Photo credit: Ontroerend Goed
Are we not drawn onward to new erA is a theater production that casts a reversible gaze on human actions that have led to climate change. The show, just like its title, is a palindromic sequence. The program brochure makes this clear. Despite giving away this pivotal information, the narrative device of reversal and repetition leaves the audience in an enchanted daze.
The show begins with an obvious reference to Eve and the Garden of Eden. From there on, it takes many jerky, absurd twists and turns. In the first half, the actors speak in a foreign tongue and their actions feel pointless in jarring ways. Perhaps, this is how future generations will perceive the behavior and decisions of their human ancestors that squeezed the planet’s endurance to the brink. The pace and progression of the first half bears poetic resemblance to the history of mankind – starting with mild curiosity and seemingly disjointed actions of many to manifest a coherent material world, eventually leading to the escalating transgressions of the last few centuries and decades. The madness stops in the current day – the clutter and din of anthropocentric greed clouds everything (quite literally). From this admission of nihilistic inevitability, the show takes on a new life. It counters human greed with deliberate action and accountability. At some points, it throws logic out of the window – urging us to embrace the unknown with comic relief. There is space for everyone – the cynics, the dreamers, the makers and the fence-sitters. The show leaves everyone looking onward… to a new era of climate repair and peaceful co-existence (or willful annihilation, you choose).
Most of us are aware of the depressing statistics about climate change. Analyzing in hindsight, we shake our heads at the destruction wrought upon our planet by resource extraction and consumerism. Prescriptive advice by climate experts on how to reverse the effects of climate change abound our news cycles and social media. But we also need radical art like this production to help us develop crystal clear insights by showing the past, present and possible futures that can potentially emerge from collective action. When the rational mind feels dejected, art about speculative climate futures can refill our emotional drives to keep trudging forward. Are we not drawn onward to new erA shines a light on the little joys of embracing our absurd reality and marching onward with incremental steps in a bold quest to undo our collective follies and sins.
Produced by Belgium-based Ontroerend Goed in coproduction with Spectra (BE), Are we not drawn to new erA is presented by PuSh International Performing Arts Festival. Shows run from Feb 1-4 at Frederic Wood Theater in UBC. Learn more here
-Annapoorna Shruthi