The Weatherwoman

Australian theatre generally ignored the overheated climate change conversation, and so missed being able to offer the real reason for hot weather and rising seas. The identity of the anonymous Weatherwoman, whose revolutionary theory is expounded in this play, will perhaps always remain unknown because at the time these events occurred the Climate Change Corporation (CCC) omitted to ask her name.

* * *

CHARACTERS:

LUCIUS BRAY is a happy hypocrite, about fifty years of age. He is the CEO of the CCC. Thickening at the waist, his career was grown by the late-in-life discovery of climate warming (sic). A reliable doomsday source, his face is familiar from his many media performances and encounters with interviewers who, in a kindly manner, simply disremember his earlier unfulfilled apocalyptic pronouncements.

LIBBY and DENNIS are senior bureaucrats of the CCC. Twitter-implanted individuals, they are of little importance. When not actually speaking they tend to be doing things with their smartphones.

WOMAN could be a university academic or blogger or perhaps a Greens Senate candidate pre normalisation makeover for her official campaign photo.

MUSTAPHA is a security officer.

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VOICES IN A BLACKOUT.

VOICE 1: Ouch.

VOICE 2: Who’s poking me?

VOICE 3: Sorry.

VOICE 1: [Happily.] I’m getting the hang of this.

VOICE 2: [Icily.] That’s me your getting the hang of!

VOICE 3: Watch where you’re poking your elbow.

VOICE 1: Be careful, something’s falling.

[Sound of loud thump and glass breaking.]

VOICE 2: Lucius?

VOICE 3: I think I broke something.

LIGHTS COME UP.

An office with several desks. Back stage left large windows looking out onto the city and over the lake towards Parliament House, which is clearly visible. During the play the light outside varies as Canberra experiences extreme changes of weather to which no one onstage pays any attention. Back stage right is a large sign: Climate Change Corporation. Near it is a portable whiteboard on which is written: “NB. Hide the decline!” The period is the present, the time somewhere between late public servant breakfast and early public servant morning chai. If the audience could smell it, the office is perfumed with the sweet aroma of cinnamon chai.

Centre stage facing the audience are three business-suited figures wearing large, frightening, larger-than-life-size Halloween masks of Waleed Aly—smiling. The centre figure is standing above the corpse of a very broken slim computer screen he has knocked from a desk.

LUCIUS: [Centre figure.] Oh shit.

LIBBY: [Right figure.] What have you done?

LUCIUS: I couldn’t see.

DENNIS: [Left figure.] I still can’t.

LUCIUS: Someone pushed me.

The three characters address the audience.

LUCIUS: Note to the audience. Do not adjust your sets.

DENNIS: The frightening facial covering we wear …

LIBBY: Is neither a religious fetish nor a sickening example of cultural appropriation …

LUCIUS: This mask is the official battledress of the Climate Crusaders. Guaranteed to spread fear among our enemies, the climate sceptics.

DENNIS: In the future, all young Australians will spend two years in our good science ranks.

LIBBY: We come in peace …

LUCIUS: Climate science is the science of peace … and the young will be our National Climate Science gladiators.

LIBBY: A golden army of youth who will attack bad climate …

DENNIS: Unclean air …

LUCIUS: Coal mines and power stations …

LIBBY: Fracking and damming, digging and burning …

LUCIUS: And the enemy who refuse to imagine our bright, green future. [Ominous pause.] Where the climate is under threat, there you will find the Climate Crusaders, battalions of climate warriors ready to fight the fight of true science against spoliation and impoverishing capitalist progress.

LIBBY: No more will Australia be the sunburnt country …

LUCIUS: We will protect and cover the land with good climate management, wind farms and solar powered coffee makers.

LIBBY: Climate Crusaders is the army of the Climate Change Corporation, ready …

DENNIS: and willing …

LUCIUS: to wage war on bad science …

DENNIS: and wrong thinking.

LIBBY: And we never get stopped at airport security checks.

[They remove their masks and reveal three First Division public servants.]

DENNIS: Look at the computer.

LIBBY: You hit me.

LUCIUS: It was an accident, you’ll be right.

DENNIS: What will we tell Security if they complain about the noise and the breakage?

LIBBY: Just say we were doing Climate Crusader manoeuvres around the office.

LUCIUS: I don’t think this is a moment for all that truth.

DENNIS: Then, just say they did it.

LIBBY: Who?

DENNIS: The nutters. Just say the climate sceptics did it.

LUCIUS: Think they’ll believe it?

DENNIS: Course they will.

[An office phone rings. No one moves. Phone continues ringing. LUCIUS picks it up.]

LUCIUS: Hello? What? No. Noise? No. No. Noo. Don’t bother coming up. It’s a long way. No. No problem. Climate testing. Bushfire evasionary tactics. Conservation, sustainability, that sort of thing. Saving the planet tends to be a bit noisy at times. No. No problem. [Hangs up.] No problem. Mustapha’s on duty. She’s sweet. He’s very understanding.

DENNIS: Let’s clear up and get back to work.

LUCIUS: Is there an appointment?

LIBBY: Yes, a staffer from the Attorney General’s department is due.

DENNIS: It’s about the new law—clause 18D of the amended Racial and Climate Discrimination Act. The proper wording. The proper penalties for sceptics.

LUCIUS: Oh. [They clear away the masks and broken computer.]

A WOMAN enters the office. In the matter of age she vainly aspires to be thirty-forever. Her dressing intentions are political, abrupt, and not subject to change. On her head is a repulsive tam-o’-shanter in red, gold and black wool—it has been placed at what may have been supposed to have been a jaunty angle. The remainder of her clothes reflect supportive though indecisive gender confusion decisions. She carries a large, black, art portfolio which is covered in stickers endorsing the Friends of the ABC, gay marriage and other dismal causes.

LUCIUS: [Sniffing reflectively.] What’s that smell?

[They all turn and see her.]

LIBBY: [Aside.] Attorney General’s. Wrong side of the lake.

DENNIS: [Aside.] Smells like my mother.

LUCIUS: [Aside.] Patchouli oil. I haven’t smelt it in years.

DENNIS: Hello. Can we help? You must be here about the new laws?

WOMAN: I am.

LUCIUS: Good, good.

WOMAN: I come from Gaia.

LUCIUS: That’s nice. [Aside.] Must be the name of the new department head.

WOMAN: [To Lucius.] I’m a great admirer of your work.

LUCIUS: Thank you.

WOMAN: And your TV shows, your public addresses, your speeches. I saw you last week at the Sydney Writers’ Festival when you accepted the Voltaire Award.

LUCIUS: Oh, good.

WOMAN: And at your keynote address when you defended free speech. You were inspiring. I was part of the standing ovation when you suggested banning coal power, petrol and Rupert Murdoch.

LUCIUS: Ah, yes.

WOMAN: And your passionate plea for the criminalisation of scepticism.

LUCIUS: For questioning the settled science.

WOMAN: We need action.

ALL THREE: Exactly.

WOMAN: There need to be new laws.

ALL THREE: Exactly.

LIBBY: Isn’t that what we have been saying?

DENNIS: We thought prison terms.

LIBBY: Stiff sentences.

WOMAN: That seems right.

LUCIUS: The minister agrees?

WOMAN: [Not understanding.] The minister agrees?

LUCIUS: Well, this is nice. That we all agree.

WOMAN: Climate warming …

ALL THREE: Climate Change.

WOMAN: Climate change. It comes from man tampering with nature.

LUCIUS: You are so right.

DENNIS: Look at the seas rising.

LIBBY: The icebergs melting.

LUCIUS: No rain. [Outside it is pouring.]

WOMAN: I’ve brought a graph. May I? [Takes a large graph from her satchel and places it on whiteboard.] You see the rise in temperatures, cyclones, bushfires and fogs is indisputable. The rise is so sharp, it looks like, like …

DENNIS: A hockey stick?

WOMAN: Not quite.

LUCIUS: That’s a relief.

WOMAN: Male tampering with nature. Women must save the planet.

LIBBY: Exactly my point. [To WOMAN.] I’m always saying that.

LUCIUS: We need evolutionary organismic biology …

DENNIS: And laws to bang up sceptics, and smokers.

LIBBY: Especially smokers. And we should tax sugar.

WOMAN: I blame Gregory Goodwin Pincus.

LUCIUS: Sorry?

LIBBY: Who’s he?

DENNIS: Jewish?

WOMAN: The man who started it all. The male who corrupted nature.

DENNIS: Did he?

LUCIUS: Is that the Department’s view or just the Attorney General’s?

WOMAN: My graph explains everything.

DENNIS: Must have a graph.

LIBBY: Sounds scientific.

WOMAN: It is absolutely undeniable. The rise in temperature correlates exactly with the growth in production.

LUCIUS: Ah, yes. The Industrial Revolution, capitalism, the markets.

LIBBY: It’s absolutely what we have been saying.

WOMAN: No, no. Not the Industrial Revolution. The Sexual Revolution. The production of the pill. When Pincus invented the pill he destroyed natural childbirth. Gaia has been defecunded by Man. Her natural reproductive cycle has been destroyed.

DENNIS: Sounds feasible.

WOMAN: It’s obvious really. The pill increased sexual encounters and automatically increased the production of noxious body gases given off in sexual intercourse. This wild increase in bad gases, which can no doubt be scientifically documented, has changed the world’s climate.

DENNIS: Have the noxious gases got names?

LIBBY: We could get another research grant, and a bigger office.

WOMAN: I’ve made a graph. It’s irrefutable. Invention of the pill. Production of the pill. Increased sexual activity. Rise in bad gases. Rise in temperatures and melting icecaps. The line for the rise in hot air since the invention of the pill is as clear as [Indicates her graphic graph as she grapples for a descriptive term.] as a cricket bat.

LUCIUS: Uhm, I wonder …

WOMAN: And abortion murder must be outlawed. Dead babies are an offence to Gaia. Normalism must be embraced. Gaia wants natural childbirth and an end to the killing of her babies. Feminism must rise to the challenge. We Earth Mothers must embrace our destinies, and ban abortion.

LIBBY: That’s ridiculous.

WOMAN: When women started playing with what was natural they hurt Gaia. A man invented the pill. Only a feminist movement for a return to reality can help us lower temperatures, stop droughts and bushfires and save the Barrier Reef. Ban the pill.

LUCIUS: Call Security.

[MUSTAPHA enters. He is in his early thirties, is dressed as a typical security officer, has a pronounced black beard, and is seated in a wheelchair.]

MUSTAPHA: I just happened to be rolling by.

LIBBY: Get her out.

LUCIUS: [To the WOMAN, who is leaving unwillingly.] We will forward your graph in due course. [To MUSTAPHA.] How did she get past Security?

MUSTAPHA: When she said she was from Gaia, we thought she was kosher.

[MUSTAPHA directs WOMAN towards exit.]

WOMAN: [Turns back as she steps out of the office.] Morons! Fascists! Men!

[A strident alarm goes off. MUSTAPHA looks back before he exits.]

LUCIUS [To Mustapha.] Don’t be alarmed. It’s a call for the Climate Crusaders.

[All three characters look towards where the buzzer is sounding, without moving. The telephones on their desks all start ringing. They look at them without answering. Then, all their mobiles begin ringing and they immediately pick up and answer. There are animated but garbled conversations around the room.]

DENNIS: Social media is alerting us to a climate crisis.

LIBBY: We must leave immediately. The Prime Minister is sending his personal plane.

LUCIUS: To Sydney.

DENNIS: What is it, an earthquake?

LIBBY: Rising seas?

LUCIUS: It’s a climate warming crisis. The weather forecast has predicted rain, hail and snow for Mardi Gras weekend.

DENNIS: And lots of ice.

LUCIUS: They need us immediately. Heavy weapons are called for. We will have to perform an El Niño dance.

LIBBY: It’s that serious?

LUCIUS: It is. Bare flesh, cold weather, it’s positively un-Bacchanalian. Sydney’s reputation will never recover. Now, everyone prepare. [They walk in single file towards the back of the stage, passing behind a desk. As they do so they each put on a mask, taking care that the face is not visible to the audience, and then collect a suitcase on wheels which has been hidden behind the desk. Then in single file they return to stand in a line facing the audience. It is an impressive tableau. Three, large, grinning, Bob Brown masks with first-class luggage.]

THE THREE BOBS: [In unison to the audience.] Climate Crusaders are GO!

[At the same time they give the audience a high-five and begin their march towards the exit as BLACKOUT.]