The Split, by Jordan Hall, is a Commission that comes out of The Only Animal’s work with the Artist Brigade. The Artist Brigade brings art and artists to the climate crisis. For more information visit: Artist Brigade.
This project was created on and inspired by the unceded and ancestral lands of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish),səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), and hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ (Halkomelem) Nations.
Artist Statement
The purpose of The Split is to generate an entertaining science-fiction narrative that approaches the climate crisis in intersectional, solutionary terms.
The Split is the pilot episode of a proposed narrative science fiction podcast, in which Erin Reyes, a rural doctor in a strange post-apocalyptic Vancouver, tries to find the source of a spreading sickness — and stumbles into a conspiracy that will reshape reality as she understands it.
Part of our inability to respond to climate change emerges from our inability to imagine our lives outside of a capitalist paradigm. Philosopher Mark Fisher notes “that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” Part of the impetus of The Split is to unravel our storytelling around not just the climate crisis, but capitalism. In a typical eco-thriller, ecological crime is presented as an aberration, and then solved through the action of the plot. In The Split the ecological crime is an intrinsic feature of one reality’s way of life, and there is no simple solution to escape it. Stories about climate change tend to fall into two categories, either offering a discourse of reversal, or a post-apocalyptic, dystopian threat to be avoided. The Split will instead reflect the messier reality that we are all living in the climate crisis right now, and we’re all making choices about how we navigate it.
Artist Bio
Jordan Hall is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter whose work focuses on the exploration of genre, socio-political inequality, ecological crisis, and the creation of deeply-compelling female protagonists. Her work has been dubbed “fresh and funny” by The Daily Mail, “sharp and witty” by Broadway World, and “a zesty treat” by The Telegraph.
Her first full-length play, Kayak, won Samuel French’s Canadian Playwrights Competition, and has been produced to critical acclaim across North America. Subsequent plays include How to Survive an Apocalypse (Flying Start 2016, Samuel French 2018), and A Brief History of Human Extinction (with Mind of a Snail Puppet Theatre). She has been an Associate at Playwright’s Theatre Centre, and her work has been supported by Pi Theatre, Up in the Air Theatre and by grants from the British Columbia Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts. She is currently a commissioned artist with The Only Animal’s Artist Brigade.
As a screenwriter, Jordan is best known for creating the cult-hit webseries Carmilla (Winner: CSA, Digital Fiction, with over 70 million views on YouTube). She was Carmilla‘s lead writer for three seasons and the subsequent movie. She has been a winner of the Crazy8s Short Film Competition, a recipient of a Corus Writer’s Apprentice Fellowship at Banff, and is an alumnus of the Pacific Screenwriting Program’s Scripted Series Lab. Recent credits include story editor and writer on Family Law, and her supernatural drama Chaos Theory, on option with Seven24. She teaches screenwriting at Capilano University.