Oil Babies

Oil Babies, presented by Darebin Arts Speakeasy and Lab Kelpie, is billed as ‘a high-octane exploration of our relationship to climate change and the female body’. The play is written and directed by Petra Kalive (Hungry Ghosts, Melbourne Talam MTC), and looks at the conflict between climate change, reproduction and the female body.

When it begins, the three women powering the play are stacked on top of each other, resembling some sort of reptilian creature (hint: it had to do with dinosaurs). The structure it lays on is actually three exercise bikes covered in black plastic sheets, but we’ll get to that later.

In the first part of the play, they break the fourth wall, educating the audience about the history and statistics of how the world once ended for dinosaurs, and what it would take for the world to end for us humans. The rapid-fire delivery of information by the trio stirs up laughter from the audience.

Then we get to their storyline: the three of them work at “the generator”, pedaling away on exercise bikes, giving us near-apocalyptic, Black Mirror-esque vibes. C reveals to her lover X that she wants to have a baby, and has wanted one for a few years now, before they even met. X takes a while to warm up the idea, with one of her first objections being that they would be bringing something into the world that would create thousands of extra tonnes of waste and carbon dioxide.

At the generator, they debate this with P, who piles them with stats about climate change, pollution, overpopulation and their impending extinction, none of which are called into question or doubt. However, upon revealing that she can’t have babies, she is confronted by the other two with alternative methods of falling pregnant, then bombarded by the multitude of ways she could be ‘bettering’ her body and ability to conceive. She is rightfully overwhelmed, and who wouldn’t be – society judges women on their ability or intention to bear children, and faulted if they cannot or choose not to.

There are moments of hilarity throughout the play that speak to underlying themes, like when P pulls out a bag of chips to eat after getting worked up by their conversation around babies and pollution, and the other two follow suit – because even though they’d just been talking about priming your body for conception, women are prone to emotional eating, right?

I’d love to tell you more about this play, but hopefully I’ve told you enough so far that you’ll go and see it for yourself. The themes in this play are so very relevant to current events, and Kalive’s storytelling really got my mind whirring about our responses and so-called solutions to climate change.

Oil Babies 
Main Hall, Northcote Town Hall, 189 High Street, Northcote
Till Saturday, 18 August 2018
darebinarts.com.au/whats-on/oil-babies-by-lab-kelpie