Once, I traveled to the southern coast and saw a camphor laurel tree — a natural monument. I think it was the first time I ever felt something like awe toward the natural world. Its sheer size, dwarfing any human being several times over; branches stretching upward as if reaching for the sky; a full, generous canopy of green leaves. In a universe this vast, I am a small thing — to borrow a line from the play Lungs, nothing more than a "little stain" in the cosmos. And yet, even as I stood there feeling the weight of that enormous world, I made a quiet, deeply personal vow: however small I may be, I would live my life with fierce intention.
In much the same way, Lungs begins with questions about the earth and the environment — but what it ultimately speaks to is the shape of our lives.
In a life that spins without pause
The staging and the characters are both stripped down to their essentials. On a bare circular stage, a man and a woman — nameless, but in love the way ordinary people are in love. Characters who could be you, me, any of us. The man brings up the idea of having a child. But that single suggestion refuses to stay simple. In a world where the climate crisis and environmental destruction grow more dire by the day, is it right to bring a new life into being? Are personal happiness and the planet's future destined to collide? The play draws an enormous environmental question into the most intimate of spaces — a private conversation between two people in love. And when you think about it, love and nature are not so different. Both offer us rest; both give us the strength to keep going; both hold us without asking anything in return. We breathe air and receive love every single day, yet we grow so accustomed to both that we forget how precious they are.
Breathe
In a life that spins without pause, we need to stop and catch our breath. In that pause, look again at the things we have taken for granted, and take a moment to think about what it is we actually lean on to get through each day.
Even if the footprints we leave are only little stains
As the two characters change, shoes accumulate on the stage one by one. Over time, those shoes become the traces of the lives they have walked — and they read, at the same time, like footprints left upon the earth. We tend, I think, to see ourselves as far too small. We wonder whether carrying a reusable cup, refusing one more piece of single-use plastic, showing kindness to a stranger, or simply trying to be a better person could ever really change anything. But the world is not moved only by the grand choices of great heroes. The small decisions of ordinary people living through ordinary days accumulate — they change someone's life, shift something in society, and in the end, set the world in motion. Whether for the environment, for someone we love, or for ourselves: the steps we take do not vanish into thin air. The desire to become a better person, even in the face of an uncertain world — perhaps that is the most beautiful mark any of us can leave behind.
Lungs speaks about the environment, and at the same time it speaks about life. In the vastness of the universe, we are nothing more than little stains — yet those little stains, gathered together, form a landscape. And so today, as on every day, we breathe, we love, we wrestle with our questions. Trusting that all those small choices will, one day, reach someone.
production photos ©The Best Play
🔎Explore the production history of Lungs by Duncan Macmillan here.
