Step into the quarter-acre lot at the corner of Nunziato Park and you’ll step into a world removed from the usual urban sprawl. The Somerville Community Growing Center, a green berg in a sea of asphalt, is a home to those who love to nurture nature.
It’s also a home to the occasional theater production. Witness “Now Is Still Here,” an eco-minded drama production put together by the Artists Theater of Boston and director Tom King. The play debuted Sunday under cloudy skies.
The production is part of broader ecologically attuned theater movement, “Climate Change Theatre Action,” an international festival of climate-crisis-based works curated by Chantal Bilodeau.
As Shira Laucharoen reported in May,
“King selected pieces that Bilodeau presented to him. He envisioned them performed with seven actors in the outdoor Somerville Community Growing Center, creating a multisensory experience for audience members sitting on blankets or folding chairs on the lawn. The plays are all woven together by a common theme, focused on care for the human and natural world, beauty, inclusivity and possibility.”
The director described the dramatic vignettes as a reckoning of humanity and its environment along a timeline of crisis,
“The first act is the present, as informed by the past. This is a collection of plays that look at where we are now and are about the climate … emotions of grief, rage and the sense of hopelessness we feel. The second act is the possible future that we could create now, the future as made possible by our choices. It gives us a number of scenarios and allows us to think about what scenario we would want to choose.”
The audience, spread out on blankets and lawn chairs amid the crawling vines of the urban garden, soaked in the diverse micro dramas…
There was a chance encounter between two bee lovers.
A comedy sketch featuring a hyperactive nature booster and a sidekick with an “Applause” sign.
A couple with a relationship on the rocks, caught in the tug-of-war between satisfying their personal desires and living up to high-minded, altruistic commitments.
A crew of orcas, one wearing an “Eat the Rich” T-shirt, debating the merits of violent revolution from below versus incremental change.
A dramatization of the hurricane intensity scale, describing the impact in human terms rather than wind velocities.
An elementary school teacher lamenting the struggle of her students as they navigate the fallout from the latest climate disaster. Heartbroken, yet heartened, as she observes the resilience and empathy that the crisis drew out of her students.
That was the first act. The second act remains mostly theoretical, since Sunday was cut short by rain a few minutes after intermission. It’s a tough break for a production that had only scheduled three performances and saw Friday and Saturday completely rained out.
But “Now Is Still Here” is still here now. At least for one last makeup performance Friday. Bring yur blankets, lawn chairs, rain slickers, and cross your fingers that Mother Nature plays along.
“Now Is Still Here” performs its final show at 6:30 p.m. on Friday at Somerville Community Growing Center, 22 Vinal Ave., Somerville.
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