In the midst of Climate Week North East, The Lemon Tree hosted Penny Chivas’ ‘Burnt Out’. A solo dance theatre work centred around our changing climate, utilising spoken word and movement to take us through Penny’s own experience of wild bushfires in Australia.
Starting with collecting matchsticks scattered across the floor in complete silence, it feels ominous when we as an audience are so used to listening to pre-show music before a performance begins.
Once Chivas has collected every matchstick, she introduces herself and shares a graph made by her environmental geochemist father in the 1970s, showing that we were aware of carbon emissions and fossil fuels having a direct link and as a world, we continue to turn a blind eye.
Weaving words and movement into a reflective story, everything is purposeful, deliberate and detailed. Chivas takes us through a variety of emotions; guilt, panic, denial, and sorrow. Her fluidity of her movement contrasts the brash mechanical whirs and sirens throughout the piece. It is a painfully beautiful piece of work, Chivas conveys a clear and compelling message on the Climate Crisis.
A bare stage is complimented with simple but effective lighting by David Bowes. The single spotlights symbolise the last light of nature, as Chivas tries to escape the inescapable boiling point of our climate.
Paul Michael Henry’s music and soundscapes set the tone perfectly with birds mimicking emergency sirens and thrashing blades of helicopters, providing that tension and peace at different points in the work.
Chivas only uses a handful of props throughout the performance, but they are staggeringly poignant. Her fathers graph, a lump of coal and matchsticks, which she lights and we watch it become ‘Burnt Out’ at the end of the performance.
The plain white boiler suit Chivas wears slowly becomes stained with coal soot as the work progresses, creating the idea of ongoing pollution continuing to stain the progress of Climate Change.
The beauty of this work is its simplicity. Burnt Out provides a gut-punching message and leaves the audience reflective on the future of the climate. It’s not only a personal story of Penny’s experience of past bushfires, but an important warning as we see our local areas destroyed by the increasingly warm summers and freezing winters.
Burnt Out was performed as part of Climate Week North East, a week-long campaign full of events to show what we can do to make a difference and reduce our carbon footprint. Find out more at www.climateweeknortheast.org and https://www.aberdeenperformingarts.com/festivals-and-series/climate-week-north-east/
Theatre Scotland 
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