the British Council
All At Once I Saw A Crowd
7 Billion Humans This Year, 10.1 Billion by the End of the Century
Over three years in the making, ALL AT ONCE I SAW A CROWD is a bilingual English & Chinese project that aims to weave many different art forms together to create a live theatre production exploring a core biomedical issue: the impact of the exploding global population. Imagine a CASABLANCA for a crowded planet.
From the first Terra Nova has drawn our partners from Hong Kong and Macau into this project as we believe this topic cannot be addressed without a Chinese perspective.
We are now entering phase four of the development of our project: a final year of work to create a production supported by a ancillary activities that will disseminate the science behind the story, and allow for further learning. These are: an interactive exhibition, website, phone app, workshops and education materials. The package will premiere in 2013. We are still actively welcoming interested scientists to the project.
Our aim for the production is to to create emotionally compelling characters whose dramatic stories allow a wide range of people to engage with the issues that which we believe sit at the core the population explosion:
- the facts and demographics of the human population explosion, as well as the politics and ethics around birth and birth control
- an understanding of the carrying capacity of the environments on which humans depend (both past societies and our imagined future)
- policy and ethics around the our right to die, including a range of personal and political possibilities in a future with an aging population, where resources are scarce
Our play is framed by the story of Claire, a woman activist torn between two men, one Irish and one Chinese. We first meet Claire as a young population control activist in the present and follow her through to old age, as she struggles to choose the time and manner of her death. Set in 2012, her story is parallelled by two others: medieval lovers living in the twilight of the viking colony on Greenland and two young Hong Kong Chinese coping with the reality of our world in 2060. The story takes place in Greenland, Belfast, London and Hong Kong.
ALL AT ONCE I SAW A CROWD features film, animation, puppetry and original music. It is being created through years of professional collaboration across the globe, coupled with outreach work into a range of local communities in our partnership nations; built workshop by workshop, draft by draft, image by image, always striving to overcome language and cultural barriers to create beautiful and engaging theatre.
To find out more go to:
Scientists, Advisors & Science Content
The Project Blog (by and for the team)
Picture Gallery (the workshops and activities to date)
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