Deep History

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Climate change was never as exciting a theatrical topic until Australian playwright-performer David Finnigan arrived with his one-man show Deep History at The Public Theater. This riveting, shocking show traces human milestones over the last 75,000 years leading up to the Canberra, New South Wales fires of 2019-2020, the worst in human history. Using photographs, demonstrations and a chart he creates, the charismatic Finnigan will keep you enthralled but also enlighten you on what needs to be done.

According to Finnigan, climate change is not something that is coming but here already. For him, we are living in the Climate Change Era which will last throughout our lives, but is not here to stay. “Deep history” is the term for the study of human origins in the distant past before recorded history; we need to know our past to understand our future.

Three days before the end of December 2019, David received a call from his father, a climate scientist, in hospital due to a recurring injury when a mountain he was climbing collapsed in 1969 due to the thaw of climate change. He has a favor to ask: if he sent David his notes for a paper looking at human society as a thermodynamic system, could he write up his six turning points into a rough draft. David takes on the assignment hoping to find the moral or lesson for us now from these six turning point moments. At the same time that he takes on this assignment, David hears from his best friend Jack, his actor partner, back in his hometown of Canberra, Australia, that he and his family are living through the worst fire season in recorded history.

Using unbelievable photographs of the destruction of the fires as well as historical pictures of the milestones in human history, Finnigan tells his two stories. A demonstration of sugar in a funnel shows the increase in population over the last 75,000 years. Using the six milestones, Finnigan brings us up to the present in 2019 and the out of control Australian fires due to lack of controlled burns to reduce the dangers: 75,000 years ago: the Toba volcano that decimated the world’s population with its ash, lava and tsunami; by 68,000 years ago, humans were on every continent; 27,000 years ago marks the death of the last Neanderthal leaving homo sapiens the last surviving hominid; 11,000 years ago represents the end of the Ice Age when the land shrank from rising oceans; 500 years ago, the European sailors arrived in America bringing illness that killed nine out of every ten Native Americans, and finally 75 years ago were the first nuclear tests in New Mexico in 1945 ushering in the Nuclear Age.

Finnigan has found morals for most of these events but in the face of the destruction in New South Wales he realizes that there is no lesson in these deep time stories that can guide us through climate change. He realizes that we have to work together to solve the current problems. We hear of Jack and his family’s incredible journey to escape from the 156 out-of-control fires in New South Wales as of the last day of 2019. The results are mind-boggling but the human race survives this catastrophe, this time. He reminds us that in February the rains begin putting an end to the fire season in Australia and celebrations abound.

Directed by Annette Mees, Deep History is a real eye opener but it is not depressing. Finnigan is so upbeat and compelling a storyteller it is not possible not be pulled into events as he describes, telling the history of the world from the point of view of a mythic woman who appears in all eras. The show is punctuated by Australian pop songs that figure in both Finnigan’s life and the history he is recounting. The video design by Hayley Egan will sear the proof of climate change into your eyeballs permanently. You will never think about this topic the same way again: a not to be missed enlightening theatrical event.

Deep History (extended through November 10, 2024)

The Public Theater

Shiva Theater, 425 Lafayette Street, in Manhattan

For tickets, visit http://www.publictheater.org

Running time: 70 minutes without an intermission