A brand-new production powered entirely by bicycles – A Play for the Living in a Time of Extinction, by award-winning playwright Miranda Rose Hall, continues a nationwide experiment in sustainable touring models when it plays at Theatre Royal Plymouth next month (28 June – 1 July).
A Play for the Living in a Time of Extinction is currently touring the UK, but in a way that reduces the traditional environmental impact of touring theatre by drastically reducing the numbers of people or materials physically travelling. Furthermore, the performance will be entirely powered by bicycles peddled in real time throughout the duration of the show by local volunteers.
Each venue on the tour features a local actor, once again reducing the environmental impact of travel. In Plymouth, the role of Naomi will be played by Shaday Barrowes-Bayewunmi.
Shaday is a Plymouth-based performance artist and poet. An activist with a twist, her work explores themes such as identity, vulnerability, race, mental health, neurodiversity and climate justice.
Sharing learning from Europe and Katie Mitchell, Headlong and the initial creative team have produced a blueprint containing sustainability guides which have been passed on to each subsequent venue, in the first off-grid tour of its kind in the UK. It forms part of a ground-breaking international experiment in reimagining theatre in a climate crisis.
A Play for the Living in a Time of Extinction is co-produced by Headlong and the Barbican.
The difference between death and extinction is this: death is to cease to exist. Extinction is to extinguish. I think of death as individual. Extinction is collective.
Naomi is part of a touring theatre company and they have made a play especially for you – those who are living through extinction – except the actors haven’t shown up yet. We don’t know why, and maybe they will, but in the meantime, Naomi has a plan.
Miranda Hall’s darkly funny and uplifting play explores what it means to be human in an era of man-made extinction.
A Play for the Living in a Time of Extinction is Headlong’s second major touring experiment, part of the company’s ongoing commitment to rethink theatre-making in a climate emergency. In 2020, Headlong produced Signal Fires, a national festival that saw over forty companies come together for the first time to tour a single idea, at a time when traditional touring was not possible.
Headlong have committed to staging one major touring experiment and one piece that explores a different facet of climate change, as part of our commitment to rethinking what it means to be a touring theatre company during the climate emergency.
Tickets for A Play for the Living in a Time of Extinction are currently available from the TRP website.