Human Nature completed a final tour of What's Funny About Climate Change? at the end of April 2005 before retiring the show. This last jaunt was mostly to Humboldt-area high schools. We had experimented with a "reduced" version of the show for high schools while on the road in Wisconsin and New Mexico and managed to reach younger audiences.
The trick was to keep the material within bounds, politically and erotically, that staff and administration could tolerate without sanitizing it to the point where teenage audiences would lose interest altogether. We seemed to find the right balance, students actually sat quietly for the most part and listened, maybe they even learned. (An excellent mini-curriculum prepared for us by the Center for Environmental Economic Development and distributed days before the show helped with the learning part.) A young woman, during one of the question-and-answer periods that we held after each show, paid us a significant accolade: "I'm really glad. I thought this show was going to be lame." That may be higher critical praise than a rave review in The New York Times.
Overall, in the high school performances as well as the full shows we did, we felt a sense of completion and success. The last audience for the full show, at the Eureka High School Auditorium, was large and entirely enthusiastic. An excellent review in the North Coast Journal helped bring them to the theater. After two and a half years of honing this comedy review--80 performances in 70 locations throughout the U.S. for a total audience of 10,000 people--we felt we had accomplished part of our mission.
Onward! As successful as What's Funny About Climate Change? might have been, we have been forced to admit that climate change still progresses apace. Hurricanes, heat waves, fires and famine haunt the Earth, polar ice disappears, and ever-grimmer scenarios infiltrate our consciousness. There is much more to do. We take up the crusade for planetary survival through theater again in the fall. Look for A Solstice Song.
DVDs of What's Funny About Climate Change? are available upon request from Human Nature, P.O. Box 81, Petrolia, CA 95558 or at hnpetrolia@aol.com.
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TOC for Forest & River News, Summer 2005