ThoughtGallery.org > Harry Newman’s Dry Time | Reading & Panel

Harry Newman’s Dry Time | Reading & Panel

Segal Theatre
4:00pm Reading | 6:30pm Panel

FREE + Open to public. First come, first served.

Heat. The sun bearing down. People in line for food, for water at temporary camps. Elsewhere, a party, as if nothing’s changed in the world. A novelist is being celebrated. Set against a background of environmental collapse and economic crisis in the Midwestern US, Dry Time explores the personal and social consequences of intensifying climate change in an increasingly authoritarian society. Conceived as a narrative symphony, each scene is two scenes that overlap and play out simultaneously, revealing the contrasts and connections of those most affected by environmental events (mainly in patrolled encampments) and those largely untouched by events in their private homes. What happens when they come together?

Written in the early 1990s, Dry Time is most likely the first global warming related play. Considered too distant, abstract, and forbidding at the time, it now approaches realism. Informed by the original UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report and other studies, Dry Time builds on the impacts of climate catastrophe already apparent and takes them to an unflinching conclusion.

Photo by Ewa Orzech

Harry Newman’s plays include The Occupation, Dry Time, The Dark, and a translation of Patrick Süskind’s The Double Bass, and have been presented at the Contemporary American Theater Festival, The Public Theater, BACA/Downtown, the Guggenheim Works & Process series, and other theaters around the U.S. as well as, most recently, in Germany. Widely published as a poet, his work has appeared in Ecotone, Rattle, Asheville Poetry Review, and The New Guard, among many other journals. In 2016, a collection of his political poetry, Led from a Distance, was published by Louisiana Literature Press. Before working in theater, Harry studied Chemistry and Mathematics at MIT. More information is available at www.harrynewman.com.

Nathan John Steiger is an Associate Research Scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. His work engages the fundamental problem of understanding the historical variability of the climate system and its relevance to human societies. In particular, he conducts research on the physical mechanisms of severe droughts and other climate extremes. Nathan majored in physics as an undergraduate, doing thesis work in theoretical quantum mechanics. In graduate school at the University of Washington he developed new methods for reconstructing past climate using data assimilation, a technique that fuses climate models with paleoclimate proxy data. He received his PhD in Atmospheric Sciences in late 2015 and came to Columbia University as a NOAA Climate and Global Change Postdoctoral Fellow.

Benjamin Cook is a climate scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University in New York City. His research is focused on improving our understanding of drought dynamics in the paleoclimate record, during the historical period, and in response to anthropogenic climate change.











When: Mon., Apr. 29, 2019 at 4:00 pm
Where: Columbia University
116th St. & Broadway
212-854-1754
Price: Free
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Segal Theatre
4:00pm Reading | 6:30pm Panel

FREE + Open to public. First come, first served.

Heat. The sun bearing down. People in line for food, for water at temporary camps. Elsewhere, a party, as if nothing’s changed in the world. A novelist is being celebrated. Set against a background of environmental collapse and economic crisis in the Midwestern US, Dry Time explores the personal and social consequences of intensifying climate change in an increasingly authoritarian society. Conceived as a narrative symphony, each scene is two scenes that overlap and play out simultaneously, revealing the contrasts and connections of those most affected by environmental events (mainly in patrolled encampments) and those largely untouched by events in their private homes. What happens when they come together?

Written in the early 1990s, Dry Time is most likely the first global warming related play. Considered too distant, abstract, and forbidding at the time, it now approaches realism. Informed by the original UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report and other studies, Dry Time builds on the impacts of climate catastrophe already apparent and takes them to an unflinching conclusion.

Photo by Ewa Orzech

Harry Newman’s plays include The Occupation, Dry Time, The Dark, and a translation of Patrick Süskind’s The Double Bass, and have been presented at the Contemporary American Theater Festival, The Public Theater, BACA/Downtown, the Guggenheim Works & Process series, and other theaters around the U.S. as well as, most recently, in Germany. Widely published as a poet, his work has appeared in Ecotone, Rattle, Asheville Poetry Review, and The New Guard, among many other journals. In 2016, a collection of his political poetry, Led from a Distance, was published by Louisiana Literature Press. Before working in theater, Harry studied Chemistry and Mathematics at MIT. More information is available at www.harrynewman.com.

Nathan John Steiger is an Associate Research Scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. His work engages the fundamental problem of understanding the historical variability of the climate system and its relevance to human societies. In particular, he conducts research on the physical mechanisms of severe droughts and other climate extremes. Nathan majored in physics as an undergraduate, doing thesis work in theoretical quantum mechanics. In graduate school at the University of Washington he developed new methods for reconstructing past climate using data assimilation, a technique that fuses climate models with paleoclimate proxy data. He received his PhD in Atmospheric Sciences in late 2015 and came to Columbia University as a NOAA Climate and Global Change Postdoctoral Fellow.

Benjamin Cook is a climate scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University in New York City. His research is focused on improving our understanding of drought dynamics in the paleoclimate record, during the historical period, and in response to anthropogenic climate change.

Buy tickets/get more info now