#Penny a song of ice and fire free

вЂњYou have made a choice to make the story less realistic than it would have been otherwise.вЂќ

вЂњIf youвЂ™re making a story about anything, in any place, and you donвЂ™t have climate change in it, thatвЂ™s a science-fiction story,вЂќ she said. The first year, Bilodeau said, they ended up with a вЂњwhole lot of depressing plays.вЂќ Now they try to steer playwrights away from dystopia and toward visions of a livable future, and encourage those staging the works to pair them with programming that helps audiences get a deeper understanding of the issues.

#Penny a song of ice and fire free

The organization commissions plays with environmental themes, paying the writers and then providing the scripts free to theater companies, schools or any other groups that want to stage readings or productions. Since its inception, the group has produced 200 works that have been performed for 40,000 people in 30 countries, said its co-founder, Chantal Bilodeau. (The theater group has never been officially affiliated with any of the annual COP meetings.) climate meeting in 2015 that resulted in the landmark Paris Agreement. Climate Change Theater Action, an initiative of the nonprofit the Arctic Cycle, was created to encourage theater-making that might draw greater attention to COP21, the U.N. Though Balogun is the only theater artist on the official COP26 schedule, he is certainly not the first playwright to grapple with climate themes.

вЂњWe donвЂ™t talk about the communities whoвЂ™ve been leading this fight for years.вЂќ вЂњSo often we donвЂ™t talk about the global South,вЂќ Balogun said. To that end, he interweaves his own story with that of the Nigerian writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, who campaigned against destructive oil extraction on behalf of his Ogoni people. вЂњThe goal is to make grass-roots activism accessible, and to represent people of color and working-class people,вЂќ he said. Climate action, in other words, is for everyday people with everyday concerns. Though at first it seems as if they are interrupting BalogunвЂ™s primary narrative about вЂњemissions, emissions, emissions,вЂќ as he sings at one point, their interjections hammer home one of his central ideas: If the movement isnвЂ™t willing to prioritize someone like his Nigerian grandma, itвЂ™s missing the point. Throughout the show, Balogun fields phone calls from family members about issues seemingly unrelated to the central thrust of the play, asking him when heвЂ™s going to get married or why he left a bag in the hallway at home. вЂњKnowing all that I did made me angry at the world for not doing anything,вЂќ the 26-year-old Balogun (вЂњDune,вЂќ вЂњI May Destroy YouвЂќ) said in a phone interview. Not even landing the lead in a West End production (a long-coveted dream) of вЂњThe Importance of Being Earnest.вЂќ His growing anxiety made him feel as if he were living a real-world version of вЂњMythвЂќ in which society kept repeating the same old script even as the planet descended into chaos. Suddenly, nothing seemed more important than addressing the global crisis. The whole experience changed his life, Balogun said. The play itself called for him and the other actors to repeatedly run through the same mundane lines, to the point of absurdity, as their environment ruptured terrifyingly around them - the walls streaking with oil, the stove catching fire, the freezer oozing water. The actor Fehinti Balogun knows that theater can mobilize people toward climate action, because thatвЂ™s what it did for him.Д«ack in 2017, while preparing for a role in вЂњMyth,вЂќ a climate parable, he began reading books about climate change and became alarmed by the unusually warm summer he was experiencing in England.