Climate Change Stories on Stage: A Crisis of Imagination

Over the last ten years, the global production of performing arts works dealing with the environmental theme has intensified, with very different approaches and outcomes. Faced with an increasing proliferation of plays dedicated to the topic, the problem often arises of the aesthetic as well as “performative” value (understood as effectiveness) of such dramaturgies, which very often are fragile not only from a formal point of view, but also with respect to their educational and political purposes. If Art does not and must not have the task of resolving a scientific and political crisis, it can certainly question itself on the reasons for a crisis which is first and foremost a crisis of the imagination, a crisis of the narrative; theatre and novels can, in other words, question about the impossibility, witnessed by many, of transforming the climate collapse we’re living into a narrative – and therefore a sharing of experience – that is not purely science fiction or dystopia. My short article proposes a synthesis of some theatrical and literary reflections developed so far on the relationship between arts and climate change (starting from Ghosh and up to Jonathan Safran Foer), in the context of a broader framework: that of the relationship between art and current political-social-environmental issues.