Kathrin Röggla

"Thirty years from now, when we will no longer hear the landing approach of airplanes, when it will have long since been cancelled, and when the absence of traffic sounds will coincide with the arrival of our grandchildren, or something similar to grandchildren, we will know something. Because something will follow, right? Something will have been born ... Be that as it may, we will have entertained ourselves, we will have had a long time to breathe. We will have seen something coming," surmises the WOMAN WITH FUTURE in Kathrin Rögglas' play about how we deal with climate change.

In her research for this work commissioned by the Staatsschauspiel Dresden, the author met activists, eco-initiatives, entrepreneurs and environmental officials in Dresden and the surrounding area of Saxony, where water shortages and destructive flooding have become the most pressing ecological problem in recent decades.

"Everything is far away. Much too far away. The catastrophes that take place are always somewhere else, even if they take place in real terms on our doorstep. They are still called natural disasters. Our knowledge about them also keeps its distance," reads Kathrin Rögglas' preface to the piece, which describes failed communication, narratives of inconceivability, departmental thinking, and bureaucratic hurdles as blocks to action in our serious attempts to save the world.

But how can we escape the mishmash of alarmism, empty political promises, fears and denial? What is the stage and who is the audience in the climate debate? How can science make itself understood? Do we need a "short-term China" or rather grassroots democracy to finally think of the big picture, even though we feel that not even communal survival is assured? And how can we care about the future when the problems of the present are already eating us up?
In her text, Kathrin Röggla repeatedly drives the reality of authorities, apparatuses, plenary meetings and press conferences into the comical and grotesque. And she draws on the myth of Jonah and the whale as a metaphor for present-day drought and flood disasters. As in the biblical story, the characters' actions in the face of advancing environmental destruction are characterized by mutual recriminations, delusions of grandeur, threats and echoing warnings. Is hoping for the next generation all that is left? (Announcement Staatsschauspiel Dresden)