Symbiocene

In 2025, a mysterious and highly disruptive force ruptures the boundaries between humans, plants, and animals. Under the banner of Expedisi Harapan Sembilan, three outcasts – a world-weary park ranger, a psychic, and a fungal traveller – are sent into the epicentre of this rupture, Penang Botanical Gardens, to investigate.

What will they find and how will it change them?

Symbiocene is an ecopunk tale of love, grief, and a wild re-imagination of a world where humans, plants, and animals live together symbiotically.

Coined by the Australian philosopher, Glenn Albrecht, Symbiocene is a period of re-integration between humans and the rest of nature, a time of living together and companionship. In the play, the Symbiocene is imagined as a world populated by human-plant-animals creatures where language and meaning are deconstructed and reconstructed.

Inspired by the genesis of the cyberpunk genre, we coined a term “ecopunk”. “Eco” as in ecology, the relations between living things and their habitats. “Punk” as in a defiance against the status quo. In our ecopunk world, we follow a group of outcasts as they navigate a world that re-centres all living things as equal.