Ever found the slowly creeping environmental apocalypse too intrusive to ignore any longer? Ever felt the burning desire to try and create something that channels it and trys to make some positive change? 

Well my lovely and talented friend Amelie Edwards did just that. As part of the BBC New Creatives programme, Amelie created a fantastic short radio play called Five Years From Now. I love me some near future eco-dystopia, and here it is done perfectly. Cleverly using the radio format as vehicle for an audio record/ diary, we are slowly painted a picture of an Earth just five years in the future, now toxified by plastic. A team of scientists are tasked with reversing the effects, and the days tick by as they desperately experiment. Amelie’s excellent turn as Dr Lindsay Smith, the project head, charters us from the sweet mundanity of the day-to-day interactions between the crew at the beginning, to the slow dawning horror that all may be in vain.

Why’s it on my blog? Well apart from it being an awesome little Sci-Fi radio play that should be heard by as many people as possible (overestimating my impact ever so slighty) I’m also in it playing Daniel (and a medley of characters in the opening montage). The whole thing was recorded in a studio in Brighton that was essentially a massive and plush victorian house, and it was great fun doing the audio work. All the background noise you hear in Lindsay’s reports was improvised between the rest of us. Just a little gang of lovely people making silly conversation and trying to pretend that the world hadn’t collapsed.

(Not an awful lot different to normal life tbh)  

If you would like to have a listen, and I highly recommend you do,  you can find the play in full    here

There’s also a fantastic interview with Amelie talking about her process here. She’s one of the most awesome humans I know, as you can plainly judge for yourself.  I can’t wait to see what she creates next.