Jacob Hirdwall lets young people tell in climate play: “Activism is an expression of faith in the future”

The clouds wander across the stage, the moon shines in all its glory, it is late on earth. Seven Dramaten actors are on stage, Tina Pour-Davoy and Razmus Nyström play the two main roles. A performance built from stories from all over the world, from ever-changing images, new landscapes, from music, dance and movement.

It started with the performance that Jacob Hirdwall did at Dramaten 2020, “We hear you – Greta Thunberg’s speech”. Then 77 actors and extras stood silently on stage and listened to Greta. Helene Larsson Pousette, cultural councilor in Washington, was furious and wanted Hirdwall to make a sequel.

– Now we wanted to make a story where 77 young people got to talk, not about facts, but about their feelings, says Jacob Hirdwall.

– All said and done, we connected partners in Washington. 250 applied to participate, and we managed to link 77 people around the world to the project.

– We have interviewed all the young people, in groups of eight, ten people on Zoom, they have been allowed to talk freely about how it feels to live with climate change and to have most of their lives ahead of them. Then we used a function in zoom that turns it into a text. And that text was washed into a story by an American dramatist, Robert Duffley. I got all these stories in English and so I’ve translated bits, moved them around. I was given free rein.

Inspired by Strindberg’s “A dream play”, where the god Indra sends down her daughter Agnes to listen to the people, and by a real American activist, Jacob Hirdwall wrote a play based on the stories of these 77 young storytellers.

– We have an Agnes who descends, not from the sky, but from a tree in which she lived for two years. She meets a lot of people who tell stories and she listens. She doesn’t quite know what to do with it, but then she gets an idea…

– Many years ago, when I heard about Julia Hill, I immediately thought of Indra’s daughter. After all, Julia climbed down from her tree and met people and tried to understand. Then I thought, but that is a modern Indra’s daughter!

The activist Jacob Hirdwall was inspired by, Julia Hill, climbed a 1,500-year-old Redwood tree, 55 meters high, which was threatened by felling. She lived there on a small platform for two years and climbed down on December 18, 1999 when the lumber company agreed not to cut down the tree and the grove it was in.

– Our Agnes meets the writer Robert and together they wander through a changing world in search of stories about our times. They become soul mates and from different sides have the same desire to break free from the feeling of powerlessness. They want to do something, shop.

Strindberg called it wandering drama, Hirdwall calls it road movie.

The big question, he believes, is how one as a young person can transform a feeling of powerlessness into having some form of power, that one can act. Although no one has the power to stop the oil companies.

– Someone says in the play that it is hopeful to tell each other, even if what you tell is not hopeful.

– Man has three superpowers, says Elin Klinga, who has several roles.

– Create, destroy and change your attitude.

– Here are 77 of all the world’s witnesses who no longer just want to stand and watch.

Razmus Nyström, who has only one role, the writer Robert, says:

– I am one of the voices in this chorus of testimonies. Robert is trying to understand how to act and exist on a planet that is slowly heading towards its demise.

Ashanee Kottage, researcher at Georgetown University in Washington DC, is one of the 77 storytellers who participated in the project, she landed in Stockholm on Monday.

– We sat at our computers and listened to each other’s stories, I’m so excited to see them come to life on stage. This feels like the most perfect example of bodily knowledge of the climate.

About twenty narrators will come to Thursday’s premiere. They have arranged their trips in different ways by seeking money from funds and the like.

Jacob Hirdwall believes that the four-year long work completely changed his image of activism.

– Activism is an expression of faith in the future, not as is often portrayed in the debate, that activists are against society and that they are hostile to technology. Many changes have started with activism and civil disobedience and have then led to real social change.

– The activism we see today is just the beginning.