The Royal Shakespeare Company and theatre company Good Chance have announced casting for the world première of Kyoto, a production which places audiences at the heart of the historic 1997 Kyoto climate summit.
Making his RSC debut in the role of American oil lobbyist and master strategist Don Pearlman is Stephen Kunken. He received a 2010 Tony Award nomination for best featured actor in a play for his performance as Andy Fastow in Lucy Prebble’s Enron at the Broadhurst Theater, Broadway.
Kyoto also features Jenna Augen (Shirley Pearlman), Jorge Bosch (Argentinian ambassador Raul Estrada Oyuela), Vincent Franklin (Fred Singer), Dale Rapley (Bert Bolin) and Olivia Barrowclough (Secretariat).
Representing the national delegations are Andrea Gatchalian, Raad Rawi, Kwong Loke, Nancy Crane, Ingrid Oliver, Jude Akuwudike, Ferdy Roberts and Togo Igawa.
RSC co-artistic directors Daniel Evans and Tamara Harvey said, “in building our inaugural season at the RSC, we set ourselves the challenge of reaching across borders, to seek out the most exciting writers, directors and actors of our times and asking them which stories they feel a passionate need to tell.
“To be working with Good Chance and their long-term collaborators Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin on this powerful and urgent new play is a particularly thrilling example, one which speaks directly to how the RSC can be in conversation with the world.”
Written by Good Chance co-founders Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson and directed by Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin, this “breathless and gripping” tale recounts the fateful hours of tense negotiation leading up to the historic signing of the UN’s landmark climate conference in December 1997.
Murphy and Robertson said, “Good Chance began nine years ago in the Calais Jungle refugee camp where thousands of people from dozens of countries lived side by side. Together with camp residents we built a theatre and for eight months made art of all kinds and cultures.
“Since then we’ve created work that celebrates and interrogates our differences and our common human experience, always asking: how can we live together?
“Kyoto is a play about how to agree in a world awash with disagreement. In many ways the Kyoto Protocol should never have happened. How could 176 countries find consensus on a subject as complex and important as climate change, especially as powerful forces worked to undermine the process at every stage? And yet, against all the odds, they did.
“We’re thrilled and honoured to be creating Kyoto with the RSC as part of Daniel and Tamara’s first season.”
Daldry and Martin added, “this play marks our first time directing for the RSC, an exciting moment for us both to take part in a new chapter in the RSC’s story.
“Kyoto is a play which speaks directly and urgently to the world we live in and the ecological crisis in which we find ourselves. In the spirit of the 1997 climate summit, we’re blessed to be working with a truly international company of artists, all of whom bring their own unique perspectives, cultures and experience.”
The creative team includes Miriam Buether (set designer), Natalie Pryce (costume designer) Aideen Malone (lighting designer), Christopher Reid (sound designer), Akhila Krishnan (video designer), Gemma Stockwood (dramaturg) and Julia Horan CDG (casting director).
Kyoto will run in the Swan Theatre, Stratford from Tuesday 18 June until Saturday 13 July. Press night will be Tuesday 25 June.