When the Sea Changes, Who Decides? Performing Climate Knowledge Beyond Data

The limitation of the natural sciences in conveying the severity of the climate and ecological crises and in instigating action have become increasingly evident, particularly in light of recent geopolitical shifts. There is increasing recognition that the role of the arts is central in shaping humanity’s aspirations and inspiring a just-sustainable transition.

This presentation discusses the outcome of an arts-science collaboration between the authors – one a performance artist–scholar, and the other a climate scientist. This collaboration took the form of a co-designed and co-taught course, Theatre of the Climate-Performing a Just Future, positioned at the intersection of earth sciences, systems thinking, and participatory arts. The course proposed to move beyond data dissemination to engage the mind and body, emotion and ethics, and the more-than-human world.

The course blended ecological theory and systems thinking with theatre, dance, storytelling, and visual arts. Drawing on Bruno Latour’s call to decentre the Anthropocene, students developed a Geo-play framework in which animate and inanimate actors-fish, sea, nets, weather, policy, and people, were re-animated to bring emotions into climate discourse. Building on this, the course experimented with emotional practices such as mobilising, naming, communicating, and regulating, alongside participatory methods inspired by Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed.

A decisive shift occurred during a field visit to Urur Kuppam, a fisher community in Chennai. Conversations with a community elder and women of the fishing community revealed how climate change intersects with long-standing injustices; coastal pollution, destructive fishing practices such as bottom trawling, eroding livelihoods, and the systematic invisibilisation of women’s labour and indigenous knowledge. These encounters reframed students’ understanding of expertise. Fisher knowledge emerged not as anecdotal local input, but as a form of science; embodied, intergenerational, and relational, excluded from centralised, satellite-driven policy models.

The course culminated in a first-of-its-kind spect-actor, multi-art production called When the Sea Changes, Who Decides?Through visual culture, embodied performance, and audio-visual stimuli, the production staged a wicked problem in which multiple actors and systems, often well-meaning yet poorly informed, collide to shape precarious coastal futures. The silent presence of a fishing woman become a powerful marker of unequal burdens and invisibilised labour. Spectators were transformed into spect-actors, invited to walk through scenes of toil, insecurity, and ecological loss, and to enact empathy as a call to action.

The post-performance discussion instigated heartfelt emotional responses from both the performers and the audience.

The presentation will share curated snippets and performance footage to demonstrate how Theatre of the Climate-Performing a Just Future unfolded as a pedagogical and performative process.

We argue that art–science collaborations can incorporate emotion as a legitimate mode of knowing. We propose participatory performance as a vital bridge between earth sciences, lived experience, and justice-oriented climate futures. Together, these insights position performative pedagogy as a transferable model for universities, scientific institutions, and public forums, suggesting how embodied, participatory art–science practices can foster ethical imagination, collective responsibility, and sustained dialogue around climate justice, policy, and planetary care across cultural, educational, and coastal contexts worldwide today.