world, and those in developing nations increase their standards of living.

Rapley’s lecture won’t be spoken by the man himself in this production at the Seymour Centre (where it is being presented as part of the Vivid program). Instead, it will be voiced by actor John Gaden.

“But every word is his,” Gaden says. “There’s no latitude to change anything. My job isn’t to impersonate him or anything like that. It’s just to make it all clear.”

The debate around climate science is a politically charged one, but 2071 eschews politics, Gaden says. “It’s the science and only the science. There’s no spin on it. What you do with the information is up to you. We’re not telling you what to think.”

Those who accept climate change as fact will find Rapley’s assessment sobering, says Gaden. “There’s nothing comforting here. As for the skeptics, who knows? Talking to some people is like talking to a brick wall.”

2071: a Performance about Climate Change plays at the Seymour Centre, May 26 - June 10, $35-$43, seymourcentre.com

 This story was first published in The Sun-Herald on May 21, 2017.