A new play called Watchlist – by Flinders University drama lecturer Dr Alex Vickery-Howe – tells of a world turned upside down by climate change and a global health crisis.

Ironically the play was written more than six months before the national bushfire crisis and COVID-19 took effect in Australia.

Dr Vickery Howe, an award-winning playwright whose works include the OzAsia Festival hit rock musical Once Upon a Midnight and romantic comedy Out of the Ordinary, has now had the play published by Currency Press.

“It’s a little spooky. The play was finished around July/August in 2019 and it predicted two things: mass environmental events due to climate change, including uncontrolled fires, and a zoonotic pathogen,” he says.

“The environmental disasters were easy enough to see coming, but the idea of a zoonotic pathogen (a disease that travels from animals to people) was soft sci-fi at that stage.

“I consulted with biologists about the hypothetical scenarios, but a disease this intense was seen as being highly unlikely. Now reality has caught up to imagination.”

While performances of Watchlist have been postponed until 2021, Dr Vickery-Howe has been working with theatre director Lisa Harper Campbell – a graduate of Flinders University’s Drama course – to prepare his play for theatrical presentation.

“I can’t quite believe that the events of Watchlist have started to appear on the news. I even said it was far-fetched when I handed the script to the director,” says Dr Vickery-Howe.

“The reason I wrote this play was largely due to my own sense that the world is spinning off its axis. As a species, we’ve been too smug for too long. I decided to be upfront about that feeling. I showed my fangs.”

The lead roles in the stage production of Watchlist will be played by Gianluca Noble and Katherine Sortini, two actors who graduated from Flinders in 2019 (pictured).

They play Basil and Delia, a young couple drawn together by mutual concern for the environment at this critical point in history.

“Watchlist is a perfectly pitched – and increasingly prophetic – play about young people discovering just how troubled the world is,” says Mr Noble.

“The ecological, sociological, economic, political, and international crises we face drive many to ‘radicalism’…but when your only hope for your 54th birthday is that your hometown might still be above sea level, how moderate can you really be?”

Production of this play is being partially funded under Flinders University’s Creativity Theme, thanks to the support of Flinders University’s Dr William Peterson (Associate Professor in Drama) and Professor Peter Monteath (Dean – People and Resources, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences).