First lockdown. Doomscrolling. Second-year university exams cancelled and suddenly with a lot of spare time on my hands. A year-old article from the Guardian somehow finds its way onto my Twitter feed, and amongst all the carnage of current affairs in that period, somehow this still finds a way to cut through everything.

In 2014, residents of the small coastal town of Fairbourne in Wales were sat watching a BBC news report when they found out that they were to be Britain’s first climate refugees. Sitting barely above sea level, their local council had concluded that the town would be indefensible against any predicted sea level rise, and as such the decision had been made to abandon the town by 2054 and dismantle it in its entirety and return it to a tidal salt marsh. Practically overnight house prices plummeted, insurance disappeared, and any investment in the town withered away. The residents meanwhile were told not to expect compensation, on the premise that rising sea levels are ‘nobody’s fault.’ And so just like that, an entire community was given an expiry schedule. No ifs. No buts.

It blew my mind that this was the first I had heard of this. It couldn’t even be explained away by Covid dominating the media, because this was an article from May 2019 – so what on Earth explained the apathy of the press towards giving this story more airtime?

For me, it seems clear that apathy is probably the word historians will use most when discussing the climate crisis in the (very unimaginable) future. Whether it be the weak commitments of world leaders at COP26, or the open mocking of attempts at a greener future by pundits like Julia Hartley-Brewer and Mike Graham, it too often feels like an uphill battle in which hope is a dying currency. And yet, I struggle to blame the average Joe for not caring more. The mainstream discussion of climate change and its effects are drenched in abstracts that are typically very hard to relate to – what relation does ocean acidification and loss of biodiversity really have to me and my 9 to 5? Of course, everything. But can I conceptualise it, really? Can I imagine a world 2-4° hotter without also indulging in the guilty pleasure of a bit of extra sun in the English winter? And I say this as someone who is deeply committed to combating climate change.

Perhaps this is why the story gripped me so much. This is climate change being felt on our shores – not as an abstract meteorological process or some far-away happening in an unimaginable part of the world – and so, surely it would be reaching even the most apathetic among us. Surely. Right? And yet, there it was – a year old article falling upon my Twitter feed by chance, with seemingly no call to arms thereafter.

And so, Swell. The human tragedy of it was inescapable for me. Swell is not a play about climate change: Swell is a play about community and grief, about how we come together and fall apart in times of crisis. It is about the butterfly effects of these complex, difficult political decisions and the impacts they have on everyday lives. It is this human element of the story that ultimately struck me the hardest, and that continues to push me to get this out there as far and wide as I can.

It follows the story of Ava and Josh, two siblings caught in the purgatory of a fictional but analogous town, ready to be abandoned. With dividing lines drawn and scapegoats hunted, the community is forced to pick up the pieces, or fall apart trying, whilst Ava and Josh’s very siblinghood is pushed to its limits. Swell asks the question: how are we able to understand our own selves when the places we call home crumble around us?

My own tragedy of the piece is that I have fallen in love with Swell and the community in writing the piece. My father’s side of the family were oyster fishermen in Whitstable for generations, but growing up between Surrey and Croydon, I lost that connection with the coast. In writing and developing Swell however, I have forged one in my own strange way, and it brings the events of the play – and of the very real Fairbourne – home all the more. This is a story that needs to be heard now, not later, and I feel a heavy sense of responsibility in taking that on. I just hope that we can do it justice.



SWELL by Tom Foreman returns for a second run at King's Head Theatre

9, 15, 16 January

Box Office