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A full-length play in three acts by The Finn-Brit Players:
https://nonametheatre.fi/the-last-of-the-wild-bees/
Play blurb:
The year is 2037. This is the future, but not too distant future, and the world has changed, but not that much. If you walk into a supermarket, you’d probably recognize most of the products there. One thing will definitely catch your eye – the desolated fruit and veg section. If you think that finding a ripe melon, or a tomato that tastes of anything is a challenge now, that will be a mission impossible in 2037. Forget about posting an Instagram picture of your hamburger, people are posting strawberries at that time, if they can find such a treasure, of course.
One of the main reasons for this shortage is the extinction of a lot of natural pollinators, and in particular of all species of wild bees. This is the context in which we meet The Wild Bees of Ettlingen, often addressed just as The Bees. This is a small volunteer organization dedicated to taking care of the forests and meadows which have lost their most impactful pollinators.
We focus on four of the most pivotal members of The Bees as they prepare for one of their regular “flights”. Even though they have plenty of flights behind their… wings, this one is not going that well. In fact, it’s gearing up to be a monumental disaster, as multiple conflicts, rivalries, and personal problems threaten the future of these guardians of the memory of lost species. Will The Bees survive these troubles, or will they ultimately join the actual wild bees in oblivion?
Characters:
This motley bunch is the core of The Wild Bees of Ettlingen, or just “The Bees” as they are known to those close to them. They are a small but strong-willed caretaking organization that takes on the work of their now extinct namesakes. They organize multiple “flights” per year, during which they gather as many of their members and as many additional volunteers as they can and embark on hand pollinating a targeted wild area.
In a reality in which the loss of natural pollinators has caused multiple major food crises, most people are worried about farm yields and supermarket stock. Hand pollination is a quite mundane task these days, as every producer of vegetables or fruits relies on lots of people to replace the multitude of insects that used to do the job.
The Bees’ concern and care, however, go beyond their own species and the immediate necessities of sustenance. They don’t tend to cultivated fields. They “fly” instead in nature reserves, secluded forests, and distant meadows, pollinating wildflowers or any other shrub or tree that previously relied on the actual bees for its survival. They do that because they know that in a world so obsessed with food and with reclaiming the abundance of the past, nobody but them will take care of those orphaned plants, and they are way more important to the natural balance than anything that grows in a land ploughed by humans.
As we will see very soon, however, dedication and the serenity of taking acre of nature are not enough to keep the Bees’ spirits high. The weight of what they do and of how impactless it feels on the background of everything else will push them further and further down, until it will be very hard for them to take flight.
Meet Juna Albrecht. She is a freelance journalist with variable success, but invariable dedication to uncovering uncomfortable truths, pursuing important causes, and always provoking society to be a more responsible version of itself.
She is one of the two founding members of The Wild Bees of Ettlingen, and she has not only been a part of almost all of the Bees’ flights so far, but she’s also the voice of the organization, taking tireless care of publicity and of all kinds of articles, leaflets, and other incarnations of the written word.
This tenacity for spreading information and fidelity to the truth make her a valuable ally. If you’re fighting a good fight, you definitely want Juna on your side. Her power, however, comes with its cost. The sharpness of her tongue may often take casualties on both sides, as she doesn’t spare even the people close to her from a frank opinion or from her proclivity for provocation.
If we have to liken Juna to a wild bee – that would be the Leafcutter Bee. The Leafcutter Bee has the most painful sting amongst all wild bees, scoring 2 on Schmidt’s sting pain index, and just as well Juna has the harshest sting amongst all members of The Wild Bees of Ettlingen.
Strong will and strong language have carried Juna through a lot of trouble in her life, but lately one of those is getting weaker and weaker, while the other is earning her one quarrel after another. How will Juna react to the mounting pressure and loss of security, and how will that affect her fellow Bees?
Eleonora Meyer, Leni, is the other founder of The Wild Bees of Ettlingen and has been a stalwart pillar for the group ever since. Just like a Wool-carder Bee used to bind its nest with leaf sinews, Leni binds this disparate gang via her abilities to coordinate and motivate. She is a relentless taskmaster, with a rare gift for logistics, scheduling, and all the other aspects of organization that often elude even the best of strategists. Thus, even though The Bees do not formally have a “command structure”, Leni has been their leader in all but name.
The Bees is not the only group which benefits from Leni’s skills. She is involved in multiple committees to sustainability institutes, state funds, and various environmental organizations dedicated to bringing the colour green back to human enterprises. But… you know. Not the dollar green. The green green.
An actual bee, back when wild bees still existed, used to spend its day sketching a long, long trajectory through hundreds of flowers. Leni seems to be the perfect reincarnation of a wild bee, spending her days “flying” from one meeting to another to the next one. Weekends too. While this is probably not very healthy for her, such unstoppable determination, or obsession as therapists define it, is definitely very healthy for the world around Leni.
So, it’s not a surprise that everybody around her believes that Leni’s composure and endurance are inexhaustible resources. The surprise is stark, however, when cracks appear and steadily grow into gaping fissures. Fault lines caused by personal losses. Loss of support, both within and without The Bees, and most frightening of all, the apparent loss of two of her closest friends. Each for very different reasons.
Emil Bergmann is the resident comedian within The Wild Bees of Ettlingen and just like his spirit bee – the Masked Bee, he is a natural performer. You can think of him as the Robin Williams of the bunch, but a chill version and without the dark side. A cheer, a laugh, or any other comic relief, if you need it - Emil will provide. Well… he will even if you don’t need it. He is known not only for his endless supply of quips and puns, but also for the utter lack of awareness about when to stop using them. This adds further… unintentional layer to his comedy.
When he is not inducing fits of laughter in those around him, Emil works as a viticulturist at a vineyard, which is one of the last remaining vestiges of independent business for his family. Thus, having an outgoing personality, years of experience in agriculture, and a unique talent for connecting to people make him the perfect educator within The Bees. Emil conducts the workshops where newcomers who wish to “fly” with The Bees can learn how to hand pollinate.
But what could pose a problem to somebody whose very name is synonymous with light-hearted fun? To somebody who has no enemy in life, except for a very specific, quite… overweight kind of cats?
For a start, there will always be those people who are unable to combine dedicated work with humour and thus will fail to… appreciate Emil’s approach to getting things done. This is not the first time, however, when he faces the Fun Police. A deadly punslinger, he is always ready to great them with a salvo of his best jokes.
The true challenge for Emil comes when he will, for once, have to be serious. Comes when he enters this tender territory where humour no longer works.
Geniuses are often misunderstood.
Felix Böhm is one of those intense blends of ingenuity and awkwardness, which for some unfathomable reason has taken a human form and which we, for a lack of a better name, call a ‘genius’. The living embodiment of a Rube Goldberg machine of immense complexity, Felix needs no more than a few minutes do discern how any system or process works, regardless of its scale or intricacy. And he is just as capable of creating such marvels himself.
In a group like The Wild Bees of Ettlingen, where environmental and social concerns are most common, Felix fills the obvious gap of technical knowledge. And not only technical. He grasped the mechanics of pollination and the different techniques and requirements for each plant with an astonishing speed. The frenzied precision with which he carries out his activities with The Bees is equally amazing, even though it tempts people to classify this as a mere OCD.
Yes, geniuses are often misunderstood. But the greater truth behind this observation is that the misunderstandings are equally distributed on both sides of the genius fence. Where fate has drawn a line for Felix’s abilities is to read other people’s cues, emotions, and in general anything that pertains to human behaviour. This often leaves him quite confused or agitated, at best, when he has to deal with other people.
Just like the Mason Bee meticulously builds its nest from small stones, Felix builds a tall, circular wall of ideas and inventions to protect him from the chaos of being human. The ultimate questions here are: Does this wall serve only to protect? Or does it also prevent? And most of all – how long can it last?
written & directed by Vladislav Nenchev
Cast:
Juna – Anastasia Diatlova
Emil – Josef Konderla
Felix – Branislav Dakovic
Leni – Evelina Califano
Credits:
Embedded photos by Anni Taponen.