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A couple considering the carbon footprint of having a baby; friends discussing the pros and cons of wind farms; colleagues in a bank deliberating whether it should pull out of fossil fuel projects – these are some of the conversations depicted in Australian playwright David Finnigan’s Scenes from the Climate Era.
Directed by Atri Banerjee, the performance comprises 40 vignettes and uses an experimental format. For each of the myriad personal stories, the audience is thrust into the narrative without much more than a couple of words of introduction. Moving backwards and forwards in time and geography at dizzying speed, the four actors – Ziggy Heath, Peyvand Sadeghian, Miles Barrow and Harriet Gordon-Anderson – switch effortlessly between characters. From activists to scientists, politicians, bankers and clubbers, with no set and minimal props (other than some lentils).
The scenes hint at the realities that lie ahead for humans in this climate era. Such as characters reminiscing about when they last travelled by plane and what made them finally stop. A future of terrifying turbulence, flight shame from friends, and eco-terrorism levelled at airports. Civil unrest, the extinction of coral reefs and stratospheric aerosol injection to increase clouds are also in the future of Finnigan’s world, with scenes – though imagined – based on current real-life debates.
The inspiration for many of these conversations came from Finnigan’s role as a climate and disaster risk consultant. Wearing this hat, he develops interactive models and playable scenarios to help teach public officials and community members to grapple with complex climate problems and prepare for disasters.
This consultancy role has given him hands-on insight into the many different conversations and debates at play as the world struggles to respond to the climate crisis. His mode of storytelling skilfully pushes to one side the polarisation of the climate debate – so often portrayed in the media as merely pro or anti net zero. Instead, it shows the reality through the voices of ordinary people.
Lighting is used effectively to lift or darken the mood. In one of the final scenes, each character speaks of their personal struggle as floods, extreme heat (55C in Dagenham!) and wildfires engulf the UK. Each face is lit in turn as they describe their fight for survival – the resulting mood urgent and terrifying.
In one particularly powerful scene, the simple storytelling style is aided further by audio. Two characters are lying by a river. We hear the loud and diverse birdsong they would have heard 20 years ago. This is then replaced by a quieter, thinner recording for the birdsong of the 2020s. By the 2040s, we wait for the audio, but none comes.
In a handful of words and no movement from the characters, the scene tells the story of the biodiversity crisis more power-fully than any report stuffed full of facts and figures. This illustrates perfectly how plays such as this can leave their audience with a lasting message while avoiding a didactic approach.
Moments of humour lift the mood, such as an invitation to the audience to pick up plain brown envelopes placed under each seat to find a single lentil inside. These, we are told, are for after the play. We can use them to deflate tyres of SUVs – a reference to real-life activist group Tyre Extinguishers, who inspired a global movement of lentil vandals. As the audience is briefly made would-be activist characters in the play, we are reminded of how often it is left to everyday people to take action on the climate crisis where politicians have dared not.
Scenes from a Climate Era written by David Finnigan and directed by Atri Banerjee premiered in Sydney, Australia in 2023, most recently showing in London in autumn 2025.
