A scene from Toshinobu Kojo’s play “The Fear Begins”.SANSUYU THEATER COMPANY
Kim Myung-hwa The author is a playwright and director.
It did not seem real. There had been no rain, yet the destructive force of the flood that swept through Nepal’s Trishuli River region looked like something from a disaster movie. I thought we had become familiar with ecological destruction caused by global warming: torrential rain, massive wildfires, shrinking polar ice and rising sea levels. But a mountain glacier tsunami? I had no idea it could be so powerful.
Is this only Nepal’s story? The heat wave has ended, cool breezes are blowing and fireworks decorate the weekend night sky. Daily life seems pleasant again. But what if a crevasse lurks just beyond this comfortable existence — a disaster that could swallow everything the moment we take one more step?
The theater world has also begun grappling with climate change and ecological destruction. Productions are minimizing sets and lighting as they consider their environmental impact. Plays once focused mainly on conflicts among people are widening their scope to examine human responsibility for the ecological crisis. The stage is becoming a place not only to portray human conflict but also to ask what humans have done to the wider world around them.
Chris Bush’s “(Not) the End of the World” (2021), recently staged by a Korean theater company, asks about choice and responsibility. The world is not predetermined. It is merely the result of choices we have made, and the future will be, too. Bush breaks the drama into numerous scenes, presenting different choices and the different outcomes they might produce. The structure itself becomes a question posed to the audience: Faced with a future that remains open, how are we going to live?
Toshinobu Kojo’s “The Fear Begins” (2013) and Lucy Kirkwood’s “The Children” (2016) are even more searing. Both concern people dealing with the aftermath of radiation leaks from nuclear power plant accidents. They turn attention toward those left to confront the consequences after catastrophe has already occurred. In “The Children,” three scientists decide to enter a deadly nuclear plant, refusing to leave the next generation to clean up a catastrophe created by their own generation.
Nepal has declared a national day of mourning, and rescue operations are still underway. The devastation there forces a question that reaches far beyond one country: Who will take responsibility for this disaster?
The future is not fixed. It can still change according to what we choose now, what consequences we are willing to confront and what responsibilities we are prepared to fully accept.
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
