Grace, Seth, Leah and Oliver come from very different backgrounds. Inspired by Greta Thunberg, they meet in grade twelve at KCVI and become climate activists. Each in their own way, they struggle to survive the climate apocalypse. A climate-friendly government takes power in Ottawa, but is battered by backlash and scandal. By 2038, the four friends are forced to make hard choices.
The Makers and Shakers Society is a scripted audio drama in six parts written and directed by Clarke Mackey. All cast members have Kingston connections. Performers include Jackson Watt-Bowers, Vishmayaa Jeyamoorthy, Stephanie Fung, Paul Smith, Anna Sudac, Liam Karry, and Cassel Miles. The music is composed and performed by Kevin Bowers.
Funding for The Makers and Shakers Society was provided by The City of Kingston Arts Fund and The Community Foundation of Kingston and Area.
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Praise for The Makers and Shakers Society
“The Makers and Shakers Society from Clarke Mackey delighted me this week. It’s a serialized drama that tells the story of young activists today figuring out the climate apocalypse of tomorrow, told retrospectively, with lots of love and youthful drama woven in…It is so imaginative, and really brings us into that speculative fiction space without feeling all that unrealistic based on our present day. It walks that line of reality vs fiction that a lot of Kim Stanley Robinson’s work does.”
— Britt Wray on the Gen Dread blog. Britt is the author of Generation Dread.
“Drawing on climate science along with Indigenous ontologies to address the climate crisis, Clarke has created an engaging and timely podcast drama. The Makers and Shakers Society tracks the lives of a group of student activists trying to navigate their personal lives while dealing with the bleak future they’ve inherited.” – Armand Garnet Ruffo, Anishinaabe poet, author and filmmaker, The Treaty #, Man Turning into Thunderbird, A Windigo Tale.
“The Makers and Shakes Society is a compelling story that takes us from the present into a future most of us dread. But it doesn’t simply present the bleak climate apocalypse. The characters’ emotional journeys through the crisis also make us think about how we can prevent it from happening. It’s well-told, exciting and hard to stop listening.” – Rebecca Schechter, award-winning screenwriter: North of 60, Degrassi: The Next Generation, Little Mosque on the Prairie, and former Writer’s Guild of Canada President.
The Makers and Shakers Society is a beautifully crafted and wonderfully acted radio play that at once offers a bleak and regretful future of climate catastrophe while simultaneously engaging with the present-day hopefulness of the people, the protests and the radical movements that may deflect the worst that climate breakdown has in store for us. A wonderful triumph in storytelling. – Stephen Lee Naish, author of Screen Captures: Film in the age of Emergency (Newstar books)
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To listen to The Makers and Shakers Society for free, search for it on your favourite podcast app: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and several other popular apps.
There are six episodes in total. Below is a description of each one.
EPISODES:
Episode One – Dear Ancestors – 41 minutes
It’s 2075 in Kingston Ontario. An old man enters his childhood home, now abandoned, after a long journey. We find out he is dying of cancer. He begins telling his life story to the ghosts of 2022. His name is Oliver Adams. In 2018, he and other students in grade 12, inspired by Greta Thunberg, start striking for the climate. Four students — Oliver, Leah, Seth and Grace — form a group called the Makers and Shakers Society.
EPISODE 2 – School – 40 minutes
Oliver argues with adults who scoff at his climate concerns. He experiences romantic heartbreak at the end of high school in 2019. His first big love, Leah Zhang, rejects monogamy and is about to leave for university in Vancouver. While much of the world suffers a record-breaking summer heat wave, Oliver discusses politics and the future with Grace, a fellow Maker and Shaker, who seems wise beyond her years.
EPISODE 3 – Beautiful Failure – 37 minutes
While all his friends leave town to go to university, Oliver remains in Kingston and starts a band called “Beautiful Failure.” He doesn’t enjoy attending Queen’s. In January he quits school and starts working at a health food store where he meets Lennon, a trans youth. During the three-year COVID-19 pandemic, Oliver suffers from depression. That’s when he reconnects with former classmates Grace and Seth who live in Toronto.
EPISODE 4 – Rapid Response – 36 minutes
In 2023 Oliver takes the bus to Toronto to visit his friends. He finds out Grace and Seth are student activists with many tales of blockades and hunger strikes. Grace convinces Oliver to start a climate activist group in Kingston called Rapid Response. Over the years that follow, a remarkable, climate-sincere government wins power in Ottawa under Prime Minister Omnira Anderson. Anderson’s personal assistant is Maker and Shaker Leah Zhang, Oliver’s high school love. Politics in Canada start looking better until severe political backlash and a series of scandals topples the Anderson regime. The result is an abrupt switch to a police state under the United People’s Alliance. Seth is arrested and Grace suddenly has to go into hiding. She asks Oliver to join her.
EPISODE 5 – Pinot Noir – 44 minutes
Grace and Oliver, using false identities, become farmworkers at the McCann Estates Winery in Prince Edward County. During the eight years they live in hiding, they are involved in a migrant workers strike, become lovers, and have a child together. Meanwhile, as predicted, climate crisis decimates much of the world. Millions die in countries near the equator. The US collapses into warring factions. The underground resistance group Black Rose Network, which Oliver and Grace are part of, discovers a government informer in its midst. Soon after, Grace is arrested.
EPISODE 6 – Galileo
Leah, who once assisted Omnira Anderson, now works for United People’s Alliance, the authoritarian government which has taken power in Canada. The nation’s capital has moved from Ottawa to Waterloo Ontario, now a walled city. In 2038, shortly after Grace’s arrest, Oliver has to secretly enter the walled city so that he can negotiate with Leah on behalf of the Black Rose Network. He offers the end of blockades and bombings in return for the release of prisoners, including Grace and Seth. As they talk, Leah tells him the real story behind the coup that toppled the Anderson government.
Clarke Mackey 