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The Contingency Plan

This diptych of plays formed part of an endeavour to find an appropriate dramatic form for a story about climate change. It developed from Waters’ engagement with environmental and political questions in previous pieces such as Clare’s Walk (2006) and a collaborative short play A Plague of Peoples written with writer George Gotts for Hampstead Theatre in 2006. It also grew out of a paper, 'Heat-mapping' that Waters gave on dramatising climate change at Bath Spa conference April 2007 and a comment piece on the same issue written for the Guardian in October 2006. The research process for writing The Contingency Plan was recorded in a notebook that formed part of an exhibition on Notebooks as part of the Cambridge Festival of Ideas in October 2008. The research itself was undertaken on a number of fronts. Waters worked with research scientists at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, one of whom, Professor John King participated in a public event post-show with Waters during the run of the show. Waters also worked with 'Tipping Point' attending their conference in September 2008 and becoming a cultural consultant for them; he wrote about some of these experiences of research for the Guardian Stage website during the Copenhagen conference in 2009. Waters also interviewed and visited staff at RSPB Titchwell Norfolk, to ground the very specific world of On the Beach (one of the two plays) in terms of marine impacts of climate change and so-called 'managed retreat'; he also met with civil servants in the Department of Energy and Climate Change in November 2008 to develop the ideas for Resilience, the other play. The research process and findings have formed the basis for papers given at Grinnell College, Iowa USA, September 2010, and UEA in March 2012.