Deep Thoughts on Deep History at The Public Theater

Inside the Public Theater it’s 2019 and Australia is on fire. Outside the theater it’s 2024 and North Carolina is under water. It is with this context that Australian theater artist and game designer David Finnigan introduces Deep History with a sobering, but deeply felt thought about climate change, “There’s no before and after– we’re in it, and we’ll be in it for the rest of our lives.” For the next 70 minutes he grapples with this fact through a multimedia infotainment style lecture/theater piece that toes the line between hopeful optimism and recognition of how selfish and destructive our survival instincts can easily become. 

The show is structured around two parallel arcs. First there is an exploration of six moments from deep history (beginning about 75,000 years ago) that his climate scientist father has picked out as essential turning points for humanity. Second is his friend’s harrowing escape from the path of the Australian fires that ravaged about 59 million acres in 2019-2020. The piece is enlivened with clever gimmicks and devices (pop song mashups, video design by Hayley Egan, underscoring by Reuben Ingall, grains of sugar to represent Earth’s growing population). 

PC Joan Marcus

One such device is a piece of paper on which Finnigan collects increasingly cynical lessons from the critical historical moments he investigates. That these lessons are eventually complicated comes as a surprise, if a somewhat shallow one. Finnigan does some light hand wringing over his own positionality as a white man who gives a dutiful land acknowledgment and tries to say the right things, yet falls prey to his own privileged instincts. As far as white men performing solo acts go he is generally charismatic and sympathetic but this fact of his soloness remains. The only voice outside of his own, his father’s, and his friend Jack’s that he brings in is an invented, unnamed, unraced female who reincarnates throughout time to embody the deep history lessons. Well, her and pop singer Caroline Polachek. That the show aims to critique masculinity and individuality yet uses a theoretical woman in this purely functional way isn’t egregious, but does ring as slightly awkward.

This isn’t to say the piece is a failure or even bad. The highlighted turning points of humankind’s history are fascinating and the details of Finnigan and Jack’s friendship are vivid and endearing. At 70 minutes the show is tight, with enough going on to stay consistently compelling. Rather, I am merely doing what Deep History urges us to do– ask questions and make our way through uncertainty. As Finnigan himself admits, “In 2019, I thought art could guide humanity through the climate era. In 2024, I don’t know.” 

Finnigan has another commission from the Public for a larger piece in 2028. I wonder if the next one will also be a solo show or if it will lean into collaboration to more fully embrace the collectivity he seems to hope to inspire. I am not his editor, but to my mind it would help create more space to explore what we can do and what is still possible, rather than staying in the realm of questions and self critique. There’s nothing wrong with asking questions, but with a topic as urgent and devastating as climate change, I want art that at least tries to move us forward. With his combination of science and storytelling, his interesting visual aids, and his earnest but quippy voice, I do believe Finnigan is capable of providing us with such art, I just want him to dig deeper than Deep History.