A Comedy Sketch About Prehistory and Human Nature by Jean-Pierre Martinez
One character, male or female, is there. Another arrives.
One – We’re suffocating. What’s going on?
Two – The air conditioning has stopped working.
One – You couldn’t get it going again?
Two – It hasn’t broken down… but there’s no electricity any more.
One – We’ve no water either.
Two – No internet.
One – How long are we going to last like this?
Two – Without internet?
One – Without water! And without air conditioning…
Two – What temperature is it now?
One – We’re close to sixty degrees… It’s insane!
Two – It’s like the pay-as-you-go pension system. The old people thought global warming would be their grandchildren’s problem.
One – The old people are dead, and their grandchildren are retired.
Two – And now it’s the old people’s problem too.
One – We were told so often that nothing could be done without increasing the deficit and unemployment. Now we’ve reached full employment and reduced the deficit…
Two – But we’re all going to die…
One – This country used to be the most beautiful in the world. Now it’s a desert.
Two – The planet’s population has already fallen by half.
One – We thought the only people who would die would be those without air conditioning.
Two – So those who had air conditioning didn’t care.
One – And now those who have air conditioning have no electricity to run it.
Two – Except those with a generator…
One – Until they run out of petrol to power it.
Two – Apparently the few dozen multi-billionaires who own ninety per cent of the world’s wealth are building a spaceship to leave Earth.
One – To go where?
Two – I don’t know… To another planet, I suppose… To start doing exactly the same thing all over again.
One – But we’re condemned to die here.
Two – How could we let this happen…?
One – At first, forty degrees in summer in the north seemed unimaginable. Then it became the norm. We reached fifty. Forty degrees became the good old days. Today, we’re over sixty.
Two – Air conditioning used to be a luxury. It became a matter of survival.
One – And now the air conditioning doesn’t work any more.
Two – The time has come to pay for our blindness over the past fifty years.
One – Do you think we can still reverse the trend?
Two – We’re told we can’t. Unless we go back to the Stone Age…
One – Go back to the Stone Age. If this carries on, we won’t even have that option any more…
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A sketch from the collection Apocalypse
Link to the collection for free download (PDF)
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