Poempocalypse Croydon

Commissioned by Stanley Arts for the Arcadia Festival · Stanley Arts, South Norwood · Saturday 19 September 2026

Enter Poempocalypse

It's 2066. The world is undone by climate change, and what's left of Croydon is sheltering in the old Boxpark at East Croydon. I've just come back from a supply run. What happens next?

Poempocalypse Croydon is an interactive spoken-word performance set in a speculative future shaped by climate collapse. The audience enters a survival roleplay in which every decision carries consequences, and the poems themselves change according to the community's collective vote.

As the community's mouthpiece, scribe and conscience, I give voice to its predicament without deciding its fate. The audience must confront the choices themselves, navigating the moral and practical demands of survival.

It's a stark reminder that the choices we make in the imagined future are already being made in our own communities.

Croydon as a landscape of climate fiction

My thesis is that climate change will have its landmark moment when people see their landmarks destroyed.

Wandle Park, South Croydon station, the Interchange. This is the geography of a future in which the climate crisis is no longer an abstraction, but a condition of everyday life.

The audience as co-authors

At each turning point, the audience votes on their phones. The results determine which poem or perspective follows, creating branching narratives shaped by their collective decisions.

There are no easy answers. The audience must weigh survival against solidarity, individual need against collective responsibility, and the immediate demands of the present against the world they are leaving behind.

The same questions they must face today.

Croydon's choices

How did the world end? The survivors chose between a scary version and a Disney version.

Outsiders have taken the river at Wandle Park. Strike first, or defend ourselves?

What do we do with our dead?

The first rain in two years. Who fetches the water?

Before the last two questions, the survivors were played a recording from the Croydon Community Assembly a few months prior in July, describing the borough they hoped for. It was framed in the performance as the hopes and dreams of their ancestors.

Stanley Arts Community Assembly →

What they miss about the world before its collapse

What they wish they had done differently to care for the planet

The environmental footprint

I designed the production with reuse and resource consumption in mind, with its environmental impact recorded using the Theatre Green Book Calculator.

of set and costume reused or recycled

0item bought new

0 kgCO₂e for my logged journeys

Open the Theatre Green Book Calculator →