A new Bristol theatre  company are making their debut with a play about changing the world. Steve Wright reaches the ‘Tipping Point’.

I’ve seen a lot of so-called ‘climate-change theatre’ which centres on people stranded on desert islands or trapped in environmental disasters. That’s never really appealed to me, because it makes us the victims of circumstances, whereas in fact we are protagonists: we have caused this mess, but we can also change it. We can change the future of the planet – or just carry on shopping.” Simon Lys is a playwright and co-founder of newly formed theatre troupe Gaia, whose debut piece ‘Tipping Point’ is being developed and unveiled at Bristol’s co-operative cultural hub Hamilton House.

Simon’s play introduces us to Andrew and Grace: married thirtysomethings, saddled with mortgage and debt, and both trapped in less-than-life-affirming jobs. We join them in the middle of an argument about whether or not to have a child. “Andrew thinks this will provide ‘hope and fresh blood’ and give him something to get up for in the morning,” explains Lucy Jameson, Simon’s partner and the company’s director. “Grace points out that it will actually be something to get up for in the middle of the night. Although her surface argument is, ‘what kind of a world is this to bring a child into?’, in fact she finds the idea of motherhood terrifying – because she fears a loss of identity, and because it involves getting in touch with a part of her she has kept buried.”

A visitor arrives – a woman, apparently in need of shelter from the wind, rain, hail and sheet ice outside (the play is set during this coming winter – a hard one, with blackouts and power failures common). In fact, we learn, the guest’s purpose is to make Andrew and Grace re-examine their lives, and in particular their enslavement to a system that’s harming both the planet and their senses of self. “She shows them things they’re afraid to look at. In some ways, she represents the earth – but she is also that part of us that knows there’s a better way, but which we ignore.” At first, Grace sends the visitor packing. “She represents something much older and deeper, and they know this, and it freaks them out. Interwoven into the contemporary story is a much more ancient reality of myths and stories which bubble up to the surface throughout.”

“The play grew out of wanting to find a lighter way to live,” Simon explains. Influences have included climate-change drama-doc ‘The Age of Stupid’ and The Dark Mountain Project, a group of writers, artists, craftspeople who “believe we are entering an age of material decline, ecological collapse and social and political uncertainty, and that our cultural responses should reflect this, rather than denying it. They’ve become disillusioned with the Green movement, which to them is always looking for just one more fix to continue our society as it is, rather than actively questioning it – the rationale that goes, ‘if we stick up enough solar panels in the desert, we can carry on as we were’, rather than thinking, ‘we have to change the way we live’.”

Simon hopes that the play resonates deeply with audiences. “A lot of art, theatre and cinema now works on a intellectual level, rather than on a whole body level. I hope this piece affects audiences right down to their soul – I don’t want people to forget about it and get on with their lives, or just think, ‘oh yes, I must recycle more’.”

Its visual world is a crucial part of the play’s appeal. Lucy: “The lighting and set design both suggest the closed-off nature of our urban environment – what Rhiannon, our designer, calls the ‘boxes within boxes within boxes’ that we live in. We have lost our connection to the earth. One of the journeys of the play is a dissolving of that domestic environment into a wilder environment. It begins as a fairly still piece, but as Andrew and Grace go off on their separate journeys, moving deeper within themselves, it becomes more physical. Some very beautiful pictures are created: we transform Hamilton House into a wonderful, haunting landscape.” Music, with an accompanying violin soundtrack, is also integral to the evening’s feel. “It tries to create a mood that I think we have lost, where we used to sit and sing and tell stories together. It’s also very funny in places – there are things are about humans that are innately funny and ridiculous.”

Last word to Lucy. “The play’s main theme, I’d say, is reconnection to our own inner music. I believe we all have an inner music that, if we were better connected to it, would mean we didn’t go around destroying the planet and each other.”

TIPPING POINT WAS AT HAMILTON HOUSE, BRISTOL FROM 1-11 DEC.  FOR REVIEW, CLICK HERE.
 

Copyright Steve Wright 2010

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