Two Degrees is a play by Tira Palmquist, about Emma Phelps, a paleoclimatologist, who focuses on ice in Greenland.

“In drilling and studying ice core samples, she sees first hand the symptoms of our changing planet, which makes the need to act all the more crucial and urgent. In addition to her growing sense of urgency for the planet, Emma, as a recent widow, experiences grief that compounds itself with each passing month. Now she’s been asked to come to Washington D.C. to testify in a Senate Committee regarding climate change legislation, and in this intersection of science and politics, of politics and the personal, she finds more than just a little is breaking up under the strain of change.”

I haven’t seen the play, but after reading this review at the Denver Post, it’s on my list should it ever be produced near me.

The play contains two parallel stories; one of the grief and loss Emma experiences, and one of the implied grief and loss accompanying her work and the environmental upheaval it portends. The set apparently has ice dripping in the background; I love that idea of the drip drip drip of melting ice accompanying the narrative, just as the drip drip drip of melting ice accompanies all our lives now, whether we hear it or not.