Transition and Arts: Pete the Temp’s Climate Action show
By Ben Brangwyn 31st October 2012
Using comedy to get the climate point across
If you’re looking to combine humour and climate together in an engaging event in your local initiative, this might be of interest.
Recently, I got a recommendation from a couple of trusted contacts to check out a show by “Pete the Temp”. He does a stand-up one-man-show covering the difficulties we have responding to the climate challenges. There’s humour, banter, solid analysis and a bit of mayhem and a unique take on our collective journey through these troublesome times.
A couple of people from Transition Stroud and Transition Faversham have also seen the show and they must have been impressed because they’ll hosting local performances in their towns in the near future.
Here’s an (abridged) email he sent me explaining the show.
The show promotes community grass roots action through the lens of food and agriculture as well as poking fun at the idea of giving to green charities without changing personal or collective habits. There are sections on economics, the oil giants and the ecosystem. It includes:
- Intro
- The Situation: carbon addiction / animations on average carbon uses / energy use / characteristics of high carbon economy / biospheric collapse
- ‘Pete the Temp defeats Climate Change by Getting a Charity Job‘: how far charity giving change things? / Fuel poverty
- ‘Pete the Temp Eats Climate Change‘: Food, supermarkets and climate change / The agrarian renaissance
- ‘Pete the Temp defeats Climate Change by Defeating the Banks!‘: RBS and Climate Camp in Edinburgh
- ‘Pete the Temp slays the Oil Giants‘: Tar Sands and oil conference action
- Outro – Call for people to do something / Ecocide video
A couple of different extracts: http://vimeo.com/45099619, and http://vimeo.com/43463474
The show encourages people to come together as part of a diverse movement of various types of change. It is designed to reach out to people who are not the usual suspects by making climate action seem exiting and interesting. Laughter and candid admission is a way that has worked for me at theatres and festivals such as Secret Garden Party.
The last two chapters are on my involvement in direct action – telling funny anecdotes about a couple of actions I have been on. Both of these were creative and funny actions and were not violent / highly arrestable things (unless you count pouring oil over yourself in an oil conference as arrestable). As the titles of these chapters suggests it is presented in self-effacing, tongue in cheek way.
If you want to get in touch with Pete to discuss the potential for a performance where you are, you can phone him on 07799 375147 or email him on managementptt@googlemail.com. Check out his website for info too – www.petethetemp.co.uk/?page_id=67