In this “In 40 Years” action scene, the facilitator frames a future of escalating ecological breakdown where each participant embodies an impersonal archetype, and the improvised narrative quickly concentrates on scarcity, survival, and the moral fractures caused by pollution. The whale is the first to signal the crisis physically, becoming unwell in an overheated sea and entering into a dialogue with the fisherman that immediately anchors the scene in vulnerability and interspecies dependence. As resources tighten, the beekeeper takes a pragmatic survival step by breaking a branch from the tree to shade the bees, an action that the arid land actively supports, intensifying the pressure on the tree, which then voices its suffering. The arid land, in turn, expresses satisfaction at the tree’s injury and repeatedly positions itself as a hostile force, prompting explicit rejection by the beekeeper. Meanwhile, hunger drives the whale toward the adolescent and the fisherman, yet the whale’s approach is marked by mistrust, reflecting a world where even solidarity is destabilized by threat. The conflict escalates when the beekeeper kills the tree entirely and the arid land rejoices, while the “ghost” of the dead tree returns to speak, extending the scene beyond the immediate present into grief, haunting, and accountability. The whale continues to weaken, articulating fear of being killed as well, and the fisherman, unable to witness this collapse, withdraws; the whale ultimately strands itself and dies, marking a turning point where extinction becomes irreversible and meaning drains from the remaining characters’ actions. In the aftermath, survival logic sharpens: the beekeeper approaches the dead whale to retrieve fat, while the fisherman responds differently by planting seeds in the land, attempting regeneration amid devastation. The scene ends with a final gesture of coercion as the fisherman gags the arid land to silence it, a symbolic attempt to suppress the hostile environment itself, underscoring the desperation, moral ambiguity, and collapsing boundaries between care, exploitation, and violence that define this future scenario.

F=Facilitator, P=Participant