ABSTRACT
This book asks whether it might be possible to produce emotional runaway warming systems – intense, sometimes long-running experiences typical of good theatre – without also producing significant resource footprints and a large invisible cloud of carbon emissions. In this chapter, a possible answer to this question is explored through the eyes of spectators, thanks to The HandleBards’ audience feedback forms collected in the course of their 2015 summer tour. Responses were playful, affectionate and admiring, and repeatedly described the productions as Shakespeare as the Bard intended, notwithstanding the anachronistic presence of bicycles. Early on, this chapter looks back to another bicycle-driven production, Stan’s Cafe’s Home of the Wriggler. By the end of this chapter, two things are clear. The environment on stage does not need to be openly mentioned to be assertively present. Bicycle-driven theatre is nothing less than a ‘comedy of survival’ and a potential paradigm in ecoengineering for a society looking for ways of heading off the environmental crisis.
