Me and My Bee is a family show, in the best sense of appealing equally to both adults and children. Like The Muppet Show or The Simpsons there are jokes that sail over the heads of the youngest but reveal a sharp seam of humour embedded in the show for the older attendees. The silly irreverence of what the group describe as a ‘political party, disguised as a party party, disguised as a show’, dramatizes the looming extinction of bees and asks that its audience join the three performers in helping them resist it. A lonely bee looks for a flower to pollinate through a series of dance routines, monologues and audience participation. Politics, ecology and disco converge. The bee’s story is continually framed in relation to his importance to the continuing survival of other species, and as a result of the impact of humans on the eco-systems he relies on.
Just what the extinction of bees would mean for the world is increasingly part of public discourse. The cataclysmic effects of colony collapse disorder (CCD) could result in the disappearance of not only honey but enormous amounts of crops that couldn’t survive without the pollinating insects. As this contributes to a shrinking of the resources of the world, the problems that we already see, of migration and of conflict, will be exasperated. Like the rest of the public, artists are waking up to this and attempting to raise the alarm on behalf of the furry little insects, from Reverend Billy to Black Mirror. The satirical clowning of Me and My Bee deals sillily with an incredibly serious issue, highlighting a pressing ecological issue to its young audience. As they leave, clutching a pack of seeds they’ve been encouraged to plant, they importance of reversing the decline becomes ingrained early on.
- Lewis Church
Links relevant to this diagnosis:
Extinction of Bees – Global Research
Honey Bee Extinction Will Change Life As We Know It - Motherboard
The Climate Change Generation Gap – The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists
Black Mirror ‘Hated In the Nation’ – The Atlantic
