Surviving Mankind

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On an Earth rendered uninhabitable by catastrophic climate collapse, humanity is gasping its last breaths. Deep beneath the boiling oceans, four survivors — Romeo, Juliet, Adam, and Eve — prepare to launch aboard a prototype spaceship known as The Ark, humanity’s final attempt to escape extinction.
Their mission: reach the distant planet Y214, the only possible refuge, and give the human species a chance to endure after destroying its own world.

But not everyone agrees that humanity deserves to be saved. As the launch window narrows and tensions rise, ideological conflict fractures the fragile alliance between the four survivors. Pragmatism clashes with radical idealism, personal histories resurface, love and jealousy reappear in the shadow of apocalypse, and an impossible ethical question haunts the crew:
Should mankind continue— or should it end here?

Between dark comedy, moral dilemma and dystopian suspense, Surviving Mankind exposes the fragile architecture of human hope.

Date of writing2019

Number of characters4

Cast2 men, 2 women

SetThe command deck of The Ark. A futuristic control room: electronic consoles, a central screen, hibernation capsules, maintenance hatches, warning lights, and the Ark’s insignia on crew suits. Cold lighting punctuated by alarm flashes and distant structural rumbling. Offstage locations — the damaged launch silo, the upper cockpit — are suggested through entrances, exits, and sound design.

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Genre Overview

Surviving Mankind blends science fiction with modern moral tragedy, forming a dark tragi-comedy structured around ethical conflict.
The futuristic setting — spaceship, cryogenic sleep, missile launches, planetary colonisation — provides both narrative propulsion and symbolic resonance. Yet the dramatic core remains human: competing values, impossible choices, and the absurd vanity of a species debating its survival at the very edge of extinction.

Humour arises from the gap between human pettiness and cosmic stakes. The text oscillates between satirical dialogue (mocking authority and bureaucracy), pathos (farewell scenes, ethical impasses), and black comedy (sterilisation proposals, biblical allusions).
This tonal hybridity shapes a dramaturgy where technical realism, philosophical debate and intimate confession coexist — the hallmark of Martinez’s symbolist societal comedy.

Genres: Science-fiction comedy, Moral tragi-comedy, Existential dystopia, Black comedy.

Thematic Panorama

The play confronts several intertwined thematic axes:

  • Human responsibility: mankind’s complicity in its own extinction.

  • Ethics of survival: who decides who lives, dies, or reproduces?

  • Power and ideology: scientific authority, military secrecy, sabotage, political manipulation.

  • Transmission and memory: what should be preserved for future generations — if any exist?

  • Intimacy and survival: jealousy, past relationships, pregnancy, the pressure to “repopulate.”

  • Technology vs. fragility: the limits of salvation through science; the precariousness of The Ark.

  • Hope vs. renunciation: the desire to rebuild civilization versus the temptation to end the cycle.

The play questions whether survival is a biological imperative or a moral one, and whether the human story deserves another chapter.

Dramaturgical Context

Within Jean-Pierre Martinez’s dramatic universe, Surviving Mankind continues his exploration of ethical conflict, intimate dynamics, and political satire under extreme circumstances.
The play occupies a liminal space between dystopian fable and intimate tragedy, placing four archetypal figures in a technological huis clos.

The dialogue drives the action: fast-paced exchanges, philosophical clashes, revelations, and emotional reversals structure the scenes.
The dual temporal frame — an urgent countdown to launch, and a 16,000-year cryogenic leap — allows the narrative to question the durability of human values across vast stretches of time.

The Ark becomes both a literal survival machine and a metaphorical courtroom, where the species is judged by its last representatives.

Character Types / Functions:
Romeo – the pragmatic survivor; ex-military; action-driven.
Adam – the ideological radical; doctor; moral absolutist.
Juliet – the rational scientist torn between conscience and necessity.
Eve – emotionally conflicted biologist; pregnant; bridge between extremes.

Set as symbolism : The Ark embodies both sanctuary and judgment chamber, a vessel of salvation, yet fragile, cracked, and morally compromised — mirroring the collapse of the civilisation that built it.

Temporal Setting: Near future, ecological collapse and totalitarian aftermath. Long interstellar duration: 16,000 years of hibernation. Temporal duality blending immediate urgency and epoch-spanning projection.

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Copyright

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