Theatre Archives - ClimateCultures - creative conversations for the Anthropocene

CCTA and the Theatre of Necessity: Visceral Responses to Climate Crisis

For actor and director Giovanni Enrico Morassutti, the recent Climate Change Theatre Action (CCTA) Turin residency demonstrates theatre’s role as an artistic laboratory where we practise the emotional bravery required to face the climate and nature crisis together.

1,400 words: estimated reading time = 5.5 minutes

I have just returned from Turin, where I had the honour of leading an artistic residency for the tenth anniversary of the Climate Change Theatre Action (CCTA). Despite my long-standing commitment to these themes, I constantly find myself measuring the vastness and urgency of the climate crisis — a topic so immense that it makes me feel almost overwhelmed by its complexity. Yet, it is precisely in this difficulty that the strength and necessity of theatre reside.

CCTA & Art Aia: Climate Change Theatre Action in Italy

The philosophical basis for this work lies in Art Aia – Creatives In Residence, the international residency I founded, which integrates environmental sustainability into its core mission. As a central hub for the Climate Change Theatre Action (CCTA) in Italy, Art Aia actively hosts, coordinates, and promotes ecodramaturgy, using the performing arts to translate the climate crisis from abstract data into emotional, visceral experiences. This commitment is materialised through highly conscious production methods — such as powering performances with solar energy on the Tagliamento River, aligning the artistic output with the environmental message — and by upholding its founding principle of operating in total respect for the environment. Indeed, the CCTA movement is an interventionist action born from the recognition that scientific discourse often fails to prompt the necessary emotional or behavioral change. The movement strives to translate the abstract scale of climate data into the personal realm, aiming to foster collective agency. This mandate has historically driven my efforts, from directing ‘When’ by Wren Brian in 2021 on the Tagliamento, integrating science with local authorities like Legambiente and ARPA, to the 2023 performance of ‘Mirror Mirror’ at the WWF Oasis Dune degli Alberoni in Venice, where theatre powerfully merged with the activism of Extinction Rebellion and WWF volunteers.

CCTA: Showing Climate Change Theare Action 2023. Partners include WWF and Extinction Rebellion. Photograph: Jacopo Capuzzo © 2023 — CCTA 2023. Partners include WWF and Extinction Rebellion. Photograph: Jacopo Capuzzo © 2023

Artistic visions & techniques converging on global crisis

This crucial mission was recently amplified in Turin through an unexpected but powerful collaboration with Serena Bavo, founder of the Earthink Festival, a pioneering project dedicated to sustainability in the performing arts. Working with Serena to co-direct three pièces commissioned by CCTA was a discovery of synergy, showing how different artistic visions converge toward a common goal. Our creative process was nourished by two distinct but complementary souls: I brought the depth of over twenty years in Method Acting, exploring tools like Sense Memory, Animal Work, and the Private Moment, essential for transforming the ecological crisis into a visceral, felt reality. This research leverages the actor’s deep emotional experience to embody the consequences of the disaster — be it the struggle of an endangered species or the fragility of the isolated individual — and thereby builds an empathetic bridge with the audience. Serena, for her part, enriched the directing with innovative ideas, such as the use of audio in headphones and the performative walk (passeggiata), taking the theatre outside conventions and into direct contact with the lived space, thereby aligning our work with the movement’s tendency toward site-specific performance.

This fusion of techniques — emotional introspection and environmental immersion — is fundamental, for it is not just about telling a story, but about creating a visceral experience that pushes for action. To achieve this, Serena and I carefully selected three pieces for Turin, our analysis focusing heavily on ecodramaturgy and the drama of animal survival. ‘Brackendale’ by Elaine Avila, for instance, is a profoundly sad yet crucial text about bald eagles reduced to feeding on landfill garbage and nesting with plastic — an image of profound ecological decline. Similarly, ‘The Polar Bears’ by Nicolas Billon is direct and uncompromising, showing the accelerated melting of the ice making survival impossible. Counterbalancing these, ‘Homo Sapiens’ by Chantal Bilodeau projects us into the sixth mass extinction with an inquiry into our future identity; I define this work as ‘compassionate’ because it seeks hope or at least a reflection on our identity currently hanging in the balance.

CCTA: Showing Serena Bavo in 'The Polar Bears', written by Nic Billon, presented in Turin during CCTA 2025. Photograph: Paola Odone © 2025 — Serena Bavo in ‘The Polar Bears’, written by Nic Billon, presented in Turin during CCTA 2025. Photograph: Paola Odone © 2025

“The Time is Now”

To fulfil the action mandate and ground the artistic work in scientific reality, we collaborated with Valerio Neri, the regional manager for the WWF, whose accurate and informative talks clarified the condition of these animals and the risks of a mass extinction. His intervention made the problem and the necessity to act now even clearer, powerfully underscoring this year’s CCTA theme: “The Time is Now.”

Showig: Solar panel station. In line with the principles of the ecological transition, the lights and sounds of the show and the concert of CCTA sul Tagliamento were powered by clean energy thanks to a photovoltaic panel generator realised by La Casa del Sole. Photograph by Edoardo Marcon — Solar panel station: In line with the principles of the ecological transition, the lights and sounds of the show and the concert of CCTA sul Tagliamento were powered by clean energy thanks to a photovoltaic panel generator realised by La Casa del Sole. Photograph: Edoardo Marcon

We must also incorporate forms of ritual to process the heavy emotional weight of the crisis. To this end, many CCTA events, including those I have organised, actively employ the Climate Ribbon initiative. This participatory art project invites audiences to write down their grief, fears, commitments, or hopes for the climate on a coloured ribbon before tying it to a collective structure — a tree, a fence, or an artistic installation. This simple, yet profound, act externalises the intense, often internalised, emotions associated with eco-anxiety, transforming private fear into a visible, communal commitment. The resulting tapestry of ribbons serves as a powerful symbol of shared vulnerability and mutual solidarity, grounding the abstract threat of climate change in a tactile, communal experience.

The pervasive feeling of eco-anxiety, which currently limits our audience reach, is precisely where the role of the artist becomes most critical. We must acknowledge that the fear generated by the sheer vastness of the crisis is profoundly paralyzing, yet the theatre, especially when utilizing the profound intimacy of Method Acting, offers a crucial, specialized space for processing that collective trauma. By guiding actors to embody the visceral truth of ecological collapse — not just conceptually, but through deeply felt experience — we provide the audience with a necessary emotional container. The performance acts as a cathartic shared space where collective grief and fear can be recognised, validated, and subsequently transformed into productive energy and sustained purpose. This necessary shift from paralysis to commitment is my primary concern as we look ahead to the final iteration of this specific format, which is intended to spur urgent climate action before a likely transition to a different model. It is no longer sufficient to simply raise awareness or shock audiences; we must equip them with the emotional and psychological resilience needed to sustain long-term engagement with the crisis. This demands that we, the organizers and artists, become relentless in diversifying our outreach, moving beyond traditional theatre circles to actively collaborate with civic leaders, technologists, educators, and local community groups, effectively turning the CCTA framework into a true multidisciplinary engine for regional and global change.

The artistic challenge now is to find and articulate a sustainable hope within the darkness, using our unique emotional language to reinforce the message that though the problem is immense, collective action is not only feasible, but absolutely unavoidable. Theatre remains the essential laboratory where we practice the emotional bravery required to face the future together.

Find more

Art Aia – Creatives In Residence is an international art residency based in the north-eastern Italian region Friuli-Venezia Giulia, for artistic production and research that combines art, environmental sustainability and ecotherapy practices.

Climate Change Theatre Action (CCTA), launched in 2015, is a worldwide festival of short plays about the climate crisis presented biennially to coincide with the United Nations COP meetings.

The Climate Ribbon is an arts ritual to grieve what each of us stands to lose to Climate Chaos, and affirm our solidarity as we unite to fight against it.

Complementing this final post for ClimateCultures during 2025, you can read playwright Chantal Bilodeau’s post at the start of this year, All Good Things Must Begin. Chantal shares CCTA’s latest anthology of short plays on the climate crisis, whose theme takes an imaginative leap through challenging times towards a just and regenerative world.

And in Giovanni’s previous post for us, Create the Future – Creatives in Residence for Climate Change, he shares further case studies of climate theatre and community engagement at an international conference, exploring strategies for encouraging cross-disciplinary projects to address the biodiversity and climate crisis.

Giovanni Enrico Morassutti

An actor, director, cultural entrepreneur, founder of Art Aia - Creatives In Residence, promoting environmental and biodiversity protection, inviting communities to take action on the climate emergency.

Cloud Mountain, Thunder Dragon: Stories of Gross National Happiness

Researcher and writer Jules Pretty‘s climb to Bhutan’s Taktstang mountain temple reveals a nation’s story of hope and regeneration through its common focus on Gross National Happiness. “Difficult to reach, but not impossible. Like solving a world crisis…”

2,050 words: estimated reading time = 8 minutes

It is said, each person of Bhutan wishes to make a pilgrimage to Taktstang. Founded in 1692, centuries of reverent feet. A great magnitude of devotion, the build and the maintenance, here on thunder mountain.

Showing: Tiger's Nest: Taktstang temple, Bhutan. Photograph byJules Pretty 2025. — Tiger’s Nest: Taktstang temple, Bhutan. Photograph: Jules Pretty © 2025.

Hello old friend, you say. I know you.

For this is who is waiting.

Taktstang temple calls quietly to the soul. Just welcoming, not demanding. Shall we take up where we left off? Up here hidden in mountains.

At this bird-perched temple and monastery built into the kilometre-high cliff. Half in cloud, spires golden, serenaded by forest birds in the thin air after rain. Hidden, not hidden, hidden again.

Difficult to reach, but not impossible.

Like solving a world crisis, say stopping the use of obsolete fossil fuels, preventing the scouring up of nature.

The climb to the Tiger’s Nest begins not long after dawn. Up there in the eastern hills above Paro, under the blue dome of sky. Up the trail, up steps and foot-worn paths. Through cool groves of seven-needled pine and oak, orchid and fern and old-man’s beard, rich epiphytes on every branch.

The climb’s stiff, at altitude. The sun leaps from the sheer granite cliff, lights the forest, swings around to shine on temple roofs and white walls of stone and clay. Beneath is the drop, the ascent. There’s a fluting bird, the yellow-billed magpie. There are bright prayer flags holding the land together.

Gross National Happiness — changing a country’s story

A pilgrimage of this kind is said to need right speech, body and mind. Speech is the story, body’s the hard work, mind’s the agency and effort. It’s a lesson for any kind of transformation.

The mind gradually empties as you climb. There’s the physical and mental test, then comes a muffled roar, a detachment from sky and land. The wind horses have stopped running. It’s the alchemy of change.

A single white cloud is fixed upon the azure sky.

The temple shimmers, across the ravine.

Far below is the valley, the contoured rice around the town.

Showing: Paro Valley and Himalayas. Photograph by Jules Pretty 2025 — Paro Valley and Himalayas. Photograph: Jules Pretty © 2025

Guides accompany each group of visitors. Jigme Chodup says, “One hundred and eighty-one.” The number of times he’s walked this upward pilgrimage. Here came Guru Rinpoche with his consort, she the flying tiger. Here they crushed the dark spirit, the mara of the mountain.

At some point it’s time to turn. To walk down the old trail that’s now a new trail, past herbs and orchids in the forest, past scars of landslips. Passing climbing pilgrims.

“Is there far to go?” A question about life itself.

“No, not far! Don’t stop. Transformation awaits.”

Such hope means taking risks. Precisely what the Fourth King does in the early 1970s. He takes a risk, and people give support.

At the age of 18, people say King Jigme Wingchuk seems mature for his years. He declares Bhutan’s primary aim should be Gross National Happiness. All else should serve this: economy, culture, society.

Some in other countries smirk at the idea of Gross National Happiness. Come on, what about growth? You can’t eat happiness.

What’s Bhutan now known for? Well, precisely this one big and beautiful story.

Gross National Happiness is described in Bhutanese as Gakid Palzon. Ga-happy, Kid-peaceful, Pel-prosperity, Zon-convergent. GNH means “happy-peaceful-prosperity-convergence for all.”

It’s completely changed the story of the country. The way that people talk, their identity, how they act.

A country with no litter, no plastic pollution, no person smoking in public. No pesticides or herbicides, so an abundant insect presence. Every tree filled by a noise-wall of crickets, every green space rich with flocks of butterfly. Nine hundred species of butterflies in the country, thousands more of moths. A country with no slaughterhouse, not one fast-food outlet. All the food organic, all agriculture regenerative.

Showing: Prayer flags and rice paddy. Photograph by Jules Pretty 2025 — Prayer flags and rice paddy. Photography: Jules Pretty © 2025

And this too: phone coverage everywhere, no dead signal zones. All electricity from hydropower, the surplus sold to India and now the primary source of national income. The next step: electrify transport.

Who’s the trickster now?

The king gives up his position, wants the next generation to bring new ideas. The Fifth King says, we’ll give away my power, create a voting democracy. As easy as that.

The country with a negative carbon footprint, it’s now one of a small group with the lowest internal social inequality in the world. And this: the 5th King’s vision for a new settlement in the south, Gelephu Mindfulness City. High tech, new jobs, integrated with wildlife, all the buildings made of wood.

What is it then? Are people elsewhere afraid of the idea of this sort of contentment? That they’ll have to give up things to find it?

What you’ve also not got. You’ll hear no one saying, we think selfishness is best, or friendliness is the enemy of economic growth. Or that growth is king.

The guide Jigme stops, says, “Just think of what we’d lose.”

That wider world of wonder. It’s still in a hole.

This small country never fell in. This hidden land, it’s not in the hole and it knows how to stay out.

The trickster’s wearing a mask. It’s rags to riches. Right enough, happiness riches.

People love that story. They never get enough of it.

The audience laughs. Too true.

The Masked Dance

One mountain day starts like this. Sunshine, hot for autumn. Clouds hide the hill-tops and snow-slopes of the great Himalayan peaks. It’s the first of three days of masked dance and celebration. The Tsechu festival, the best time of the year.

Gross National Happiness. Showing: Masked dance at Tsetchu. Photograph by Jules Pretty 2025 — Masked dance at Tsetchu. Photograph: Jules Pretty © 2025

The first day of dance. The dzong amphitheatre’s brim-full, eight thousand people, dancers down on the stone performance square. To one side, the citadel, white-walls and golden roofs. Clowns in masks wander, prodding the serious dancers, leaning into their faces, engaging with the audience in a side-show of jest and laughter.

The tricksters mimic moves, exaggerate, play at slap-stick entertainment.

No one’s allowed to take themselves too seriously. Laughter is good.

The audience loves it.

The national TV station broadcasts all the action across the three days. Homes and restaurants have their TVs running all day. There’s no commentary. Everyone knows the stories.

Here’s the Black Hat dance, monks spinning as they fight the devils of desire, beating hand-held drums.

Here are masked animals. The mythical faces of gold and green and blue: the tiger, the snow-lion, garuda, dragon. The audience eats and chats and points.

Here’s the dance of couples, a tall woman and man, calm-faced masks, tested to the limit. Yet the marriage survives it all. Children laugh, play on phones.

Rain starts to fall, gently as moths at evening dusk. Five thousand umbrellas ping open, and families cluster underneath.

Nature’s an important healer too. Especially when it’s abundant. When it’s not being beaten half to death on the ropes.

Overlooking the capital, all perched on steep slopes, the river dashing far below, high on the hill is the fifty-metre golden Buddha. Often hidden in clouds. But present, all the same, in people’s lives.

Sunlight briefly falls upon the Buddha. On his shoulders, on his lap, on his smiling face. The mountain dances, the arching rainbow a scarf wound around the mountain’s wrist.

And in each temple, in each Dzong fort, there’s golden light on the Buddha and disciples, on Guru Rinpoche who brought Buddhism to the country. Energy flows in from the universe, streams out again. Butter lamps flutter in the endless draughts, wind channelled down wooden corridors, high windows open to the world.

Showing: Butter lamps. Photograph by Jules Pretty 2025 — Butter lamps. Photograph: Jules Pretty © 2025

In the golden light of the sweet butter lamps, shadows dance on walls, murals are alive with tiger and snow-lion and elephant. The animals jump and blink, as it did for early humans when they stood right before the cliff face, the cave wall.

A monk pours saffron water on your hands.

For this is a place of story. How to care for places, keep them sacred.

By the banks of the river, two villages are engaged in archery competition. The men are mostly elders, burned by life in the fields. Like all team sports, there’s laughter, jesting, ribbing. They’re wearing sashes on their belts, one for each successful strike.

The target’s no more than a handspan wide. It’s 140 metres away.

Hitter and hit are not two opposing objects, they are the reality of the whole. The archer, the bamboo bow, the bamboo arrow. The arrow departs the eye of the archer, curves high in the sky. Time passes as it arches over the butts. There’s an acceleration at the end as the arrow at last is caught by the eye.

There’s an unzipping of the air, the arrow buries two feet deep, into the grassy mound, into the target.

The men simply sway aside. They call to the next archer, right a bit, up-up. Listen to the wind, to all the world around them. Another arrow pierces the sky.

A team breaks into dance and song when the arrow strikes the tiny target.

Jigme laughs, says, “Well, they are a bit drunk.”

All around, the contoured gold and green of paddy fields. Some drained and cut, hand threshing underway. The irrigation water travels from one field to the next below. Frogs are calling.

And so the monsoon rebounds, dashes in. A month after it should be over.

A growth story of the 21st century

Sixteen hours of torrential rain. Crashing thunder dragon, fire and lightning. Morning light comes late, dull and blue. The hills are hidden in mist. The river’s maddened, no longer blue and sweet, now a rushing, crashing venomous snake. Water strikes rocks, rises high in standing waves, whole trees spinning and leaping away.

“I’ve never seen anything like this. At this time of year,” says Jigme.

Never has such a storm come, so long after the old certainties of the monsoon.

On the drive over the Dorchu-la Pass, there are landslides every forty or fifty metres. Rocks ping off the road ahead, bounce away. The driver looks up, the guide looks ahead.

And what ugly devils stirred up this storm? Brought it to the people whose carbon footprint is less than zero?

All over the country, all across the north-east of the sub-continent, landslides and falling rock, bridges washed away. Snowstorms fall on the high mountains, strand climbers, a hydro dam is overtopping.

What else will come to the Himalaya with its forty thousand mountain glaciers? A billion people relying on a calm supply of meltwater for drink and irrigation.

Showing: Thimphu dzong. Photograph by Jules Pretty 2025 — Thimphu dzong. Photograph: Jules Pretty © 2025

Bhutan’s the growth story of the twenty-first century. Growth of happiness, growth of economy working within strict boundaries, growth of equality. An economy that does not impose externalities on others. A marvellous thing.

People here, they’re earth-cherishing people, as Joan Halifax has put it. They know how to look after the future.

How to be happy, peaceful, convergent.

Your age of oil? It’ll soon be over.

Eight hundred summers ago, Dōgen Zenji slides open rice-paper doors in Japan. He’s in the temple he founded, Eihei-Ji, the temple of eternal peace.

He sees, mountain, cloud, patches of blue sky. He writes this in the Mountains and Waters Sutra:

“There are mountains hidden in sky.
There are mountains hidden in mountains.
There are mountains hidden in hiddenness.”

Find more

UPDATE February 2026: You can now watch National Happiness and Social Equality: This is How Bhutan Did It, a special companion video to this post, recorded by Jules as part of his Story for Climate & Nature Recovery YouTube Channel.

Jules’s guide, Jigme Chodup, works for the Thimphu company, Keys to Bhutan.

“Anything that exists is possible,” is the message of this short YouTube excerpt of a feature on Bhutan’s journey with Gross National Happiness (with a link to the full documentary).

You can find out more about Gross National Happiness and other measures for wellbeing at the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI).

For more on the role of story, see Jules Pretty’s YouTube channel, Story for Climate and Nature Recovery — including this short video on the role of Tricksters in Story. We have featured Story for Climate and Nature Recovery in our Creative Showcase.

For more of his research and writing at Jules’s website.

Jules Pretty

A researcher and writer on environment and society, including ‘The Climate Chronicles’, and is author of several books on climate, nature and the stories we tell.

‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ of Climate Crisis & Poetic Response

Poet Julian Bishop shares three new poems written in response to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where dissension between its famous fairy characters plays out in ‘distemperature’ and ruptures in the patterns of nature and affairs of humans.

1,480 words: estimated reading time = 6 minutes

The setting: The Bridge Theatre, London, 2019. The play: A Midsummer Night’s Dream. A fabulously camp romp with a Beyoncé soundtrack and incredible acrobatics. Shakespeare so successfully updated, the same Nicholas Hytner production is revived in 2025. But of all the contemporary resonances, one of the play’s main preoccupations stood out for me as I sat in the audience swaying along to Love on Top at the end: climate change.

Rewind to Titania’s speech in Act II, Scene 1:

And thorough this distemperature we see
The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts
Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose,
And on old Hiems’ thin and icy crown
An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds
Is, as in mockery, set. The spring, the summer,
The childing autumn, angry winter change
Their wonted liveries, and the mazèd world,
By their increase, now knows not which is which.
And this same progeny of evils comes
From our debate, from our dissension.
We are their parents and original.

The summer of 1594, shortly before the play was written, was famously cold and wet, with crops rotting in the fields and floods that wrecked bridges. But mark the last three lines of Titania’s speech — who or what is responsible for the progeny of evils described above but we, the audience, because of our dissension. The dictionary definition of dissension? A formal term for when a group of people who should be cooperating cannot agree on something. Sounds familiar?

I also latched onto the fabulous neologism ‘distemperature’, which surely deserves a revival, with its dual nods to political distemper and an out-of-sorts temperature — is there a better word to encapsulate our global predicament? Accordingly, I’ve used the word in several poems, including one of those you can read below.

Titania’s speech led me to explore Shakespeare’s eco credentials further and, sure enough, there’s ample evidence throughout the folio to demonstrate that he was aware of issues such as deforestation and the impact of expanding cities on the natural world. By his time, the forest of Arden was more patchy woodland thanks to the booming timber industry, used not just for house-building but England’s almost permanent war footing. A fleet to defeat a Spanish Armada demands a vast amount of timber and there’s no evidence of any active attempts to replant what must have been seen as an infinite resource.

Showig a 1914 Play poster for a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Savoy Theatre. Public domain. — 1914 play poster for a production of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ at the Savoy Theatre. Public domain.

Golden shovels — poems in conversation

The form I’ve chosen for my poetic response is the Golden Shovel, invented by the American poet Terrance Hayes. He responded to Gwendolyn Brooks’s short but classic poem We Real Cool by using a word from it at the end of every line of his own poem, The Golden Shovel — in order too, so you can read her poem down the right-hand margin of the page.

I also chose this form because it preserves the integrity of the original line and forces a very direct response. Of course, given this is Shakespeare, the language is often archaic, so I’ve had to bridge the difficult gap between authenticity and parody in how I use both syntax and language, probably not always entirely successfully. I also decided each poem’s title should come from a nearby line in the same play that relates to its theme.

Most of the poems are being written while I go for a run outdoors — I hold the relevant quote in my head and repeat it until it starts to generate a response. The tricky bit is waiting until I’m on an empty path to get the words down! There have been a few near-collisions but I’m lucky to live near Green Belt between London and the M25, which can easily accommodate an hour-long run through countryside.

I grew up in Wiltshire countryside which is gradually being eaten away by new houses, golf courses and the like, so these poems are also a kind of elegy as well. When I was a teenager, a friend and I used to catch the bus to Stratford-on-Avon after school on a Friday night and stay in a youth hostel so we could queue up at dawn outside the RSC to get returns for whatever was showing. I’d become obsessed by Shakespeare after my school took our class to a showing of Franco Zefferelli’s film version of Romeo and Juliet — I think it was the first time I became aware of poetry. By the time it came to O Levels (we studied Julius Caesar), I think I’d seen all the tragedies.

And unexpectedly, Macbeth proved initially to be the richest resource for possible Shovels. The setting for the play is a blasted heath, a place of fog and filthy air. After Macbeth murders Duncan — an unnatural act — nature goes haywire, with animals eating one another, appalling weather and at one point the Earth was fev’rous and did shake. It’s all fittingly apocalyptic but I’d like to think that there’s a more hopeful vision for the world than this, which brought me back to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The circumstances aren’t dissimilar, as Titania’s speech makes clear: she and Oberon are parents and original of the distemperature and chaotic weather by fighting over the custody of an Indian changeling boy rather than attending to their normal duties (whatever it is that fairies do). As the play has it: so quick bright things come to confusion.

The play’s plot mirrors this of course, with Bottom acquiring an ass’s head and mistaken identity almost leading to tragedy among the two groups of young lovers. Significantly, the latter confusion occurs because Puck picks a flower to make a potion — is it too much of a stretch to include this among the acts of environmental destruction too? But in this play there’s a happy outcome: the lovers are reconciled, as are Oberon and Titania, although theirs is something of a forced marriage. There are also plenty of celebrations of the natural world, most famously Oberon’s luscious ‘wild violets’ speech:

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine…

(A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act II, Scene 1)

Showing William Blake's painting: 'Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing. From William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream' 1786. Public domain. — ‘Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing. From William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ by Wiliam Blake, 1786. Public domain.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream — echoing ecological disorder

So, what do I hope this project will achieve? Obviously, I’ll be looking to get some poems published but, more importantly, I’d like them to echo the broader ecological disorder observed by Titania, and indeed Shakespeare himself, when we see floods, fire and seasons alter as a result of our own actions. Just ten years separate the writing of A Midsummer Night’s Dream with its happy ending and Macbeth with its apocalyptic ending… Let’s hope we get to the end of The Tempest without having to sit through all the tragedies on the way.

Three Midsummer Shovels (from the beginning of the sequence):

Enter Oberon with his train

Once I knew of a bank where the 
nodding violets grew in a spring
hung with dewdrops; I knew the       
scent of wild thyme on a summer    
breeze and eglantine on hill, the          
wild dale and mead, bees chiding      
the roses… but then autumn and 
all the four seasons turned angry, 
mutating to a state of never-winter 
where dithering outpaced change.

Act II, Scene 1

Ill Met by Moonlight

Proud Titania attributed the moon, forgeries of jealousy and     
her Lord’s distemper for unsettling the weather, a thorough          
if touch fantastical midsummer flight of airy chiffony for this    
man-stamped disequilibrium she pitched as distemperature, 

citing hoary-headed frost in the fresh lap of rose, of which we 
are parent and original. It begs a question: if a fairy could see 
how all the distemperatured and discombobulated seasons 
changed their liveries, why on earth did humans fail to alter?

Act II, Scene 1

Wonder on, till truth make all things plain

In the age before distemperature and tempests, this
melodious plot of lichen’d oak and broadleaf’d green
was backdrop to every scene. So well-made, the plot
never changed. Years hence, what green props shall 
endure to grace our performance? What spirit will be 
left to emerge unseen from still’d wings? One day our 
tumbledown globe will host plays on an empty stage.

Act III, Scene 1

Poems © Julian Bishop 2025

Find more

You can find more of Julian’s poems at his website, Julian Bishop: Writing & Poetry and his previous ClimateCultures posts, We Saw It All Happen and On Green Verges.

The poem that gave this form its name is Terrance Hayes’s The Golden Shovel, which you can read at Poem Hunter.

Julian Bishop

A former journalist, environment reporter and tv news editor who writes poetry about eco issues and was runner-up in the 2018 Ginkgo Poetry Prize.

Finding the Tipping Points with Thrutopian Fiction

Sustainability researcher and writer Denise Baden discusses the challenges of thrutopian fiction — writing stories to entertain, raise awareness of effective climate action and inspire sustainable behaviours — and her latest thrutopian novel, The Philosopher and the Assassin.

1,645 words: estimated reading time = 6.5 minutes

In his recent ClimateCultures post, Rod Raglin casts doubt on the claims of thrutopian fiction to set out a roadmap to a better future — “writing our way to a future we’d be proud to leave to the coming generations”, as thrutopian champion Manda Scott puts it. In his article Rod sets out the practical, political and economic realities that would need to be addressed before we have any chance of a better future. Many of these seem intractable and the charge levelled at the thrutopian fiction produced so far is that it fails to address these. Another charge is that when it tries to, it comes across as “more didactic than entertaining.”

Rod is right that it is very difficult to write fiction that is both entertaining and will raise awareness of climate policies that are likely to work and/or inspire more sustainable behaviours. I know because I have tried it.

Showing the cover of 'Habitat Man', a novel by Denise Baden. — ‘Habitat Man’, by Denise Baden (2021)

Thrutopian fiction — changing behaviours

The first draft of my novel Habitat Man was appalling — everything I wanted the reader to know went in and it was didactic and clunky. I needed to write it then edit it out, just to get it out of my system. But by the final draft, I believe I pulled it off. An award-winning radio drama writer liked it so much she asked to put it in for a BBC Radio 4 adaptation and it got to the final round. It was the best seller in my bookshop for two years and reviews on Amazon are genuine and enthusiastic. In terms of behaviour change, research found that of 50 readers surveyed one month after finishing the book, 98% had adopted more pro-environmental attitudes and 60% had adopted at least one of the green alternatives mentioned in the book. These ranged from simple things like home composting and wildlife-friendly gardening, to campaigning. You can see the results in a link in the notes below.

Another novel, Visco, winner of the 2020 Green Stories novel competition sets out a quite plausible means by which a new society emerges from an old one. David Fell, himself a sustainability consultant, tells the story of a music festival on a small island within the UK that sets up a side festival for those who need care and their carers as part of an inclusivity drive. When the music ends, no one wants to go home and so they don’t. Step by step and overcoming one challenge after another, a more sustainable community based on the values of care emerges, attracting even the wealthy and powerful to its cause. Importantly, it’s also a damn good read!

I would claim that every story in the anthology No More Fairy Tales: Stories to Save Our Planet is thrutopian fiction. Several have been expanded into other forms. For example, one story imagined the ocean being given nation status and was developed into the novel Fairhaven, written by chemical engineer Steve Willis and writer Jan Lee. This sets out in fiction form a roadmap to how Malaysia could mitigate and adapt with respect to climate change.

The Philosopher and the Assassin: the evolution of a work

Another short story in the anthology was written as a standalone novella The Assassin, which is available also an audio book and as a play, Murder in the Citizens’ Jury. It imagines eight people in a citizens’ assembly debating climate solutions. The whodunnit element provides the drama and mystery. The context raises awareness of this emerging form of participative democracy, which I believe is an essential first step to real change. It also allows climate policies to be explored from the perspective of a variety of people, each of whom relates to them in different ways. Murder in the Citizens’ Jury was performed in 2024 in a sellout run, and later, a school put on an abridged one-hour version. It was interactive and the audience voted for their favourite climate policies. The director told me people were still debating the ideas days later. You can see reviews, details and feedback at the Green Stories link in the notes below.

Professional theatre companies can access it via Lazybee scripts, but it’s available royalty-free for any school/college drama groups and amateur theatre companies to stage if they approach me direct.

Thrutopian fiction: showing the cover of 'The Philosopher and the Assassin', a novel by Denise Baden (2025)

Inspired by the success of the theatre production, and wanting to reach a larger audience, I’ve included the ideas from the play as a story within a story in a novel, which was published by Habitat Press on 1^st October: The Philosopher and the Assassin. A script version won the 2024 Writing Climate Pitchfest, and it is literary fiction: think campus novel meets moral philosophy meets murder mystery! The goal is thrutopian — it aims to entertain and suggest some of the key leverage points that could tip us in the direction of a sustainable future. Here is a brief description:

There’s no more important job in the world than educator, and no subject as necessary as moral philosophy. The trick is getting the students to turn up. So, when the Dean proposes the controversial concept of education entertainment, Professor Iris Tate goes all in with a moral philosophy course based on a whodunnit that all assume is hypothetical — a murder in a citizens’ assembly on climate. A variety of characters provide an entertaining source of ethical dilemmas, but what the students don’t know is that the ultimate dilemma is very real, and their conclusions will have far-reaching consequences.

Reviews so far have been reassuringly positive:

“At once a commentary on the looming responsibility of the climate crisis and our ever-shrinking opportunity to enact meaningful change, and a far from conventional whodunnit, the book plays with the notion of what is moral and what is right. Complicit in the book’s central sprawling philosophical dilemma, the reader finds themselves judge, jury and executioner in the case of the century. While the novel tackles prescient and troubling themes and poses difficult questions (how far should we go for the greater good?), it does so with a sense of dry humour and a delightful eye for the absurd. Above all, the warmth and resilience of its ineffable protagonist suffuses the narrative and, as the story ends, we struggle to leave her behind. Not only is this a timely, thought-provoking and essential story in an age of urgent, innovative climate action that demands the attention of us all, it is a thoroughly enjoyable read. Funny, memorable, characterful and original.”

— The Literary Studio

“Denise Baden’s campus novel/whodunnit is so much more than just an up-to-the-minute academic locked-door mystery, it’s a philosophical treatise wrapped in an exposition of the polycrisis, embedded in a love story, threaded through with alternative democracy and grounded in explorations of grief, motivation and drive. Full of sharp ideas, subtle humour and grounded in the harsh realities of our world, you’ll come away with a whole new understanding of our world and what it takes to change it!”

— Manda Scott, author of Any Human Power and Boudica series.

“If facts are ignored, fiction may be our next best hope. With its story-within-a-story, The Philosopher and the Assassin cranks up the dramatic tension around whether we will achieve the carbon transition, or not. Ultimately, a surprisingly hopeful read.”

— John Elkington, author of Tickling Sharks: How We Sold Business on Sustainability

“A sharp, witty take on the climate crisis – from someone who knows what they’re talking about.”

— Wren James, founder of the Climate Fiction Writers League

Rod, I welcome your feedback!

I’d love to meet some fellow ClimateCultures members and readers, so if you’d like to come to the The Philosopher and the Assassin book launch in Winchester, UK on 11^th October, you will find details below.

Find more

Denise’s novel The Philosopher and the Assassin was published on 1st October. The book launch is on 11th October in Winchester, UK: details and booking here.

Denise mentions Manda Scott, whose novel Any Human Power (2025) is published by September Books. Manda discussed thrutopian fiction and more in a recent episode of the Life Itself podcast, and she and Faith Tilleray run the Accidental Gods podcast and programme “exploring how we can create a future that we would be proud to leave to the generations to come.”

You can find thrutopian stories and features at Bending The Arc — “towards a thriving future on Earth”, and Green Stories runs a series of writing competitions across various formats to solicit stories that showcase what a sustainable society might look like.

Denise’s novel Habitat Man (2021) and her novella The Assassin are published by Habitat Press and are available in paperback and as ausiobooks amd eBooks on all major platforms, including Amazon (where you will find the reviews Denise mentions). Denise summarises the research into readers’ responses in Habitat Man in Research on her website.

Visco by David Fell, No More Fairy Tales: Stories to Save our Planet (edited by Denise Baden and Steve Willis), and Fairhaven by Steve Willis and Jane Lee, are also available on all major platforms. You can find reviews and information about the performances of the play Murder in the Citizens’ Jury here.

In his ClimateCultures post, Thrutopian Fictions: Ways to a Better Future?, fellow writer Rod Raglin asks if thrutopian fiction’s solutions-focused approaches to our climate predicaments address the real challenges: how to overcome our reluctance to make the sacrifices needed to get through the hardest times and towards a better future?

Denise Baden

A professor of sustainability and a writer, who founded the Green Stories project to create a cultural body of work that entertains, informs and inspires transformation ...

Bullwoman – Dream Portal

Artist-writer Jennifer Leach and ecoscenographer-artist Andrea Carr‘s Earth-arts organisation Outrider Anthems invites us into Bullwoman – a dreaming. Their collaborative Portal Theatre project brings everyday reality into rich contact with deeper worlds, suggesting new myths for our times.

1,600 words: estimated reading time = approximately 6.5 minutes

There is a particular sense of happiness in sharing our latest project, Bullwoman – a Dreaming, on ClimateCultures, as we first met at the 2016 TippingPoint climate change conference Doing Nothing is Not an Option, organised and facilitated by Peter Gingold and Mark Goldthorpe. Many of us who met for the first time at that seminal weekend (TippingPoint’s swansong) have gone on to work richly together. Mark was inspired to create ClimateCultures.

The challenge laid down at the conference was how creatives might change hearts and minds, to help humanity return to occupying a humble and balanced place within the ecosystem. So grand a remit is beyond our ambitions, but in this theatre piece we hope to offer the dreamt possibility of a more holistic, integrated way forward.

We are not suggesting an easy ending of ‘happy ever after’, but we do believe that something new wants to happen, something deep wants to come out and express itself…

A portal to dream abodes & myth lands

We have been working on this theatre piece since 2017, and are happy to say it is coming now to fruition, although there are still challenges to overcome, funding being a central one.

Here, we tell our story so far in images and words, explaining more about the piece, its structure and storyline, and our thinking behind it and many of our visual ideas. If you prefer to scroll a continuous slideshow, we have an online pdf presentation: please dive in.

We would really appreciate the engagement and feedback of fellow ClimateCultures members and readers, and any support you feel you might be able to give. In particular, we are looking for a producer, fundraiser and venues. We would welcome too the encouragement of anyone who is stirred, and who wishes to help bring this big and beautiful piece to fruition.

Our introductory gallery (click to enlarge):

The following are a selection of visual images from our research and development process.

Portal: Showing Bullwoman, a painting by Jennifer Leach 2025

Portal: Showing the framework of 'Three Worlds'

Our cast of characters

In the following galleries we give a taster of the characters and the narrative, without attempting to cover every detail of the script and storyline. We start with the Artists in their Studio…

Bullwoman & the Bullpeople

Portal Theatre

The following gallery unfolds elements of our methodology, thinking, and philosophy, and the impetus behind the work.

Portal Theatre

If you wish to know more about Portal Theatre, see our manifesto.

Working towards new myths

In grappling with these questions:

We have worked with and used our dreams,
We have worked with chance and meaningful synchronicity,
We have drawn on contemporary events and issues — both personal and collective,
We have engaged our imagination,
We have used storytelling and visual theatricality —

to suggest a new myth.

Portal: a process to harness and cultivate unexpected dimonions

We are aiming to create a flexible and tourable theatre production that can travel to various venues, increasing its reach. There will be a community aspect to it.

In accordance with our vision of Portal Theatre, this will be sustainably achieved in a budget-conscious and resource-conscious way, through the innovative use of sound, film, voice, projection, and design.

Your support – people, partnerships, crowdfunding

We are seeking people and partnerships:

Performers
Venues
Production team
Fundraisers
Funding in the form of grants, sponsorship, patrons
Enthusiasts who can give of their time, interest and skills

We welcome all support, interest and enquiries to outrideranthems@gmail.com

It takes a diverse, skilled community to create and produce a work of theatre, especially in these challenging times. If you feel you could support this venture financially, we would greatly appreciate that too. Please visit Bullwoman’s Crowdfunder.

Thank you.

Find more

You can find more of Jennifer and Andrea’s work together at Outrider Anthems, as well solo work via their websites in the profile links below.

And Jennifer and Andrea took part with fellow ClimateCultures members in Conversations with Work That Connects, a series of lively and engaging conversations that Julia Marques recorded with artists and researchers to explore their experiences with wide-ranging topics that inform the creative work ClimateCultures celebrates.

Jennifer Leach

A poet, writer, performer and storyteller whose wild work, forged in the fantastical reaches of deep imagination, brings to life new stories for our strange times.

Andrea Carr

A designer and scenographer, and cofounder of Terabac and of EcoStage Pledge, an online initiative to promote sustainability amongst theatre practitioners.