The complexities of the climate crisis are a tough sell to audiences but these plays in New York show it can be done
espite (or perhaps because of) its overwhelming awfulness, the climate crisis has been oddly underrepresented on stage and screen. Humanity’s greatest challenge has often been deemed too much of a downer, too complex or too dull a topic to spawn shows and movies.
A burst of recent climate-themed cultural output, however, suggests this may be changing. Weather Girl, a one-woman play about the unraveling of a TV meteorologist who can no longer bear to gloss over climate breakdown in California, has just closed in New York City to upbeat reviews.
Another production called Kyoto, an expectedly engaging romp through the saga of international climate talks, is set to open in New York after getting positive attention in the UK, while a musical, The Pelican, centered on a climate crisis-ravaged Florida, is in the works.
And while American TV news networks continue to ignore the climate crisis even while reporting on the devastating fires and floods it exacerbates, Netflix recently brought the issue to screens via the miniseries Families Like Ours, which depicts the evacuation of Denmark due to sea level rise. Weather Girl could soon be turned into a Netflix series, too.
