Documentary Theater Play
In 2021, Michael Ruf will bring the documentary theater play "The Climate Monologues" on stage. The play will be based on interviews with people who are affected by or who are fighting against climate change. The play will be performed by a network of hundreds of actors and musicians mainly in Germany, but also in other countries.
People from island states or from the polar regions, who have been clearly feeling the effects of climate change for the past 10 years, are far away from the world we live in and we hardly ever get into conversation with them. And climate change is partly a slow, creeping process. So climate change in Europe is still difficult to grasp. Yet there is enough dramatic potential in this topic: droughts, floods, storms. Uninhabitable zones and distribution struggles are spreading!
However, for the local theatre stages, climate change remains a marginal phenomenon. With the great means of the theatre, we will make climate change tangible! We will tell touching human stories. By bringing the experiences of those affected to us. Full of details, pictures and concreteness!
Spin Offs
As Michael Ruf will spent serveral months to look internationally for interviews, even more could be done with the stories he has found. In the Climate Story Lab he would love to find out ways to develop further spin offs: other ways to narrate the stories or how to combine the narratives with other ways of communication.
Developing a documentary theater play succesfully and reaching a huge audience is something he has done before with four productions. The plays have been shown 800 times in 250 cities. What would be new and what he is striving for is to combine this climate change communication with other forms of talking about global warming.
In other words: the potential to spread the stories found for the play is not exhausted. The Climate Monologues could be the starting point for further "Spin offs", whether (animated) documentary, political lobby campaign or guerilla arts (to mention just a few examples).
