“Greenies,” a 10-minute one-act play by Amanda Zeitler, is a story of boy meets girl — with a twist. Boy crash-lands on a desolate planet and can’t get water. Girl has some but won’t give him any because she needs every drop she has.

“Spoiler alert,” Zeitler says: “One character kills the other.” And at the end, the survivor is attacked by the natural surroundings.

It’s a bleak sci-fi tale, and one that’s based in reality, says Zeitler, who notes that this is a “hyperbolic possibility” of what the world will look like if we don’t become more environmentally conscious.

The staging of the play is particularly relevant in Washington this week, sandwiched between the March for Science on April 22 and the April 29 People’s Climate March. The latter’s organizers have dubbed this “the week of action” and are partnering with various groups to host related events.

That includes ActOut, a monthly series co-founded by Zeitler that pulls together an hour of topical theater, spoken word, poetry and music. For the April edition, it’s an evening whose theme is environmental justice — including “Greenies” and other submissions — at Busboys and Poets Takoma on April 25. (For details, go to peoplesclimate.org/week-of-action.)

There’s power in performance, Zeitler says. That’s why she and Natalie Piegari started planning ActOut in January, the day after the Women’s March drew huge crowds to the capital on Jan. 21. Despite writing letters to Congress, donating money and volunteering to support certain causes, they felt there was more they could do. And it involved a stage.

Each installment offers artists “a chance to embrace, engage, or rage at current events and the political climate,” according to the official description. Tackling science this month, Zeitler says, offers a way to address technical issues in an emotional way.

“You can rattle off all of the statistics you want, but those are numbers,” she says. A battle to the death over water on a planet that may one day be our own? That’s a story.

— Vicky Hallett

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