J. Contemp. Drama Engl. http://doi.org/448 (2015)

As the climate continues to change in response to human activities, researchers and the public are wrestling with ways to express the impact of our species on nature. Dramas can aid such understanding.

The idea that humans not only affect the natural world but hold geological agency has recently been captured by the concept of the anthropocene. Una Chaudhuri from New York University, USA, explores how a handful of plays help to situate, personalize and embody this transformation.

She describes how two plays in particular — Caryl Churchill's Far Away and Wallace Shawn's Grasses of a Thousand Colors — subtly alter perceptions of the role humans play in contributing to climate change. In Far Away, the imagined world mirrors the IPCC's recent warnings that plants and animals may have to migrate to escape rising temperatures. Grasses of a Thousand Colors further dramatizes the paradoxes inherent in addressing and living with climate change, as the central character grapples with the consequences of a technological fix that worsens rather than solves an ecological crisis.

Such presentations help audiences to understand and engage with the temporal and spatial dissonances at the heart of anthropogenic climate change.