ABSTRACT
Live theatrical productions, performances and installations are as transitory as human existence, and spectators’ reactions are usually known only to themselves, unless they share the story of their experience after the event. This chapter investigates two fortuitously available compilations of theatre reviews for the premier of Churchill’s prescient 1994 climate change play The Skriker and its 2015 revival. These critical perspectives two decades apart, reprinted for posterity in the Theatre Record, conveniently straddle the long series of United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC) talks running from COP1 (1995) and COP21 (2015). Theatre critics are a relatively homogeneous group of individuals, and space in the media for their writings has shrunk. Nevertheless, comparing and contrasting content and form in these often creative reperformances of spectatorial experiences throw light on the cultural repositioning of climate change over two decades. The chapter opens with a brief exercise in contextualisation, reaching back to climate change installations explored in earlier chapters.
