No Theater on a Dead Planet

   Last month, XR NYC interrupted a performance of “An Enemy of the People” with a protest. The disruption involved 3 separate rebels standing up during the performance to shut it down, and demand attention for climate change. Each wore t-shirts bespoken for the cause, and belted out demands to the theater patrons.

   From XR NYC press, “The climate and ecological crisis threatens everything on our planet, including the theater. This action and similar actions are the response of a movement that has no other recourse than to engage in unconventional means of protest to bring mass attention to the greatest emergency of our time. All normal means of affecting change appropriate to the scale of the catastrophe – including voting, petitioning, lobbying, etc. – have failed and continue to fail. Yet the science makes clear that we have only a very small window of time in which to transition from fossil fuels and stop carbon emissions.”
    Another quote came from Jeromy Strong, during his interview on the Seth Myers show, “I feel very -- This play is about -- I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't, in a way, support what they were saying. It only underlined the message of the play, which is that we're all in this together and we're all in deep [bleep] I mean, it's like record wildfires, record heat, record floods, unprecedented extreme-weather events. And then I think the scarier stuff is the more insidious, these slow-onset events. I read this week that these ice shelves in Greenland, 30 million tons, the size of the Eiffel Tower, are melting every hour. So these things are happening, and they're happening on our watch. And, you know, the IPCC said it's a code red for humanity. So, I'm doing this play, but I also think if we could be a force multiplier for saying something about the world we all live in.”
We have to disrupt the public”  

   Lydia Woolley, who took action at the play, said, “We're not protesting the event itself; we are not protesting theater; we are not protesting the emissions that brought spectators to get here. That's not the point. We are here because we have to disrupt this public event as our last resort to draw public attention to the climate emergency we are facing today.”
   As another Earth Day passes, on the heals of a 365 day year that passed 1.5c (this month it’s now 1.6.c) warming, it’s now or never for political action.
You can join XR NYC and other groups, by visiting their website, and searching for Extinction Rebellion or starting an XR chapter, or affinity group, in your area.