Theatre making and storytelling on the margins: the lived experience of climate change in Dhaka

ABSTRACT

This paper reflects on my experience of using personal stories to create a Pot Gan performance exploring the complexity of how lives are lived, how the experience of climate change is shaped by poverty and struggle, but also strength in facing adversity. Bringing real stories to the stage had more meaning, emotion and personal connection for audiences, while also challenging them to work through a solution to the problems the characters onstage faced. It calls on us to treat their stories with an ethics of care, recognising that each person’s story belongs to that person alone.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change
• theatre for development
• personal stories
• ethics

Acknowledgements

This project was funded by the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) with an Environment and Sustainability Research Grant, the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Research in Film Award, and several grants from the University of Manchester, including: the Faculty of Humanities Strategic Investment Research Fund, Social Responsibility Research Stimulation Fund, Research and Impact Stimulation Fund, and the Higher Education Innovation Fund: Eco-voucher award. The author acknowledges the institutional support of the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Dhaka, particularly our project partners Ahasan Khan, Syed Jamil Ahmed, Sudip Chakroborthy and their students’ whose talent and hard work made the Pot Gan a reality. The author thanks Farhana Ahmed and Thatitun Mariam for their translation during fieldwork. For those who live in Duaripara, your generous participation, support and kindness made this project possible; thank you. Finally, the author thanks the editor and reviewers. I bear full responsibility for the text in the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The three live Pot Gan performances in Dhaka were attended by an audience of 634 people. It was performed in Duaripara informal settlement. This performance was not to serve as an awareness campaign in the project area; instead, it was aimed at engaging research participants and the wider community to see the results of the research that they were central to generating, providing them with a chance to give additional feedback on its key themes. The Pot Gan was also performed to international and Bangladeshi academics, practitioners, policy makers, planners, donors, students and key publics at the 10th International Conference on Community-based Adaptation to Climate Change and the British Council in Dhaka to build awareness and action on the ‘everyday’ realities and impact of climate change on low-income people in Dhaka. In addition, the video of the live Pot Gan performance has attracted over 10,000 views.

2 While the script is based on personal stories shared with me, elements of the Pot Gan have been fictionalised (e.g. pseudonyms have been used, characters have been merged, events have been combined) to ensure the anonymity of research participants and the people they mentioned during interviews and focus group discussions.

3 See Jordan (2018) for an analysis of 15 video interviews and 62 online questionnaire surveys carried out to capture audience feedback on the Pot Gan performances.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The University of Manchester: Faculty of Humanities Strategic Investment Research Fund, Higher Education Innovation Fund Eco-voucher Award, Research and Impact Stimulation Fund, Social Responsibility Research Stimulation Fund; the Royal Geographical Society Environment and Sustainability Research Grant; and the Arts and Humanities Research Council's Research in Film Award.

Notes on contributors

Joanne Catherine Jordan

Dr Joanne Jordan is an environmental social scientist, working at the interface of climate change and development with bilateral donors, policy research institutes, non-governmental organisations, universities and arts and cultural organisations. She specialises in three broad interlinked themes: climate resilience, adaptation and vulnerability; risk perception and culture; and climate communication.