People like to react fast: event, response; information, reaction. That must have saved our lives many times over the course of humanity's history. Watch out, there goes a tiger! – and there you go, scrambling up a tree. This mechanism seems to come out in theatre too: we like to put on aggressive performances on pressing issues, fuelling performers and audiences with adrenaline, anger, action. 

It is tempting to force audiences into a harsh confrontation with the facts; to shake them, shock them and expose them to violent reality. It is also tempting to be at the other end of the equation, to be shocked, shaken and to feel like we are in the possession of insight, of knowledge, teetering on the cusp of getting to react. 

But when we come out of the theatre, we don’t know what the reaction should be. Which tree can we climb to get out of this? Is there a tree for us to climb at all?

Life in contemporary society requires different survival strategies; we are chased by long-term predators who are difficult to escape. This is the case with one of the worst predators currently ravaging the planet, and we have absolutely nowhere to hide. Climate crisis is tearing into our homes and reaching up to our necks. The days when we had to raise awareness of this phenomenon are long gone. Now we are utterly in it.

The responses available to us are important, and noble (recycling; biking instead of driving; avoiding air travel), but crucially they can only succeed with collective effort, not through individualised action which, in the absence of palpable consequences, too often leads to feelings of desperation. My patient recycling seems to do nothing to stop the torrential downpours, so I am deeply tempted to just send this time-consuming exercise to hell. The rivers are flooding and I am flooded with impotence, dreaming of just swimming away into a new world. 

But as the saying goes: there is no Planet B. We are here, and here to stay. All of us, us all. And what we need to persevere, to exist, is that daring, audacious, dreamy thing called hope. 

What role can theatre play at this time? Theatre is community. Acts unfold tangibly in front of us; performers and audience members merge from atomized individuals into a molecule that, at least for the duration of the performance, breathes the same air and lets us know that we are not alone. A new world is born, illuminating unclear corners of the universe we come from–simultaneous escapism and self-reflection. Safely anonymous in the crowd, we can look deep into our soul and see that it does not belong solely to us, but a little bit to others too. 

I long for theatre channeling this collective potential more frequently into bold hope, into mad optimism; into stories that pour something sweeter down my throat, something more persistent than searing indignation and impotent rage. Stories that reassure me, that remind me that we are in this together and that it is worthwhile, meaningful, essential even, to connect, to contribute - although slowly - and to plant new trees together - although we may never see them bloom. I long for theatre that dares to imagine delicious utopias, where community looks the apocalypse straight in the eye and, with those other human beauties, patience, calculation, perseverance, simply outsmarts it.