20141104_RC

Source: Royal Court Theatre

URL: http://www.royalcourttheatre.com/whats-on/2071

Date: 04/11/2014

Event: 2071, the podcast

Credit: Royal Court Theatre

People:

Chris Campbell: Literary Manager, Royal Court Theatre
Duncan Macmillan: Playwright and director
Katie Mitchell: Theatre director
Professor Chris Rapley: Professor of Climate Science, University College London

Chris Campbell: Hello, I'm Chris Campbell, the Literary Manager of the Royal Court Theatre, and I'm here to talk about 2071 with its creators Katie Mitchell, Chris Rapley and Duncan Macmillan. Hello to all of you - thanks very much for joining me.

All three: Hello.

Chris Campbell: Katie, you're in the middle of the process, at the moment, so the obvious way to start is by asking how it's going.

Katie Mitchell: It's going very well, Chris, thank you. Yes, we're having a rather wonderful time, finalising the detail of the script, and really I should hand to my collaborators and colleagues to talk a bit about that process, which we have miraculously finished today. Duncan? Chris? Over to you.

Chris Campbell: Duncan, you're the writer...

Duncan Macmillan: A co-writer, with Chris.

Chris Campbell: Right. Okay, can you explain how that's working, and what your process is?

Duncan Macmillan: Yeah, well, the process has turned out to be something that we've worked out as we've gone, but we've been talking at least once a week for the last eight months, maybe nine months... Um, I've been going to visit Chris at University College London and he's been very patient in answering a lot of my very naive questions, so I can understand his field from the position of a lay person, and so that I can help him - I can use my dramaturgy and my writing to help him communicate to a new audience, um, the science from his field without compromising any of it.

Chris Campbell: Your field - how would you describe that? Just...

Chris Rapley: I've spent my entire career as a scientist and - both doing science and running science - but in particular communicating science. And I've felt for a long time that, try as I may, my ability to turn the science into a narrative is simply restricted by the experience I've had - the science community doesn't practise that, it doesn't do it.

So it's been a great experience working with Duncan. We started by me simply talking about climate science and the experiences I've had and what it means, but gradually I've been beginning to learn how you build up a story, how you catch somebody, how you get somebody to ask the question: "What happened next?" And that's not what scientists do at all, that's what we're taught exactly the opposite - we're taught to tell people what we're going to say, tell them it and then tell them what we said, and if you do that enough, there's a slight chance that they might remember some of the details, so...

So there is no drama in what we do - it's just hammering home complicated facts in as simple a way as we can. So I think it's a - I don't know whether you want to call it a "collision" or a "fusion" of two professions, that literally think about presenting stuff differently, and it's been fantastic... And we'll see, won't we. We'll see -

Katie Mitchell: We'll see.

Chris Rapley: - er, whether the script that we've just finished does it. And what I find really interesting is that I really enjoyed - we did a practice run through, this afternoon - I really enjoyed delivering it. But what I know is, I would never ever have written it out that way - that is not the structure that I would have assembled.

Katie Mitchell: But it is the content.

Chris Rapley: But it is the content - exactly, exactly. So, it's a bit - and I think it's been really, really difficult for both of us. And indeed I have - you know, even as recently as in the last week, I've gone through major meltdowns because I've felt "Ah no, the science isn't being represented the way it needs to", because scientists expect certain things to be done in a certain order. And I've just finally learned to relax and see that the story comes out anyway, and indeed far better the way Duncan has assembled it. So it's been great.

Chris Campbell: So would the success of this project be defined as successful communication of what you had to communicate, or are you collectively aiming for a theatrical experience? So is it communication or is it theatre? Or is that a false opposition, as I suspect?

Katie Mitchell: That's a false opposition...

Duncan Macmillan: I don't think they're mutually exclusive.

Chris Campbell: But you know what I mean, I mean is the purpose of this project to communicate the information which Chris has at his disposal, and which he says the scientific community struggles to communicate?

Duncan Macmillan: I think - for me, I had very strong opinions about this whole area of climate change, this whole issue, going into the conversations with Chris, and I've realised how little I actually understood about it. And I've really had to interrogate where I've got - where I've got my opinions from. And it's been an enormous education, to look at the evidence and to have it and be talked through it and have the reports sort of decoded for me and translated for me - this is what it actually means, these are the lengths that people go to find this data and this is what the patterns suggest. And so we then take that and we look here and we look here and we look here, so draw your own conclusions.

And that's been quite a frightening process and a very empowering process. And for - my feeling about it is: it's a very emotive subject and it's, it's - I think a lot of times the issue is led with a sense of an emotional gesture [?], it's anger or it's fear or it's frustration or anxiety or confusion. And actually what I think we've sort of concluded, at the moment, is: we all just need to have the data in front of us and have it sort of explained to us and to have a conversation about it. And be allowed to make up our own minds about it.

Chris Campbell: Why do you think - Chris, why do you think the way people interpret this data tends to follow, broadly speaking, political lines? The divide becomes almost a proxy for a broader political disagreement, doesn't it?

Chris Rapley: Because the - for people who find the science difficult because they - how could they, you know, they're not professional scientists - it's easier to translate the emotional reaction into a classic narrative of good or bad or political ideology, or what have you, and that's - that's the problem with climate science. I was trained as a physicist, and so if I talk about parts of science that don't have emotional or ideological dimensions - you know, the beginning of the cosmos or the Higgs Boson or whatever - then I can deliver my science in a particular way.

But as soon as I start to deliver my science and it begins, either consciously or unconsciously, to raise questions - "What does this mean?", "Are you telling me I'm a bad person because I drive a car?", "Are you telling me I can't go to Ibiza next year?" - then the science community comes unstuck, because we don't - we're not trained to consider those reactions and manage them. And by not managing them, the audience can - or the listener can - find ways to deal with them that are unhelpful, by creating these political partisan view, you know, so... You know, "I believe in free markets", let's say, "and it sounds to me like you're trying to impose UN government or legislation".

So, so it's easy to slip away from the facts and the conversation about those and what they mean and how society should deal with them, into stereotypes and simplistic interpretations, which are very unhelpful, they're very poisonous, they're very toxic. So this is why I've been so interested in this project. Because hopefully - when you say "What is the objective?", it's firstly to let people make up their own minds but it is to draw people into a very complicated conversation, which is so often confused by all of these external difficulties.

Chris Campbell: Makes me wonder whether this project might have a broader application to do with the communication of science more generally - public health issues, and so on.

Chris Rapley: Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, if you take GM crops - you know, climate science is not the only controversial subject - GM crops, you know, whether or not you have your child vaccinated - all of these things have become so controversial and, in my opinion, it's because the science community is so naive, I guess, or unpractised at knowing how to deal with this.

So, so when you say "Is this kind of a broader mission?" the answer is yes. I'm - my time at the Science Museum caused me to really think hard about - because it's a venue. So why do people go to the Sci- you know, why would they bother?

Chris Campbell: You were the Director -

Chris Rapley: I was the Director of the Science Museum, yeah. So why would three million people a year struggle across London, you know, up through South Ken tube station, without lifts and escalators? Why would they bother? And what are they looking for when they get there, and what would make them think "You know, I really - I had an experience which was worthwhile, to the point where I want to come back and I'll encourage other people"? So what do you do with this pile of stuff? You know, the collection. How do you present it in a way that engages people and gets them interested?

And I mean there are lots of reasons for that, firstly because it's, it's a rich seam of human history and endeavour. But also, for me, it's important to encourage young people to consider being scientists, being engineers, not just because of what they can achieve, but because I think it's really like Carl Sagan's candle in the dark - you know, the one thing that we have, after the Enlightenment, is a glimmer of being able to see the world in a way that allows us to demystify it, so that we are no longer prone to, you know, all of the manipulation, and so on.

It's a way to liberate ourselves, and yet what we find is we are still very irrational people, and indeed one of the features of the discussions we've been having with Duncan is that - is the science community itself is - it just has the Mark I brain, it just has the Mark I brain - we're all prone to being irrational. So the way you present your story needs to be engaging and truthful and open and transparent, in a way that people can assess whether or not to accept what they're hearing. So this process is, I think, helping society be a freer and better place. It's a better world to be in, as a result of this sort of process.

Chris Campbell: Thank you. Katie, this is not the first time you've done a project broadly like this, in which you present a scientist on the stage, speaking largely his own words, although shaped by the process. Is this something you see as ongoing in your work, is this a strand now for you?

Katie Mitchell: I suppose the putting of a scientist on stage isn't really the strand, it's the subject matter. So it's the subject of what's happening with the environment and the narrative of climate change, which I very passionately believe in, and want to use all that I know about theatre-making to communicate, and that can be in the form of working with a scientist like Chris Rapley or with Stephen Emmott, or indeed doing a recent project that Duncan and I did in Berlin at the Schaubühne, where we did his play Lungs, which was the German version, Atmen, and we did it off-grid, with the performers being on stationary bicycles and powering their own electricity, and four other people powering the PA system so that we could hear them acting the play over the sound of the bicycles. So I suppose I'm searching for different forms to communicate this very, very complex and essential problem that we're all facing.

Chris Campbell: Um, and I suppose I'm going to ask a very simplistic question, because somebody's got to. Um, is this show going to leave people with a sense of despair? Or are they going to come out thinking "Hooray, now we know what to do"? Or where on the spectrum between those two things?

Chris Rapley: I hope very much the latter, I hope it engages people, gives them the confidence to enter into a sensible disc- an informed discussion, but I hope it leaves them motivated to try and make the world a better place. It's all too easy, when you explain the evidence for climate change, to leave people feeling paralysed, miserable, upset, defeated. And that isn't the objective at all. You know, we have it in our power to really get a grip of this problem - we haven't managed to do so adequately yet, but there's no reason why we shouldn't. And so, if this piece of theatre helps people find that ability to get a grip on it, then that would be wonderful.

Chris Campbell: When you say there's no reason why we shouldn't, it would involve considerable sacrifice for certain people, though, i.e., us.

Chris Rapley: No, I don't think so. The world I see for 2071, the one that, you know, I'd like to think we reach, is a high-energy world with prosperous people, leading their lives perhaps with slightly different expectations from today, but I see no reason why that isn't possible. It just requires a proper conversation.

Chris Campbell: Well, I know an end line when I hear one, and that would be it, and thank you very much, all three of you - I can't wait to see it, thanks.