A few years in the future, the debate will no longer be whether or not climate change is a “hoax,” as the president-elect in 2024 claims, but whether there is any possibility of surviving on Earth, or if the focus should be on attempting to colonize Mars.
That is the premise of “Walden,” one of several recent productions in New York that employ the climate crisis in one way or another — as the driver of the drama, or simply a part of the world in which the characters live. “Deep History” chronicled the real-world climate cataclysms from the past that led to the present catastrophe. Most of the others, such as “In the Amazon Warehouse Parking Lot” and “Hothouse,” take place in the future, one that is more or less apocalyptic. Even in “Maybe Happy Ending,” a sweet tale of robot romance, they live in a world where fireflies have become extinct everywhere but on an island near Seoul.
“Walden” stood out for me, mostly because I saw it after the election, when the crisis feels as if it’s accelerating with each passing day (given, for example, the track records and agendas of the nominees for Secretary of the Interior and of the Environmental Protection Agency.) As a work of theater, Amy Berryman’s play seems unlikely to enter the canon. I wonder, though, whether it suggests a way forward for other playwrights who want to imagine the effects of the climate crisis without having to feel hemmed in by the conventions of science fiction.
One way to look at “Walden” is as the story of twin sisters who began very close together, but have traveled very far apart, emotionally as well as literally, although they are more alike than they might admit.
Stella (Emmy Rossum) has spent a year in an isolated rural area, whose few inhabitants eschew the technology that hastened the degradation of the Earth, and try to live off the land. They call themselves Earth Advocates. Cassie (Zoë Winters) has also spent a year in an isolated area, but it was on the Moon. She is an astronaut, trained as a botanist, and her successful lunar experiments trying to “grow something from nothing” has led NASA to activate their long-contemplated expedition to inhabit Mars. “The war, the refugee crisis, and then my…the breakthrough…it’s moving the plans forward.”
As we soon discover, Cassie’s sister Stella designed the structure which will house the first interplanetary migrants – which will include Cassie.
Stella too was an astronaut for NASA. This is not a coincidence. Their father was a famous astronaut, who instilled his daughters with his enthusiasm.
The two women are now on opposite sides of a worldwide debate.
Stella quit NASA and moved into this semi-wilderness with Bryan (Motell Foster.) An exchange between Bryan and Cassie summarizes the positions:
“We should be saving our own planet, instead of colonizing another one.”
“Maybe if the Earth Advocacy movement had grown to the size it is now like…fifty years ago, maybe. Maybe then there would have been time to turn this thing around, but now there isn’t.”
But I credit the playwright with complicating this debate in several ways. The astronauts also cherish Nature. The sisters’ father read “Walden” incessantly, memorized it; it was his favorite book. His favorite line: “Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.”
This is why Stella named the Mars habitation she designed after the title of Thoreau’s book.
And then there is a sibling dynamic that unfolds over the course of the drama, which takes place in a matter of days in Stella and Bryan’s home. Despite the corrugated metal covering and the sparse vegetation, the set is craftily designed to look just close enough to a contemporary exurban home to make the scenario feel all the more realistic (in a chilling way), as the characters reveal their secrets and hurts. They exhibit a range of feelings — admiration, rivalry, resentment, envy and, perhaps above all, ambivalence – that felt times like a mirror of the emotions that we as a society – as human beings – are going through in reaction to the undeniably toxic changes in the Earth’s atmosphere. Undeniable, but daily being denied.
Walden
Second Stage’s Tony Kiser Theater through November 24
Running time: 90 minutes no intermission
Tickets: $47 to $87
Written by Amy Berryman
Directed by Whitney White
Scenic design by Matt Saunders, costume design by Qween Jean, lighting design by Adam Honoré, and sound design by Lee Kinney.
Cast: Emmy Rossum, Zoë Winters, Motell Foster
