Artistic director Aruna Ganesh Ram’s play Under Pressure focusses on climate change induced by our endless consumerism, says Ayushi Sharma

Despite what politicians might tell you, here’s a fact, climate change is real. The summers are getting hotter. The water table is sinking lower. And it’s about time we made a choice about how we choose to live. Do you believe that technology will save you? Or do you think that mindful living is the way forward? The earth is yours to fight for. And the question is, will you?

Artistic director Aruna Ganesh Ram has put together a play, Under Pressure, which is a commentary on climate change induced by our endless consumerism. She says, “Let’s go back in time. I was born in the 80s. I have lived my life amidst trees and have been bitten by insects. I was so much closer to nature than my son, for example, who is three years old. He is ensconced within the comfort of the community. So we wondered how we could trigger appreciation for nature. It’s not like that we don’t know that climate change is real. Most of us know it is. But what are we doing? We are thinking of changing our lifestyle but we aren’t really doing anything to implement these changes.”

The play will examine the effect of the individual and collective choices and their leading environmental consequences. From exploring themes of consumerism, minimal living, indigenous wisdom, the life of trees and the politics of nature, the performance will present multiple perspectives — that of the policy-makers, ragpickers, environmentalists, of the 8,000-year-old trees and even the extinct birds.

“One of the questions we want to ask through the play is that how do we reach that appreciation point and love for the environment. Because if that love existed or even exists, we would have done or would do things differently. We have lost it somewhere to this idea of the glamourous consumerist. What is this rampant consumerism that has coloured the way we see life? We are materialistic and we believe it is so cool. So how do we go back and be mindful about the fact that environment is the new cool,” says Aruna.

So how did the idea come to her? She tells us that the whole process started two years back when she was listening to a podcast. Author Amitav Ghosh was the speaker and was talking about climate change. He urged artists, journalists, poets and writers to talk about the environment in any way that they could. And she realised that even though climate change is so real, people weren’t talking about it. “In that moment I was like ‘oh yes’. So I started looking at my own work over the last 15 years. I have been doing theatre since 2003 and I haven’t done a single piece related to environment or anything around that. And it just clicked that the quality of air is deteriorating and environmental conditions are worsening. We see waste being dumped on the roads but why I am, as an artist, not engaging with it through my work?” questions the director.

That’s when she started reading and getting acquainted with what’s going on with the climate crisis movement. Who are the people working in that scape? She felt there are so many perspectives one can take. Contaminated water, air pollution, plastics and industrial waste, all of this is contributing to a drastic climate change. The play focusses on three major aspects because, she says, “we couldn’t talk about everything due to a limited time.” Aruna tells us that the first aspect caters to creating an appreciation of earth through nostalgia, which is the real reason for our existence and how there were times when we knew to live in oneness with the planet. “Using verses, earth poetry and trees as a metaphor of life and growth, we have portrayed the first part,” adds she.

The second section deals with what human beings have done post the industrial age, rampant consumerism, mass production, capitalism and how all of that has influenced the way we live today, which is the throwaway life or #2minutelife, where we want quick gratification from everything we do. The director says that this part will be done through masks and behavioural gestures.

Third, it shows what we have unleashed into this world — plastic, which we absolutely do not know how to deal with. “It is getting dumped in the oceans because of which marine animals are struggling. Also, any kind of plastic takes over 50-60 years to decompose or maybe even never. Next, it deals with how we have created a problem that is way bigger than we have imagined it to be. So we do this by creating a dystopian world, which is what really happens when we become plastic humans,” says Aruna.

Facts and figures have been a part of her research. For instance, she tells us that one of the facts that they keep repeating are the performances of the timeline of 2050, a time about which most of the scientists predict that there will be more plastic in the oceans than fishes. “We keep going back to it.”

The synopsis of the play tells us that the story is narrated through the perspective of an 8,000-year-old tree. So what’s the idea? How do you tell a story from the perspective of a tree? She says, “See, we are humans but we know that the tree has life and it has seen so much more time than you and I have. So what does it mean to embody that spirit of tree into your body. We have tried to do that by embodying the spirit of the tree by being resilient, which is where we have recreated that perspective from the movement. The average lifespan of a tree is 300-400 years whereas our average span is 75-80 years at max. And see how much damage we’re doing to the earth.”

The performance is a sensory montage moving between the realms of reality and surrealism, inviting the audience to question and reflect upon their own viewpoint and their relationship with the earth. “The play is embodied with facts that the audience can take back as what they can change in their life. If the play becomes preachy then it’s not going to resonate with the audience because each one of us has been on a different journey of understanding environment. If I explain you something, you’ll be like who are you to tell me that. We are operating in an economy of individual choices and you have to exercise that yourself because only you know what you can do,” she says.

(The play, as a part of the Old World Theatre Festival, will be staged on August 23 at 7.30 pm at Amaltas Hall, IHC.)