Enya Crowley, director of Far Away, and Bethany Taylor and Rowan Hector-Turnbull, members of Cambridge Climate Justice, speak about climate anxiety and the potentials of student art and activism in Cambridge
A young girl stumbles into the kitchen and tentatively questions her aunt about the bloody assault she has witnessed in the night. Several years later, the whole world, including birds, animals, and gravity itself, has descended into war. So spans the breadth of Caryl Churchill’s absurdist drama Far Away, first performed in 2000. Eerie, disconcerting, and with language that verges on the nonsensical, Churchill pushes at the logical extremes of the play format. Yet, upon reading the script for the first time, I felt a sense of familiarity.
As a part of the generation to inherit the climate emergency, admitting to feeling understood by dystopian media is not a particularly surprising, nor comforting, sentiment.
As a part of the generation to inherit the climate emergency, admitting to feeling understood by dystopian media is not a particularly surprising, nor comforting, sentiment. Growing up into an awareness of the environmental circumstances we are being handed felt, to me, like a kind of vertigo - like looking down and realizing you are teetering on the edge of a precipice.
Far Away is a fragmentary hour of theatre that tracks a descent from innocent youth to an irrepressible awareness of ecological disaster. Caryl Churchill provides no answers: we must question what we are presented with. Ask, where are we? What brought us here? To me, nothing had spoken more to the experience of coming of age under the climate emergency; it encapsulated climate anxiety, that feeling of living on the cusp of apocalypse.
Prior to Cambridge, I had been surrounded by growing student awareness and heightened involvement in protest cultures with Fridays-for-Future and Extinction Rebellion. In preparing for Far Away, I had the joy of sitting down with Bethany and Rowan, members of Cambridge Climate Justice (CCJ), to talk about the state of student climate advocacy in Cambridge. The two noted that, when CCJ speaks to students here, there is frequently the individual sentiment that the university and government should improve their tactics, but a lack of communal push towards advocacy. This incongruence, despite the sense that, as Rowan puts it, “many people in this generation do get it and accept it”, may stem from the idiosyncrasies of our university. It’s a phenomenon that I often return to: that our university's insularity, its distance from the ‘real’ world, can relegate larger systemic concerns to the sidelines in favour of overwhelming schedules.
“The structure of Cambridge terms are not great for building community,” Bethany notes, emphasising community as one of the core needs for successful advocacy. CCJ comes up against “feelings of apathy, and that the university won’t change” which Bethany attributes to the fact that students often “come up against university bureaucracy in pursuing change in the institution”.
“Activism requires work”, she states. “Since we are only here for a brief period of time, it’s hard to see the big picture of how the university has shifted in the past and how things will continue to shift because of students.” Thinking outside of our Cambridge bubble, it’s crucial to remember that student advocacy at this university specifically has higher stakes. “It is so important in particular that students here care,” Bethany argues, “because Cambridge has so much social and financial power.”
While student life here has the potential to create communities where distance from concrete activism can feel so easy, it can also foster communities with immense drive to them. The Cambridge theatre scene famously thrives in spite of the restraints of term times and workloads, producing not only astounding amounts of creative output, but a passionate community. When I asked Rowan and Bethany about their experiences with the role of art and theatre in responding to the climate crisis, Rowan notes that art can be more than an escape from climate concerns, but a way of approaching them practically.
“Art has been connected to activism for a long time”, as a way of “creating communities of people who can express themselves, have fun and use that energy to enact change.”
“Much like comedy can help you confront things you don’t want to think about,” he says, “art helps create that sort of access point.” Bethany asserts that, “you can’t say that there is the emotional side of climate change and then the political, practical side - they are so interrelated, as people’s feelings impact the actions they take.” The value of protest art is no new revelation; Rowan reminds that “art has been connected to activism for a long time”, as a way of “creating communities of people who can express themselves, have fun and use that energy to enact change.” Given the flourishing energy of student theatre, and the impact on student discourse I’ve witnessed it to have, I agree with Bethany on the “amount that could be done” if you “make the connection between making that art and activism, which can be seen as much more boring.”
“People see advocacy as so depressing,” Bethany adds, but it’s had the complete opposite effect on her. It is “transforming that anxiety into something energetic.”
Inevitably, that same existential anxiety that struck me upon reading Far Away weaves its way into our conversation. Dates like 2030, set by scientists as critical deadlines for political and cultural reform, no longer sound futuristic, but loom a mere couple of years after our graduations. Coping with such prospects, and consuming media about the climate crisis, especially online, isn’t easy; Rowan finds that “it can make you feel like the only sane person in the room.” For him, however, stepping into activist circles with “plenty of other people who feel that way helps frame that sense of hopelessness” into something “constructive”. With the effects of climate change encroaching ever more on our privileged communities and our consciences here in England, he hopes that “hitting those deadlines will flip the switch in many people” to take more direct action. “People see advocacy as so depressing,” Bethany adds, but it’s had the complete opposite effect on her. It is “transforming that anxiety into something energetic, with movement behind it.”
‘It’s all going to be downhill from now on,’ the protagonist of Far Away quips, predicting the play’s following descent into the dark and absurd. Such cynicism is at the crux of what makes this play disturbing for all the right reasons - it prompts us to take a look at our own responses to a world in crisis. Churchill allows complicity to run rampant, pushes engagement with media to darkly humorous extremes, lets her characters carry on with their heads down, until they stand, ultimately, at a cliff’s edge.
As the team behind Far Away stages a dystopian play that, in the 20 years since its first staging, has crept ever closer to our reality, we ask ourselves where we stand and where we invest our energy. What does it mean for students to be making theatre in a time of crisis? It is a further iteration of distracting, blunting media, or an effective instigator for thought and, critically, action? How can we make art, and how can we use the communities we form around art, in ways that matter?
Far Away
by Caryl Churchill
Wednesday 26th February - Saturday 1st March, 9.30PM
Corpus Playroom
Click here to book your tickets!