100 Plays to Save the World

'We – artists, thinkers, creators – have a responsibility to communicate the truth of the climate emergency. The world is shape-shifting and our culture must too.'

This book is a guide to one hundred brilliant plays addressing the most urgent and important issue of our time: the climate crisis. 

The plays – drawn from around the world, written by one hundred different writers, and demonstrating a vast span of styles, genres and cast sizes – all speak to an aspect of the climate emergency. Encompassing both famous plays and lesser-known works, the selection includes recent writing that explicitly wrestles with these issues, as well as classic texts in which these resonances now ring out clearly.

Each play is explored in a concise essay illuminating key themes, and highlighting its contribution to our understanding of climate issues, with sections including Resources, Energy, Migration, Responsibility, Fightback and Hope.

100 Plays to Save the World is a book to provoke as well as inspire – to start conversations, to inform debate, to challenge our thinking, and to be a launch pad for future productions. It is also an empowering resource for theatre directors, producers, teachers, youth leaders and writers looking for plays that speak to our present moment.

Above all, it is a call to arms, to step up, think big, and unleash theatre's power to imagine a better future into being.

The book includes a foreword by Daze Aghaji, a leading youth climate justice activist.

'This book is a kind of miracle, a thrilling compendium of plays that speak to the enormous environmental crisis of our time. Freestone and O'Hare have exquisite taste and brilliant analysis, illuminating plays I've never heard of, as well as plays I thought I knew. 100 Plays to Save the World should be required reading for everyone who believes in the power of theatre to move the world; I will certainly never plan a season again without referring to it.' Oskar Eustis, Artistic Director, The Public Theater, New York

'This book is dynamite. Through lively play analysis and accessible environmental know-how, it will galvanise theatre-makers to step up and artists to be heard. Theatre must play its part in the climate fight and this book shows us how.' Kwame Kwei-Armah, Artistic Director, Young Vic Theatre, London

Elizabeth Freestone is a theatre director, creative consultant and environmentalist. She has directed plays for the Royal Shakespeare Company, Manchester Royal Exchange, the Citizens Theatre Glasgow, the Young Vic and Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory, amongst others. She is a former Artistic Director of Pentabus, a new work touring company. She offers strategic advice and creative and environmental consultancy in both a paid and volunteer capacity for various organisations, as well as teaching and mentoring young artists. She has a Masters degree in Environmental Humanities from Bath Spa University.

Jeanie O'Hare is a short-story writer, playwright and project consultant for theatre and film. She originally trained as a sculptor. She has worked for the Royal Court Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company, Druid Theatre, and was Chair of Playwriting at Yale School of Drama. Most recently she was the Director of New Work Development at the Public Theater in New York. Her focus is on scouting, developing and producing new writers who tell original and important stories.