Is it okay to upset and offend people with a hyperbolic title like this?
Does the end justify the means?
In her first UK theatre role, Felicity Ward will lead the cast of the European premiere of David Finnigan’s provocative and incendiary play Kill Climate Deniers. One of Australia’s hottest comics, Felicity Ward has taken the British comedy scene by storm. With critically acclaimed hit runs at the Edinburgh Fringe, London and beyond, she has also headlined Live from the BBC and appeared on Mock the Week, Russell Howard’s Good News and starred in The Inbetweeners Movie 2.
An action film wrapped in a TED talk, Kill Climate Deniers won the Griffin Playwriting Award ahead of its 2018 premiere in Sydney, Australia, where it provoked, enraged and delighted audiences and critics alike. On at the Pleasance this June, it is a bold new satire which blends fact and fiction as it explores in parallel a hostage situation teetering on the brink of calamity and what happened when Finnigan first tried to stage this play.
What would it take to actually stop climate change dead in its tracks? Science? Recycling? Experts? Or maybe: techno, guns and revolution? Environment Minister Gwen Malkin’s plan to stop climate change is rudely interrupted when a group of eco-terrorists storm Australia’s Parliament House during a Fleetwood Mac concert.
More than just a play about climate change and the end of civilisation as we know it, it’s about the power of echo chambers, about political division and allegiances, about a public increasingly distrustful and disinterested in experts. This is a play about failing to talk about the issues that matter most.
Felicity Ward comments, I am absolutely delighted to be involved with Kill Climate Deniers. It’s the coolest play I’ve ever read and quite frankly what is not to love about the words: a self-aware post-modern comedy AND action play about climate change, politics, and media hysteria.
Writer David Finnigan comments, I wrote the first draft of this play back in 2014, and I really hoped it would be dated and irrelevant by now. The fact that more and more people are finding their way to it – including, excitingly, in the UK – is great, but also, a really bad sign. This play is saying: I’m scared, turn the volume all the way up, panic euphoria, hold hands tightly, let’s go.
Director Nic Connaughton adds, Last month schoolchildren went on strike across the country to protest about government inaction on climate change, in response climate change was debated in the main chamber of the House of Commons for the first time in two years. Only a handful of MPs attended. This play couldn’t be more timely. This is not a play about Australian politics; it is a play about how as a society we are failing to confront the realities of climate change. Kill Climate Deniers is a provocative and necessary satire that appeals to those on both sides of the debate to listen to one another, and to save the planet.
Kill Climate Deniers will run at the Pleasance from Tuesday 4 June to Friday 28 June.
