A cinematic immersive experience and stampeding animal puppets are bringing the climate emergency into the city
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s parts of the UK swelter, this week brought yet more alarming reports of increasing temperatures, extreme weather events and dwindling chances of meeting the global 1.5C target. It was the UK’s warmest spring on record and its driest in more than 50 years.
Communicating the urgency of our predicament without provoking despair and hopelessness is an intractable challenge, especially when it comes to children. But two trail-blazing theatre experiences are bringing the breakdown of the natural world into urban metropolises, and raising the alarm with such immediacy that even those of us fortunate enough to live in places that have so far been relatively unaffected by the climate crisis must pay attention.
Our Story With David Attenborough is a breathtaking 50-minute immersive history of the planet, from the team behind the recent film Ocean. Thanks to 24 projectors and 50 speakers, the Natural History Museum’s Jerwood Gallery is transformed into the solar system, prehistoric caves, the ocean and the jungle. As in Maurice Sendak’s children’s classic Where the Wild Things Are, “the walls [become] the world all around”. We swim with whales and come face to face with gorillas – as Sir David did in Life on Earth in 1979. We look from space: like last year’s Booker prize-winning novel, Orbital, by Samantha Harvey, Our Story inspires the feelings of awe and protectiveness towards our planet that astronauts call “the overview effect”.
