One who broke the silence is brought to life

10:46am Thursday 30th August 2007

A one-woman show pays tribute to the remarkable pioneering naturalist Rachel Carson, writes HELEN PEACOCKE

When Rachel Carson's landmark book Silent Spring was published in 1962 it alerted us all to the environmental and human dangers of indiscriminate use of pesticides and inspired a generation of activists.

Very few books are thought to have changed the course of history, but Silent Spring's impact was such that it is listed alongside Karl Marx's Das Kapital, Charles Darwin's The Origin of the Species and Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations in having had an enormous impact on how we view the world.

As 2007 is the centennial of Rachel Carson's birth and Silent Spring remains as pertinent now as when it was first published, writer and performer Liz Rothschild has devised a one-woman show celebrating Carson's work which is touring this autumn.

Breaking the Silence has taken Liz more than four years to write. She says it's not a history lesson, nor is it about fear and despair. It's a love story, which enables the audience to meet this remarkable author, experience the natural world as she did and hear stories she never told in her lifetime.

To research this play, Liz went to the US where Carson lived and worked, and successfully gained access to unpublished letters she had written to her friend, Dorothy Freeman.

The nature of the relationship between the Freeman and Carson has remained a subject of much interest and speculation. The two women, who shared every summer after meeting in 1953 for the remainder of Carson's life, had a number of common interests, nature being chief among them.

As Carson's biographer Linda Lear points out, it was a friendship which began at a time when she sorely needed a devoted friend and kindred spirit who would listen to her and accept her wholly as a writer as well as a woman. It is this relationship which Liz carefully weaves through Breaking the Silence.

But as it was the book, Silent Spring, which set off a well-publicised struggle between the proponents and opponents of the widespread use of poisonous chemicals to kill insects which is the real inspiration. No play about Carson would be complete if this revolutionary publication was not given prominence.

Carson, who was a biologist and natural scientist, considered that everything in nature is related to everything else. She was one of the first to convince a complacent and increasingly affluent post-war generation that the government could not be trusted to take care of them.

She was opposed to the indiscriminate use of poisonous chemical sprays at a time when many were blissfully unaware of their adverse effects on the countryside and all the living creatures that inhabit our fields, rivers and woodlands.

When it was published Silent Spring became an overnight bestseller. It was serialised in three successive issues of The New Yorker magazine during the summer of 1962 and published as a book in the September. It was chosen as Saturday Review's Book of the Month Club for October with a run of 150,000 copies, and in the same year the US Supreme Court Justice, William Douglas, called it the most revolutionary book since Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Such was its long-term impact, both nationally and internationally, that Carson was listed in Time magazine's 100 most influential people of the 20th century.

She even predicted global warming and was credited with having launched the global environmental movement and posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Some called Carson an alarmist, a romantic sentimental woman, and a fanatic defender of the cult of the balance of nature. Her most unpardonable offence was that she overstepped her place as a woman.

Sadly, she died from cancer just two years after her groundbreaking work was published.

But neither Carson nor Silent Spring could be silenced. Her voice still rings out from the grave and her book is still being republished.

Thanks to Liz Rothschild, Carson's centenary year is about to be celebrated in style when she introduces her audience to this remarkable woman. Those attending will experience the natural world as Carson did and come to realise her words of warning continue to reverberate today.

Breaking the Silence premieres at the Kindersley Centre, Sheepdrove Organic Farm, Lambourn, Berkshire, at 7pm on Saturday, September 8 (for tickets to this performance call 01367 242742). It then goes to the Rutherford Institute, Harwell, on September 14 (01235 445959) at 7pm, and The Abbey, Sutton Courtenay, on September 15 at 7.30pm (Call 01235 847401). On September 27 and 28 it comes to the Burton Taylor Studio, Oxford and its final Oxfordshire performance is at Duns Tew Village Hall on Ocotber 12 at 8pm (01869 347106). Seats can be reserved for these performances on 01865 305305. For further information go to www.rachelcarson.co.uk

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