Dawn King’s new play at the Donmar imagines a reckoning for environmental chaos, presided over by the kids who inherit the mess. We join the writer and cast, including stars of Heartstopper, in rehearsal
In 2019, the playwright Dawn King was booking flights to New York for a writing residency. It was the day of the UK’s first large-scale School Strikes for Climate, a movement launched by Greta Thunberg in Sweden. Checking her news feeds, King – who had meant to join the protests – realised she had clean forgotten. She winces at the memory.
“I thought, ‘Wow, you think you’re so green, such a liberal, but you’re not helping, are you? In the future you’ll be judged as harshly as everyone else. What are you actually doing?’”