Theatre + Debate
We talk about anxiety, the future, frustration, personal
and collaborative transformation
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Mr. English appears with amnesia. He doesn't remember anything as he enters the class with increasing anxiety. Students try to help him calm down. They must speak to him in English because he does not understand Catalan nor Spanish. He connects with his breathing and slowly, with the help of the students and he melody of a song, he starts remembering.
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Then he remembers who he is and what he was doing before coming to the school. Mr. English is Robert, an English biologist and scientist who was doing fieldwork with an NGO denouncing forest destruction, water waste, emissions, etc. He'd fallen from a tree and hit his head, and couldn't remember anything. Then he begins to give data on the climate emergency and it's effects, some of which are already seen (drought). He also mentions the wars, nuclear power, nuclear weapons. Anxiety grows and seems to have no end... Why don't governments do what is needed to stop the climate and biodiversity crisis? How can I help my and the world's wellbeing?
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Discussion themes:
Anxiety is a basic emotion that we all experience. It is normal and healthy. It's our body's reaction to stress. It usually appears as a normal response to a danger or threat. It is aimed at adapting and preserving the species, it helps us to face stressful situations and to have better performance. But what happens when feelings of anxiety are very intense, they often appear, or do external causes seem not to leave? (climate crisis).
We try and manage them “continuing with life -business as usual- as if nothing was heppening”? or do we take it seriously, only to fall into anxiety, frustration, fears when we see such institutional inactivity? Can we do something for our well-being and that of our future generations?
-Emotional awareness, interaction, interdependence, culture of peace.-
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English: Part 1 is quite a simple use of the present and past simple. When Robert starts talking about the consequences, then uses the past, the present and the future tenses. Then conditional: What would happen in 15 years time? “What if”, what would we say? (“if we had only noticed” . “If we had known, then...”) using various forms of the conditional.
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