Rare Earth Mettle

Important information: We are in unprecedented times and have taken the difficult decision to postpone Rare Earth Mettle. More info 

“You don’t tell an American to turn off their light; you build them a better light bulb.”

A leading British doctor with a radical plan to save the NHS and a Silicon Valley billionaire with a radical plan to halt climate change, meet outside an abandoned train on a salt flat in Bolivia.

A landscape so bright in its whiteness that it isn’t easy to look at, and so uninterrupted in its flatness there’s no echo.

For Kimsa and his daughter who live there, the arrival of these strangers initially seems like an opportunity. Until they both stake their claim on the land, each following their ruthless pursuit of ‘the greater good’.

Al Smith’s epic new play is a brutally comic exploration of risk, delusion, and power.

“You only have an attachment to ideas. But I am attached to this place. I know the history. This land is a part of who I am”.

Al Smith returns to the Royal Court following Harrogate, for which he was nominated Most Promising Playwright (Evening Standard Theatre Awards). He is a graduate of the Royal Court Young Writers Programme. Royal Court Associate Director Hamish Pirie directs.

“The beauty of Smith’s occasionally Pinteresque writing is that while it is dark, it is never gratuitously ugly.” The Telegraph

Rare Earth Mettle has been generously supported with a lead gift from Charles Holloway.

Further support has been received from the Cockayne Grant for the Arts, a donor advised fund of The London Community Foundation.

This play is a recipient of an Edgerton Foundation New Play Award.

Original images by Chris Staring and Leonardo Rossatti.