A guide to one hundred plays drawn from around the world, written by one hundred different playwrights, addressing the most urgent and important issue of our time: the climate crisis.
The plays discussed in this guide span a wide variety of styles, genres, and cast sizes--all speaking to an aspect of the climate emergency. Encompassing both famous plays and lesser-known works, the selections include recent writing that explicitly wrestles with these issues, as well as classic texts in which these resonances now ring out clearly. Each play is explored in a concise essay illuminating key themes and highlighting its contribution to our understanding of climate issues, with sections including Resources, Energy, Migration, Responsibility, Fightback, and Hope.
100 Plays to Save the World is a book to provoke as well as inspire--to start conversations, to inform debate, to challenge our thinking, and to be a launch pad for future productions. It is an empowering resource for theatre directors, producers, teachers, youth leaders, and writers looking for plays that speak to our present moment. Above all, it is a call to arms: to step up, think big, and unleash theatre's power to imagine a better future into existence.
The book includes a foreword by Daze Aghaji, a leading youth climate justice activist.
About the Author: Elizabeth Freestone is a theatre director, creative consultant and environmentalist. She has directed plays for the Royal Shakespeare Company, Manchester Royal Exchange, the Citizens Theatre Glasgow, the Young Vic and Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory, amongst others. She is a former Artistic Director of Pentabus, a new work touring company. She offers strategic advice and creative and environmental consultancy in both a paid and volunteer capacity for various organizations, as well as teaching and mentoring young artists. She has a Masters degree in Environmental Humanities from Bath Spa University.
Jeanie O'Hare is a short-story writer, playwright and project consultant for theatre and film. She originally trained as a sculptor. She has worked for the Royal Court Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company, Druid Theatre, and was Chair of Playwriting at Yale School of Drama. Most recently she was the Director of New Work Development at the Public Theater in New York. Her focus is on scouting, developing and producing new writers who tell original and important stories.
