Climate activism takes centre stage in ‘Sea Sick’ by journalist Alanna Mitchell

“The good thing about me being a journalist is that I can’t stop asking questions,” says researcher, reporter and playwright Alanna Mitchell at the beginning of her solo play, “Sea Sick.”

“I know a good story when I stumble on one,” she continues. And she should — she worked as a news reporter for the Globe and Mail for 14 years.

Before “Sea Sick” was a play, it was an award-winning non-fiction book, exploring climate change through a lens of carbon in the world’s waters. It followed Mitchell on a sprawling journey to the bottom of the ocean. She travelled from Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, to the Gulf of Mexico, to the beaches of Zanzibar, in Tanzania, taking in the sights and sounds of the sea, and documenting its crucial role in everyday human life.

In 2014, with the help of theatre makers Ravi Jain and Franco Boni, the book became a play — in Mitchell’s words, “a non-fiction play performed by a nonactor.” “Sea Sick: The Play” was nominated for a Dora Award in 2014 before touring extensively around the world. (It has a short Toronto run Oct. 5-8 before heading to Reykjavik as part of the 2022 Arctic Circle Assembly.)

Mitchell realized while giving talks on her book that live storytelling enhanced her writing and people’s connections with it. Little by little, she started shaping her performance, lasering in on the magic of the science within the book.

“I started just giving talks all over the world about this book,” said Mitchell in an interview.

“And as I did it, I was awful at it. I was packing in way too much information. But I just gradually got a little better at it. And in the end, I realized that the stories that are interesting are stories of the scientists —because they’re fascinating, fascinating people, and they’re in love with what they do. I’m drawn to them as people,” she continued.

“That’s the exercise for me: taking these stories I reported as a journalist, and then fleshed out as a non-fiction author, and now translating them into theatre. But I’m still a working journalist. That’s the lens I bring to this journey we go on.”

Mitchell, who won the 2008 Atkinson Fellowship in Public Policy, understands the urgency of the work she’s doing: live performance is perhaps the most immediate way to disseminate sprawling data on climate change carbon emissions.

“There weren’t that many plays about climate when we did the show in 2014,” said Mitchell.

“It’s a hard topic. It’s a really rough topic to do in a way that pierces consciousness — it’s around us all the time now. It’s become more and more urgent as these eight years have passed.

“It was relevant when we first hit the stage in 2014 — but now it’s urgent. We can see the effects of what scientists predicted, and what we as journalists wrote all those years ago — those have now manifested in our backyard. So people are trying to figure out how to relate to it.”

The circumstances around the play have changed since 2014: climate activism has become more widespread, the issue has come further foward in mainstream political discourse. The issues in “Sea Sick” have only become more dire.

“People are in despair over this,” said Mitchell.

“Part of the rationale of the play in 2014 was to try to give people some hope, that it was not the end of the story, that there was still some way to take this. Now … there’s just so much information. It’s hard to take in.

“But the play is unusual in that it’s not interested in shaming people. If you come to see this play, you’ll see it’s an honest conversation about what’s happening, what it means and what the stakes are.”

And that conversation is oh-so-detailed, but all are welcome to take part.

“I think people go to a play like this expecting to be chastised. And that’s not where I am. That’s not interesting to me at all,” said Mitchell.

“What happens in this piece is that all these bits of information that are floating around get woven in to a whole cloth. The audience gets a moment to absorb what this all means, a big picture. And people hear me say, ‘I have not given up.’ I make that offering to the audience.”

“Despite all these years of researching and thinking about it and writing about it, I am not in a place of despair at this moment.”

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