“End to Begin”: A play about the future of the planet

Gloria Benedikt, author, director and IIASA alumna, has created 'End to Begin', an engaging interactive play with four actors, two dancers and an opera singer. Together with the performers, the audience is invited to explore what happened in the past. The aim is to develop a positive (climate) perspective for the future. 

What did people think, know, do, fear and hope in 2025? This is exactly what the people of 2075 want to know in order to understand why they live the way they do. So a scientist, a philosopher, a diplomat, an activist and three masters of ceremonies are sent to Vienna to reflect on the turn of the quarter century. Their mission is to explore, in modified form, the three Kantian questions with the people there: What should we know? What can we do? What can we hope for?

The mission is supported by four ambassadors. They are people who are committed to climate protection and will be on stage to inform the future generation: climate researcher and IIASA Director General, John Schellnhuber, co-founder of the Kontext Institute for Climate Issues, Katharina Rogenhofer, Professor of Climate Policy at BOKU, Reinhard Steurer, and Managing Director of Illuminem, Andrea Gori.

Benedikt's artistic inspiration for the piece came from an intense study of the pressing issues of the climate crisis, its impact on society and possible solutions. According to a Yale University study, two-thirds of the population rarely or never discusses climate change. This is despite the fact that we are already feeling the consequences.

“We are losing more and more people, animal species, plants, crops, houses, etc., and yet we as a society seem to accept this. In Western culture we see ourselves mainly as descendants. But what if we thought of ourselves as ancestors? Would we have a greater sense of responsibility?" asks Benedikt.

The piece has already been invited to the Aleph Festival 2025 in Mexico City.

Gloria Benedikt is a graduate of the Vienna State Opera Ballet Academy and Harvard University, where she studied social sciences. She has performed as a dancer in Europe and the USA for 20 years, spent six years at IIASA researching how collaboration between artists and scientists can support sustainable change, and has created over a dozen multimedia performances for theatres, universities, festivals and conferences in Europe and the USA.