david lan gets it

The Young Vic's artistic director David Lan identifies two key issues in relation to theatre and climate change. One is the global interconnectedness of 21st century lives. The other is the 'impossibility' of controlling context when everyone arrives with their own ideas.

On interconnectedness: 'The premise one starts from is: "We want to learn". I suppose a lot of the impulse comes from a sense of wanting to live in the real world, and part of the process of being alive is constantly discovering that you don’t really understand what’s going on and you want to know a little bit more than you did last week and the realities of the way we live are so complicated, but as the last three months have made abundantly clear, we are also living in each other’s pockets. A complex financial situation in downtown Miami can cause a collapse of the banks in Reykjavik. Now, what does that mean about the way we create work in the theatre?'

On context: ' ... part of the job of producing is to try and control the way in which the audience receive what you are creating, by the context in which that is presented. If you are working in an area, like this Brazil project , which has a relationship to a set of ideas and arguments and actions about climate change, it is very, very, very hard, it is impossible, to control that context, because everybody comes at it with a set of their own ideas.'

Hat tip RSA.