Climate Science Theater (Art! Science! Carbon Emissions!)

The Silencer (being performed in Blacksburg, VA, on November 1, 2, and 3, ahead of its London opening in 2007) is a play about Global Warming and Climate Science. How about that, a play about global warming and climate science. Not your everyday occurrence. I can't say if it's Michael Frayn-level theater, but I can say that it's not the usual approach to confronting climate science issues.

Here's a summary of the play:

Dr. Brian Heath must decide whether to protect his family or publicize his alarming findings about the impending threat of climate change. His predicament stands for our own as individuals, and collectively. The Silencer presents confronting the truth about global warming as a matter of conscience, which we cannot undertake without the willingness to leave our comfort zone behind.

This is part of the Choices and Challenges Forum hosted every 18 months by the Department of Science and Technology in Society at Virginia Tech. This forum's title is: ""Changing Climate, Uncertain Future: Facing Global Warming."

(The play is part of the Y Touring Theater Company from King's Cross, London. Their work is meant to contribute to public conversations on science and policy.)

This Choices and Challenges Forum at Virginia Tech is a one-day deal. They concentrate on a different topic of science and society with each one -- in prior years they've discussed Prozac, GM Foods, Human Cloning, Diet and Disease, Designer Children, Pesticides, and more. The forum "represents a unique, ongoing effort to encourage the humanistic components of science and technology to be identified and addressed -- and to engage public audiences as key participants in this process" (overview).

In prior years they've also inlcuded theatrical versions of the issue at hand. Who could forget Judy Upton's play, Pig in the Middle, which was directed by Dr. Wyatt Galusky and presented "an exploration of the complex debate surrounding xenotransplantation (animal-to-human organ transplantation) through drama" (summary). Or, better yet, the 2003 Me And My Google, which looked "at identity and privacy in the digital age, exploring the tensions between personal privacy and public security in the Internet world."

Plus, with each forum, they bring in leading participants in the subject at hand. Not just scientists, but scholars across the board who deal with the subject. So, this eyar, the main public panel includes Brenda Ekwurzel (who works on the national climate program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS)), Bill Chameides (a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the Chief Scientist at Environmental Defense), Karen Litfin (Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Washington and a prolific writer on climate issues and global politics), and Eugene Linden (who writes about science, technology, the environment and humanity's relationship with nature in books, articles, and essays).

Check out the pages. Look around. Read past transcripts. Look for the past programming on PBS about it.
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