“Day-by-day, by integrating a climate change topic and action-of-the-day, we dove deeper into the issues the characters were struggling with. Â “ Â
Heather Helinsky : As the dramaturg, I watched Tira make decisions about what needed to change in response to the election. I first came across the piece in 2014 at Great Plains Theatre Conference. In 2015, it was picked up by the Athena Project Festival in Aurora, Colorado, before it was invited to the Colorado New Play Summit in February 2016. Originally, the “villain†or antagonist of the play was cultural apathy. Over the summer, when director Christy Montour-Larson and I discussed changes, Tira decided to wait until after the election for final re-writes. After November 9, it became clear that the antagonist was not going to be any one person, but a toxic administration determined to roll back essential EPA regulations. However, there were many other aspects of the play that Tira kept intact. While the stakes for the protagonist dramatically increased because of the election, the problems and conflicts in the play were issues Tira has been contemplating deeply for a long time.believe  in climate change. Climate change is a reality that exists, like gravity. I don’t have to believe in gravity. You can have your own opinion but you can’t have your own physics.” So it is for the play as well. What’s up for debate now, are the choices, large and small, being made in our legislation and the way we live our lives.Tira : Two Degrees follows the story of Emma Phelps, a paleoclimatologist who has been called to Washington, DC to provide expert testimony on behalf of the EPA (to protect the current regulations spelled out in the Climate Action Plan). Her struggle throughout the play is how to communicate with non-scientists, how to make her scientific findings clear and understandable. In a workshop a few years ago, I worked with a young PhD student in climate science, and she told me that she could relate to Emma’s struggle of how best to communicate that science.Heather : In rehearsals, we talked about the many different languages in this play: Greenlandic, an indigenous language disappearing as fast as the arctic ice; the aggressive language of Washington, DC politics; the careful, measured, passive voice of the scientists; and finally, the language of grief (if there is, indeed, a “better†way to grieve).that . That’s the kind of detailed, language-driven playwriting that makes a new play operate like a classic play. Each character is wielding words like swords to land their point.Tira : In the play, Emma is encouraged to present her arguments in “real, human terms†to her audience of non-scientists. The problem with this is that climate science is such an enormous, complicated topic that “real, human terms†can seem elusive.
JEFFREY: (Pointing at the page) You can’t change the passive voice here?
EMMA: Where?
JEFFREY: “…the heavy oxygen isotope O18 is measured…”
EMMA: Well, it is measured.
JEFFREY: By whom?
EMMA: It doesn’t matter by whom.
JEFFREY: It doesn’t?
EMMA: Not here. Not in this paragraph. This is not a personal statement, Jeffrey. It’s a report.
JEFFREY: Yeah, I get that. It just sounds so… removed. Careful.
EMMA: That is exactly how it’s supposed to sound. I don’t want to sound like an alarmist.
JEFFREY: I dunno. It’s pretty fucking alarming to me.
So, how do we convince people that this is a very, very alarming situation indeed? This became the central conflict for Emma—to learn a new language, in effect, to alarm without being an alarmist. This change isn’t easy for Emma—though it probably seems easy for those of us outside the scientific community. The danger for Emma is that speaking about science in “real, human terms†can dilute the facts, or can obscure or twist the facts—and that’s the last thing a scientist wants to do. The data need to be conveyed in a clear, organized fashion, and the way one communicates can’t warp or misconstrue the data.
Malik Peterson (Rober Montano) tries to teach Greenlandic to Emma (Kathleen McCall). Photo by Adam Viscom. Heather : As collaborators in the rehearsal room, we also needed to learn a new language. We decided to take five to ten minutes out of every rehearsal for dramaturgical conversations. Tira and I would discuss an article about climate change every morning, then we would pair it with an “Action of the Day†to share with the cast and creative team. This wasn’t an extraneous thing we did; it was within the spirit of the production: to understand how we, as a creative team, needed to be more informed and change. Day-by-day, by integrating a climate change topic and action-of-the-day, we dove deeper into the issues the characters were struggling with. Actor Robert Montano said at the end of the project that our dramaturgy made him passionate about the very things his character was passionate about.
Tira : The arc of the play, finally, is that Emma shifts from researcher to advocate, but it’s more fundamental than that. She changes from being frozen to being ferocious. She becomes a champion. A warrior. Instead of tamping down her fury, she lets that fury fuel her language. If the rest of us are going to speak out on behalf of science, of the planet, of the future, then we need to be fueled by such fury.
The Post, Fueled by Fury: Finding the Language to Fix UsAppeared first on HowlRound. Visit their Website Here.Â
