brain drain

The Daily Dish reports that in good universities across the United States, students flee the Republican Party. The better the university, it appears, "the more drastic the trend".

Meanwhile, Republican climate deniers vie to run House Energy Committee more ...

shining light

One of the winners of the TippingPoint commissions, The LightSwitch Project by the LightSwitch Collective, features the British film and stage actor Toby Jones (left). The show asks the question: 'what happens when you switch on a light?' The press release says the performance:

'connects the individual to the implications of their actions and their place in the world.' more ...

atlantic criss-crossing

The story so far: we wanted to take part in a conference about environment and drama that's taking place right now in the US but we didn't want to incur any airmiles (however persuasive Kevin Spacey's ads may be).

Instead, we filmed six short interviews with theatre artists working in the UK and sent the DVD of the interviews to the conference.

On Friday evening, those who appear in the DVD (along with your blogger) gathered in a basement in central London to share a satellite discussion with some of the people at the Oregon conference. It was 5pm our time, 9am their time.

Once we'd shouted greetings and waved at each other, we all introduced ourselves. Then we went offline for 30 mins to watch the DVD and regrouped afterwards for 45 mins to discuss the questions raised.

Plenty of interesting things were said. But probably for all of us the most memorable thing was that it was happening at all.

Further comments on what was actually said, and a transcript, will appear shortly. more ...

mental map

The Independent is working with Debategraph to develop a map on climate-change issues:

'the whole structure of the map is like a wiki – every aspect is mutable, provisional, and open to further refinement – and anyone can add new issues, positions, arguments, events and evidence to the map.' more ...

stays in the mind

There's a big overlap between environmentalism and science fiction: both are fascinated by projecting scenarios, tracking consequences, and pinpointing the moment of 'what-if'.

The BBC's current Science-Fiction series has included adaptations of H.G. Wells's The Time Machine (left), which was partly inspired by Darwin's Origin of Species; J. G. Ballard's The Drowned World, which is about London becoming a swamp as global warming melts the ice caps; and John Christopher's Death of Grass, in which a deadly virus attacks all the grass in the world.

In He Knew He Was Right, John and Mary Gribbin's new biography of James Lovelock, the authors note Lovelock's boyhood passion for science fiction. They write that Lovelock considered that:

'It was H.G. Wells who invented real science fiction, and he particularly remembers the impression made by The Time Machine, with its apocalyptic vision of a scorched future Earth - almost a scientific prediction of the actual fate of the Earth when the Sun swells to become a Red Giant star, and the warming overwhelms the mechanisms of Gaia.'

Lovelock says: 'That really stayed in my mind.'

(More on The Death of Grass from William Shaw here and from Andrew Curry here.) more ...

antelope, llama ... politician

In Hugh Lofting's Dr Doolittle the original pushmi-pullyu was an antelope with a head at each end of the body.

In the Rex Harrison movie (left) the pushmi-pullyu was a double-headed llama.

The latest manifestation of someone pulling themselves in two directions is Stewart Stevenson, the Scottish Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change. Among his interests he lists 'private flying'. more ...

stay grounded

Yesterday the poet-critic Alison Croggon, who writes the excellent Theatre Notes in Australia, blogged that she flew from Melbourne to Adelaide to go see a movie. I'd admire her even more as a critic if she hadn't. But then, could you be a theatre critic in Australia if you took the impacts of aviation seriously? more ...

tweets

Ashdenizen is now on twitter. Go to www.twitter.com/ashdenizen. more ...

waiting for the new code

Sam Mendes' production of The Cherry Orchard opened in New York this week. The cast includes Ethan Hawke, Simon Russell Beale (pic), Sinead Cusack and Rebecca Hall.

Chekhov's last play (it premiered in 1904) depicts a world on the verge of huge changes. The New York Times critic Ben Brantley sees parallels with today:

'People are always misspeaking in The Cherry Orchard, stupidly and hurtfully, because no language could properly reflect a shifting social order that has yet to assume any solid form.'

'The old codes don’t apply, but the new ones haven’t arrived yet. Which makes the early 20th century sound an awful lot like the early 21st century.'

(See the green side of Chekhov.) more ...

joining up the dots

'Don't let the puny pound and faltering economy ruin your plans. Whether it's a bargain-priced sunshine break in the Med or the luxury of a flat-bed flight to Sydney there's never been a better time to book, says Simon Calder'. Independent, 14 January 2009

'Aborigines in the harsh Outback will be among the Australians hardest hit by climate change.' Independent, 14 January 2009 more ...

how playwrights tackle politics

The many tributes to Harold Pinter have been followed by a couple of dissenting views that have concentrated on the playwright's political views.

Johann Hari has written witheringly about Pinter's support for Milosevic and Minette Marin has proposed 'an odd natural law of literature: creative writers are often silly political commentators'. Her list of examples, other than Pinter, includes Tolstoy, Brecht, Jean-Paul Sartre, V.S. Naipaul and Martin Amis. Her example of someone sane who stayed out of politics is Chekhov.

But Chekhov's journey in 1890 to the prison colony in Sakhalin, which he wrote about in The Island: Journey to Sakhalin, was deeply political. Chekhov travelled 4,000 miles by boat and coach to report on the conditions. He wrote:

'We have sent millions of men to rot in prison, have destroyed them - casually without thinking, barbarously ... have depraved them, have multiplied criminals, and the blame for all this we have thrown upon the gaolers and red-nosed superintendents. Now all educated Europe knows that it is not the superintendents that are to blame, but all of us ...'

(quoted in V. S. Pritchett's Chekhov - A Spirit Set Free)

Chekhov makes a direct connection between lives that are lived in places that are thousands of miles apart. He backs this up with meticulous and exhausting research. It's an example of the role of empathy in politics, a subject that is central to any fuller grasp of the implications of climate change. more ...

whales in driveways

'What we know of whales', writes Elin Kelsey, author of Watching Giants, 'we extrapolate from the tiny glimpses researchers get at the water surface, and even then, only by looking in the same old places.'

Studying whales has been compared to researching humans solely by watching them in their driveways.

The Ashden Directory has just posted three new articles about whales and the performing arts. We survey the writers and directors who have imagined the impossible - putting whales onstage. The philosopher and composer David Rothenberg attempts a new level of interspecies communication by playing jazz with whales. In the ancient Inuit fable of 'The Narwhal', storyteller Helen East finds a thoroughly modern story about whales and greed.

For the performing arts, there's a special challenge in interpreting the lives of animals and their habitats: so much that is essential cannot be contained on the stage. As concern over biodiversity and species extinction becomes acute, these issues call for new levels of imaginative engagement between audiences and performers.

In the New Scientist the philosopher A C Grayling writes about the complex social, emotional and cognitive lives of great apes with their 'self-awareness and capacities for affection and grief'.

He adds, 'It makes one think, and once one starts reflecting on ethical boundaries, it's hard not to conclude that they are best drawn as far out as possible.' more ...

getting ready

GoS emails that Wallace Shawn's lines from The Fever about an amazing moment (‘before the day starts') reminds him of Philip Larkin’s Aubade.

'Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring

In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring

Intricate rented world begins to rouse.' more ...

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. more ...

an amazing moment

Grains of Sand linked last week (2 Dec) to Chris Goodall’s observation that ‘the London opera houses have had more taxpayer money than the British marine power industry over the past few years.’ GoS adds, ‘It should not, of course, have to be either/or, and neither I nor, I am sure, Chris Goodall would want to suggest such a thing.’

One person who does describe these kinds of choices in terms of either/or, and who himself earns his living in the arts, is the playwright Wallace Shawn. In his thoroughly discomforting play The Fever (1991), he writes,

'And there’s an amazing moment: each day, before the day starts, before the market opens, before the bidding begins, there’s a moment of confusion. The money is silent, it hasn’t yet spoken. Its decisions are withheld, poised, perched, ready. Everyone knows that the world will not do everything today; if food is produced for the hungry children, then certain operas will not be performed; if certain performances are in fact given, then the food won’t be produced, and the children will die.'

The Royal Court's season of Wallace Shawn plays opens next Spring. more ...

mind the gap

One of the toughest challenges for climate-change campaigners is the gap that exists (in storytelling terms) between cause and effect. That gap is closing. It looks like lawyers may make the connections before dramatists do. more ...

now or later

The most arresting line in David Hare's Gethsemane is a piece of reported speech. The Home Secretary, Meredith, is discussing her daughter Suzette's views, about asylum seekers and refugees, with her political advisor, Lori.

MEREDITH. Suzette says, 'Mum, it isn't a question of "They're poor and we're rich." It's "They're poor because we're rich." And if you can't see that, you can't see anything.'

Meredith doesn't see this, she says she can't see this (she doesn't have time), and the play doesn't pursue the point. But it's this area, the connection between our lives, here, and other lives, elsewhere, that would also be central to any drama that dealt with climate change.

A playwright who has a thrilling sense of how the world is connected is Christopher Shinn . His latest play Now or Later takes place on election night. The central character is John ('20, white') and his father is about to become President of the United States. A story has surfaced on several obscure blogs that John went to a student party dressed as Muhammad. (There were reasons for this.) As the play develops, this gossip spreads across the internet and John's father and his campaign team become increasingly fearful about the backlash in other countries (riots, death threats).

The play takes place in a hotel room, in real time, but it conveys a strong sense of the causal links (the because) that connect actions in one place with consequences in another. In that respect, it offers something of a model.

more ...

the real thing

The Columbian vice president, Francisco Santos Calderon (left), says anyone who takes cocaine in the UK is responsible for the harm caused by landmines to the Colombian people and for breathtaking damage to the rainforest.

Related. Helen Mirren - Why I stopped taking cocaine. ('I had never grasped the full horrifying structure of what brings coke to our parties in Britain.')

more ...

the context culprit

On a TV chat-show sofa, Richard Dreyfuss considers the threat to democracy, 'Television is the biggest culprit of all because it has destroyed context.' more ...

'theatre revels ...'

writes Guardian theatre blogger Andy Field,

'in the directness of its relationship with the real world. It is the perfect medium to begin playing with and making something wonderful out of our ever-more miserable weather.' more ...