100 Plays to Save the World

A guide to one hundred brilliant plays addressing the most urgent and important issue of our time: the climate crisis. 

The plays – drawn from around the world, written by one hundred different writers, and demonstrating a vast span of styles, genres and cast sizes – all speak to an aspect of the climate emergency. Encompassing both famous plays and lesser-known works, the selection includes recent writing that explicitly wrestles with these issues, as well as classic texts in which these resonances now ring out clearly.

Each play is explored in a concise essay illuminating key themes, and highlighting its contribution to our understanding of climate issues, with sections including Resources, Energy, Migration, Responsibility, Fightback and Hope.

100 Plays to Save the World is a book to provoke as well as inspire – to start conversations, to inform debate, to challenge our thinking, and to be a launch pad for future productions. It is also an empowering resource for theatre directors, producers, teachers, youth leaders and writers looking for plays that speak to our present moment.

Above all, it is a call to arms, to step up, think big, and unleash theatre's power to imagine a better future into being.

The book includes a foreword by Daze Aghaji, a leading youth climate justice activist.