A RADICAL new production aimed at creating food activists is to be staged during the world climate summit in Glasgow this year.

It has been created with the help of Nasa, a Game of Thrones linguist, the UN, a Grammy-nominated musician and a prominent food sustainability campaign group – as well as an award-winning Scottish dance company.

WeCameToDance has already created a stir at the Edinburgh Fringe where it runs until the end of this week, enlisting Scots in the battle against climate change.

It is the brainchild of Food Tank, a non-profit organisation founded in the US to highlight environmentally, socially and economically sustainable ways of alleviating hunger, obesity and poverty.

They are working with Nourish Scotland to ensure the show has a legacy, with audiences given a

five-point plan to help change behaviour around consumption. They are also being encouraged to sign Nourish Scotland’s petition to the Scottish Government to change food policy.

The production will be staged during the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) to create a different way of engaging people in the climate campaign as, despite the serious message, the aim is to entertain audiences.

Originally meant to debut last June after sold out workshops with rave reviews in New York City, the show was postponed and it was decided to present it at the Fringe this August to build local engagement in the lead-up to COP26 this November in Glasgow.

The UN was brought in as partners and Food Tank took a creative – and environmentally friendly – approach to mounting a fringe show from America, recruiting local producers and cast to deliver the show. The UN partners of the show are the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Program-USA (WFP). “They are helping us with promoting the show to make sure it is seen by a wide cross-section of society and they are also planning summits and activities to augment it,” said Food Tank co-founder Bernard Pollack.

It is one of only two musicals running for the entire month of the Fringe and the story is based on an actual exoplanet called Trappist 1d, which is Earth’s closest “Goldilocks” planet, meaning it is considered to be habitable for humans. After the show, the audiences have a chance to taste food that could be grown on the planet, presented by Edinburgh Social and Forage Foods.

WeCameToDance tells the story of extraterrestrial life arriving on Earth to warn its inhabitants of a climate crisis their own planet has experienced. Imagined in partnership with Dr Steve Howell at Nasa Ames Research Center, they sing in a language created by famed linguist David Peterson, who developed Valyrian and Dothraki for HBO’s Game of Thrones.

The music is created by Grammy-nominated Ghanaian artist Rocky Dawuni and the audience participate in synchronised dance originally designed in New York by Mary Page Nance of Broadway’s Finding Neverland and choreographed and directed for the local production in Scotland by award-winning Ashley Jack and Becky Enoch of House of Jack Studio in Leith.

“They have given us full free range to play around with it and the go ahead to put our own style on it. It’s been great to have that freedom,” said Jack.

BY coincidence, Enoch’s previous work was about exoplanets and she was able to put her knowledge to use in the production.

She said the show had a serious message but was “joyful and uplifting” so did not feel as if it was being forced on the audience.

In the story, Trappist 1d goes through a climate crisis and the rich leave for another planet.

“We don’t want to say which rich people on Earth are doing that but we created that parallel on purpose,” said Pollack. “Our Earth is all we have and there is no option for most of us right now. We have to save this one.”

Food Tank co-founder Danielle Nierenberg added: “We really want this to be a way of bringing people together to create a different kind of social movement that focuses on joy and play and makes people want to be a part of it. The serious side of that is a call to action because as COP26 is taking place in Scotland we have a real opportunity to address these issues. We need to act now.”

More information and tickets can be found here: www.eventbrite.com/e/wecametodance-at-the-2021-edinburgh-festival-fringe-tickets-163701001101