(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . A Lesson from Theatre -- Strike for the Planet week 167 [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-12-26 You can make a difference to the hurt being caused by climate chaos and the great extinction event in your town or your city! How? Reuse, repurpose, and recycle this information. You can push your local politicians to act. It will make a difference! This is the letter for week 167 of a weekly climate strike that went on for 4 years in front of San Francisco City Hall, beginning early March 2019. For more context, see this story. For an annotated table of contents of the topics for all the strike letters, see this story. Meanwhile… STRIKE FOR THE PLANET This isn’t an emergency guideline? Nope, this week is: A Lesson from Theatre The Emergency Guidelines continue next week Even though they are necessary, the Guidelines are both dry and horrible (really, 80% of SF’s potable water supply is endangered right now?! Horrible.) So it’s time for a brief break from the Guidelines to remind you yet again of why the Guidelines are necessary. It’s because you aren’t acting If you don’t act, all that’s left is reacting . The Guidelines are about how to react . But we’re gonna try one more time (it’s only the 167th attempt, after all1) to convince you that acting is so much better than reacting. So it’s time for some acting lessons. Lesson #1: A character isn’t talk You aren’t what you say, you aren’t even what you think; you are what you do. Talk a good talk all you want, but if you don’t bother to stop an unjust execution because you have a headache (The Master and Margarita), if you are a war profiteer who causes multiple deaths by accident (All My Sons), if you poison the planet because you want to fix things but don’t bother to examine your ideas (Lives of the Great Poisoners), or if you overthrow a totalitarian but ignore the consequent environmental problems (Urinetown), you’re the villain. See? Characters are defined by what they do. Lesson #2: Talk is not action Doing accomplishes much more than talking. In Angels in America, Louis talks. He talks and talks and talks and talks. Harper doesn’t say a lot but she acts. By the end of the two plays, Harper manages to get herself out of an untenable situation and construct a life and a family that is real and supportive. Louis, on the other hand, abandons everything he says he believes in and betrays those he says he loves. Take a wild guess at who’s the villain. In Balm in Gilead, Darlene monologues for 7 pages straight, which is over 20 minutes stage time even at breakneck speed. She also has the last line in the play — “…and I thought, Christ, aren’t we even moving? You know?” In the course of the play, including with an enormous chunk of lines, she literally goes nowhere and accomplishes nothing. She is no one’s hero. Talking is not action. It is through actions that we interact with and influence the world. If you don’t act, you have no impact on the world, no matter how much you talk. Lesson #3: Actions create the story Iago says he’s doing what’s best for Othello, but his actions tell the real story. In We Are Proud To Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as Southwest Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915, the characters are working out a story by improving their way through it to the bitter end, where they finally figure it out. In The Woman Who Was A Red Deer Dressed For The Deer Dance, the girl only figures out her story by acting her way into it as best she can, with incomplete information and few guidelines. Protagonists, people, and governments often act on incomplete information, unsure of the outcomes. But, if you don’t act, you aren’t in the story. You know what’s going on with the environment.2 You know the story because I’ve made sure you know the story. Not only that, I’ve given you Spark Notes on how to navigate the plot, identify the heroes, take actions that have better outcomes, and given you details on the costs of not acting plus a ton of the technical information. Lesson #4: There are no small parts, only small actors You’re only operating at the city level? So what! You can still act and have a major influence. Or you can carry a spear and disappear into the scenery while you think about your dinner or going out to a bar after the show instead of what’s happening right in front of you. Even Rosencrantz and Guildenstern had a chance to be heroes. But they didn’t recognize it when the time came and so remained bit players, expendable, interchangeable, forgotten. It’s still not too late to act It’s better than not acting, at least. And, if you act enough now, maybe people won’t notice that timely action by you could have saved a lot of pain, suffering and the need for heroism. Because, as Dr. Jason Ur of Harvard University says: When we excavate the remains of past civilizations, we rarely find any evidence that they made any attempts to adapt in the face of a changing climate. I view this inflexibility as the real reason for collapse.3 Back to the Emergency Guidelines next week Back to the Guidelines next week because, when we lose our water, you know we’re also going to lose a lot of energy production, too. So we’ll start the Energy Guidelines. FOOTNOTES 1. Really. This is the 167th Strike letter. 2. Oliver Milman. “Nearly $2tn of damage inflicted on other countries by US emissions”. The Guardian. 12 July 2022. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/12/us-carbon-emissions-greenhouse-gases-climate-crisis . 3. Emily Sohn. “Climate change and the rise and fall of civilizations”. NASA. 20 January 2014. https://climate.nasa.gov/news/1010/climate-change-and-the-rise-and-fall-of-civilizations/ . [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/12/26/2212280/-A-Lesson-from-Theatre-Strike-for-the-Planet-week-167?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/