This is a transcription of the one man show at the Royal Court last month. The Royal Court usually publishes its playscripts to coincide with performances. Numerous interviews and articles have made it clear that the authors intend this piece to have the maximum political impact. For this reason it seems only fair that the entire world, and not simply the few hundred people who attended the performance, should have access to the ideas of someone who was described in one review as “one of the world’s most influential climate scientists”. * * * * * I’m here to talk about the future.
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I’ve got a comment in moderation at
http://www.climate-resistance.org/2014/11/2071-and-counting.html
replying to Ian Woolley. I reproduce it here since it expresses what I feel about the Rapley/Macmillan oeuvre. A play put on at the Royal Court is supposed to mean something for goodness sake. I wasted six or seven or maybe twelve hours of my life transcribing this rubbish, in order that the world could appreciate it for the rubbish it is.
Ian Woolley (November 15, 2014 at 4:56 pm) I had your comment in mind while I forced myself to transcribe a samizdat recording of 2071, especially your last line about “Scientism isn’t only eating away at politics, but more everyday forms of imagination too.” It’s finished, and can be read at https://geoffchambers.wordpress.com/2014/12/02/2071-script-by-duncan-macmillan-and-chris-rapley/
though I doubt whether anyone will bother. The weirdest thing to my mind is that Rapley claims that Macmillan wrote it. It’s just not possible that a creative writer had a hand in it. Even as a parody of a very boring person trying to win the Nobel Prize for Boring it doesn’t work. Not only has every form of imagination been squeezed out of it, there’s not an ounce of science in it either. The only thing that turns Rapley on it seems is data collection. I’ve done that, centuries ago when I worked in market research. Rapley musing on the ice core melting in his hand is about as interesting as me thrilling to the first sheaf of questionnaires I received from an interviewer who’d been interrogating housewives about their preferred washing powder in a shopping mall in Slough. There is not an ounce of science in Rapley’s hour-long discourse, not a single example of scientific reasoning. Merely facts facts facts gradgrinding his audience of Sloane Square doom cultists into willing submission. Orwell imagined a future of being stamped on by a jackboot – forever. Macmillan and Rapley have gone one better in creating a world where Guardian readers will pay fifteen quid to be hit over the head with the Guinness Book of Records and like it.
“I’ve got a comment in moderation…” – apologies, I only just saw it buried under the flood of waffle from Lewis Deane.
It is a bit of a flood of waffle isn’t it? Even at his most 4.15 in the morning though I find I can read Lewis Deane’s stuff through to the end – whereas that above (Geoff: “history must never forget that this happened”), no. Not possible. Rapley should’ve stayed up till three, drunk 11 cans of Stella and thought better of it.
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Copyright laws cannot possibly apply to speeches none hears and texts nobody reads
perhaps they are hoping for a Streisand effect
I have a quick question about the transcript, if you don’t mind emailing me back.