YOU'RE SAFE TIL 2024: DEEP HISTORY Comes to Edinburgh Fringe Next Month

Son of a climate scientist, Australian theatre maker David Finnigan has always made work about climate change - then his country caught fire. At the time, he was writing a deep history narrative telling the story of 75,000 years of humanity's impact on the environment: now the show tells of 75 hours of the brutal consequences. David talks us through the experience of his nearest and dearest: his best friend making a break for home with his family before the fires cut off the highway; his father, who talked to him about 'global warming' when he was a kid, stuck in a hospital as smoke filled the operating rooms. Interwoven with these experiences are conversations with 30 scientists asked two simple questions: What's the biggest change happening in the world today? What's going to happen in the future?

At the end of 2019, Australia was hit by the worst fires in the country's recorded history. An area the size of England burned, and one billion animals were incinerated.

David Finnigan is a writer and theatre-maker from Ngunnawal country in Australia. He works with research scientists to produce theatre about climate and global change. You're Safe Til 2024: Deep History is the second episode in a series of six shows, each looking at a different aspect of climate change. The first episode was performed at the Sydney Opera House in 2019. This second episode, Deep History, is David's debut at Edinburgh Festival Fringe and will be performed at the Barbican in London 27 Sept - 1 Oct. It follows Kill Climate Deniers, which won the Griffin Playwrights Award and has been presented in 10 countries worldwide. David is an associate of Coney in the UK.

David Finnigan said, "I've spent 20 years writing theatre shows with scientists about approaching climate impacts. In December 2019, those impacts arrived on my doorstep. Despite all my years working on this subject, I was completely unprepared for what those three days brought me. I never set out to write anything this personal, but in the 21st century, everyone gets a turn on the frontline: this was mine.'

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