October 2015 – January 2016
Coney were commissioned by Chester Zoo to make a piece which people could play over a 3-course dinner, about the impact of systems of palm oil production on the orang-utan, and the need to promote sustainable oil. The commission was part of their Act For Wildlife Campaign.
We made a game-show: a game in three courses served to the audience by performer-faclitators from* Chester Zoo. Each course of the game put the audience in a different role in the system of palm oil production – a plantation, a government, a retailer – and illuminated the connections between them and us as consumers. And how all this impacted on a couple of orang-utans called Dave and Samantha.
The audience play by making choices, which they can discuss over dinner. Before [SPOILERS].
The Green Gold Conspiracy premiered at The Lowry in Oct 2015, followed by gigs at Chester Zoo in Oct/Nov 2015. It was developed with playtests at a local pub and at Chester Zoo in Sep 2015.
•
Devised and written
William Drew and Tassos Stevens
Systems dramaturgy
David Finnigan
Graphic Design
Ben Jones
Performance team
Afreena Islam, Christine FitzGerald, Jack Egan, Jamil Keating
Director
Tassos Stevens
Producer
Becki Haines
•
*appearing as if they were from Chester Zoo, but actually [SPOILERS]
Quotes
“A novel cocktail of an art form that both gets to the audience and feeds back into science”