The rehearsal room in London’s Bethnal Green buzzes with a concentrated, businesslike, and anticipatory atmosphere. People sit at tables with microphones in front of them, as though a conference is about to begin. On the stage’s periphery are directors Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin, along with playwrights Joe Robertson and Joe Murphy, co-founders of the Good Chance company. This team, known for their internationally celebrated show “The Jungle” about the theatre they set up in Calais’s refugee camp, is now halfway through rehearsals for a new project, “Kyoto,” about the UN’s climate conference of 1997.
The Kyoto conference aimed to cut global greenhouse gases by 5% by 2012 and was the first building block in the introduction of climate legislation worldwide. The Kyoto protocol was signed by 84 countries and has since been joined by more than 100 others. Although its effectiveness has been limited, it marked the first summit where the world’s nations began to come together, making it a historic environmental landmark.
Good Chance’s project has been in the works for a while and has been taken on by Daniel Evans and Tamara Harvey as part of their first season as joint artistic directors of the RSC. At the center of the drama is Don Pearlman, the morally ambiguous American lawyer known as the “high priest of the carbon club.” Pearlman, likely funded by Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and big oil companies, was a formidable spanner in the conference’s works. He is played by Tony-nominated Stephen Kunken, who brings a sense of cool, laconically unassailable rightness to the role.
Pearlman is in cahoots with Nancy Crane, representing the US delegation. Their self-interested exchanges are a sinister flexing of shared power. Other countries in attendance are represented by an international cast, and the giant oil companies are reconfigured as “the seven sisters,” intended to suggest the witches in Macbeth. The front two rows of the theatre will have space for audience members to sit, alternating with actors playing delegates, emphasizing that decisions about the climate crisis involve us all.
During a break, I meet Joe Robertson and Joe Murphy over tea and sandwiches. In their early 30s, they are delightful company, seamlessly picking up on each other’s thoughts. They met at Oxford as English undergraduates and have been writing plays together for 15 years. I ask them why they chose Kyoto as their subject. Robertson explains that Kyoto was the first time a global consensus on climate action happened, and it was about asking how to turn the world’s juggernaut from a lack of consensus and certainty in the science. Murphy describes Kyoto as “a parable about agreement.”
They explain that they had been asking questions about the “scary” world we live in and saw how critical consensus was. “The Jungle” also touched on this, asking how people from different countries can live together and find common ground. They emphasize that agreement depends on human will, energy, force of character, and the conviction that there is a way forward together.
A play about a conference could be a dead weight, but the text is entertainingly precise. The pedantry involved in negotiations builds tension masterfully. The Joes have achieved a seamless writing process, often writing with their backs to each other and their heads in a Google doc. They watched six hours of footage from the UNFCCC and talked to delegates, chief scientists, and Pearlman’s widow. The issue remained whether they could take these rooms where great questions are discussed and put them on stage.
The conundrum in rehearsals is about Pearlman’s motivation. Did he not believe the climate science, or did he think the costs of taking action were too great? Murphy and Robertson have not hesitated to take action themselves. Looking back on their achievements with Good Chance, they sometimes think their 25-year-old selves were a bit mad for moving into the Calais camp. But they rejoice in the incredible permanent citizenship ceremonies in the UK for some of their best friends they met in Calais and the continuing travels of Little Amal, the giant animatronic refugee puppet.
Returning to the subject of Kyoto, the ending of the play is still being fine-tuned. Robertson and Murphy praise the readiness of Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin to re-examine and rethink. Daldry has an amazing ability to make you feel better and more daring than you are. The play will not be simplified for convenience and is likely to be a complicated watch because of Pearlman’s ambiguous presence. The play seems to be an inquiry into the extent to which we have something of Pearlman in us: self-interest, willed blindness, and determination to sustain an unsustainable way of life.
Robertson insists they are not peddling pessimism. He wants the audience to feel that something is possible, that there is hope, and that we can do this together. However, hope cannot be the only message given the reality of where we are. When asked whether they feel gloomy about the climate crisis, they retreat behind “that’s a good question,” showing their ambivalence.
Later, I ask them what our governments should be doing. Their reply is a mission statement: “We’re artists, not climate experts or policy-makers. But it seems to us that we have to change the weather, literally and metaphorically. We have to conduct our discourse in a more compassionate and productive way and make arguments that bold, innovative, and immediate mitigation will not only prevent climate catastrophe but also create jobs, strengthen our economies, and ensure energy security in an increasingly dangerous world.”
Kyoto is at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, from 18 June to 13 July.
Source: The Guardian, The Observer
