David Finnigan uses grains of sugar to represent the human population during different epochs in his one-man performance piece on the climate crisis, Deep History.
David Finnigan’s performance piece on the climate crisis, Deep History, now playing at the Public Theater after stops elsewhere, including the Edinburgh Fringe, will inevitably be compared to a TED talk: Finnigan is scientifically fluent and uses images from his laptop (video design by Hayley Egan) to craft a deeply informed narrative of climate and human history, with some autobiography and whimsy mixed in. TED talks can be engaging, of course, and Finnigan is certainly that; but this description also sells Finnigan short. There is theatricality at work in the 65-minute piece, directed by Annette Mees, particularly a twist in the storytelling that revolves around the gap between 2019 (when the piece was written) and the time when it is performed.
Finnigan is an earnest and affable presence from Canberra, Australia (what he calls Ngunnawal country, referring to the First Nations people of the region), and is a theater artist who works with scientists and as a consultant for the World Bank “on climate and disaster risk.” “All right,” he says after this introduction, “are we ready to dive back into 2019? I’m about to transform into a younger, fresher version of myself through the power of acting.”
Finnigan lists "lessons" for navigating the climate crisis, though he doesn't make it through all of them before the show re-evaluates its own approach.
With this, Finnigan twirls around mock-dramatically and lands five years in the past. An early point he makes is that the climate crisis is not a catastrophe on the horizon: it is here, and we are living in it. Finnigan’s father, a climate scientist, was the one to suggest to a young Finnigan and his best friend and onetime collaborator Jack that they make theater about the climate crisis. The piece uses autobiography to show the crisis as personal as well as global: Jack and his family are in a vulnerable position during the devastating Australian wildfires of 2019, while Finnigan is in London desperately trying to get updates and typing his ailing father’s notes into what will become the piece the audience is seeing.
The narrative is anchored in a protagonist, a woman placed in different epochs: “As she’s reincarnated into different bodies in the course of this story, she may change skin colour, height, age—but she’s still the same soul, the same person, he says.” And so 75,000 years ago, for example, Finnigan describes her washing ash from her skin in a river, in the context of the near extinction of humans. These sections from the point of view of the nameless woman are evocative and moving, featuring poetic language, lowered lights, videos from Egan expressively setting the scene, and ambient music from Reuben Ingall. Finnigan demonstrates the human population during the different periods the woman inhabits, using sugar (purchased from the Astor Place Wegmans) poured through a funnel, each grain meant to represent a hundred people.
At the end of each section, Finnigan writes a “lesson” on a board—with number 1 through 6—a guide for getting through the climate crisis. So, for example, lesson 1 is that “survival is possible.” The piece is engaging and interesting from the outset, but the lessons seem, if not empty, then somehow inadequate. And that, it turns out, is the point: Finnigan stumbles around the issue of colonization, when his lessons no longer match his stated values. And here Finnigan sabotages his own 2019 creation:
Finnigan is a theater artist who works with researchers and consults for the World Bank on climate risk. Photographs by Joan Marcus.
And as the video finishes, I finally understand why this project doesn’t work. Why this doesn’t work [pointing to sand] and this doesn’t work [pointing to screen] and this doesn’t work. [pointing to guide] … This is not a guide for getting through a crisis—it’s a guide for creating one.
It’s quite a theatrical gambit. There are no easy lessons to take home that can be scribbled in a few words on a board. Instead, this is a call for self-examination, to think differently—Finnigan is not happy about his own performance in a crisis, though he thinks he can do better next time. While it feels as though there is an absence after the piece’s intentional failure and course correction—Finnigan wraps up rather quickly without fully diving into the radical uncertainty that he has unleashed—his denial of easy answers seems more equal to the crisis than a schematic list of six TED-worthy takeaways. Ultimately, he seems most unsure about the power of art: he begins with the hope that it can help usher the world through the climate crisis, while at his nadir he thinks it can’t change a single mind. He has at least proved one point: that art on the climate crisis can be both grippingly entertaining and thought-provoking.
Deep History runs through Nov. 10 at the Public Theater (425 Lafayette St.). Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday; matinees are at 1 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Tickets are available by visiting publictheater.org.
Playwright: David Finnigan
Director: Annette Mees
Video Design: Hayley Egan
Music: Reuben Ingall
