“Adams Run” is a video opera composed by Ruby Fulton and produced by Rhymes with Opera. Baynard Woods, a former Charleston City Paper columnist, wrote the libretto, which is set in the Colleton County town of Adams Run. The story, set in the near future where the climate crisis is the only topic, centers around Billy Noble, an environmentally minded televangelist with a reality show about building an ecological ark for his flock, and Julie Shore, an existentialist weather woman who mocks our inability to act in the face of planetary change with gallows humor. They have the two most popular shows on TV and when Shore goes to Adams Run to cover Noble’s ark, they fall in love. The following scenes open the film (which is available on Amazon Prime) by cross-cutting scenes from both of the shows.
JULIE SHORE
It’s July 29th, 2020 and I’m Julie Shore, the Existentialist Weather Woman
It is snowing in Los Angeles
At twentynine degrees
Connecticut is burning,
one hundred-eighteen.
BILLY NOBLE
And it is the wrath of the Lord
that brings these end times upon
us. We have not shepherded his
Earth and his Oceans and his seas
JULIE SHORE
Today marks the eighth straight
year of severe drought in the Mid
and South West
BILLY NOBLE
And the Dust is blowing
JULIE SHORE AND BILLY NOBLE
So long it’s been good to know you/
so long it’s been good to know you/
so long it’s been good to know you/
this dusty old dust is driving me
home/ and I’ve got to be drifting
along
BILLY NOBLE
And it is the wrath of a righteous
God Just as it was in the days of
Noah
JULIE SHORE
In the City of Baltimore today, the
mayor and City Council finally agreed
on the forceful and permanent
evacuation of the historic Fells
Point neighborhood
BILLY NOBLE
And that is why we are here today And
henceforth on the Rev. Billy Noble
Gospel Hour
JULIE SHORE
Baltimore is now the fifth city to
take such drastic action against
rising tides
BILLY NOBLE
at the Ark, our environmental retreat
and laboratory
In the town of Adams Run, SC
The story the people down the road
On Edisto island used to say
Is that Edisto was Eden and Adams Run
was where Adam stopped
the first night after the expulsion from the Garden
JULIE SHORE
Eight other cities, including New
York City, are contemplating similar
actions.
It is an especially fraught issue
in New York, where 232 people died
last week when a subway line flooded:
Still no word whether they
drowned or were electrocuted.
BILLY NOBLE
And so we, sinners expelled from our cities-
You heard about the flooded subway
in New York last week, no doubt,
We have come back to this spot, the
first dark night after the
realization of our sin to rebegin
again; to build an ark for the righteous
to claim our birthright
not only as the children of Adam
But also of Noah, for the Lord hath
so ordered to live in harmony with
the Earth and on this ark create a
new covenant with the Lord and the
JULIE SHORE
Meanwhile, in South Carolina where
two super tornados coming from
different directions collided into
the state capital in what one
spectator described as two
Godzillas having rough sex
Citizens, led by the famous Rev.
Billy Noble are claiming the end
times and declaring the weather
acts of God
BILLY NOBLE
And surely some of you, even those
amongst us here as soon as you turn
off our show flip through the DVR
to the Existentialist Weather Woman
The top show on the TV. And I
understand, I too have watched the
fetching young woman as she makes
light of the only topic that now
matters Infecting our country with
European nihilism and gallows’
humor
JULIE SHORE
Even if God is not dead it is now
clear that He used the world as
little more than his internet:
Disaster and porn.
Baynard Woods is a Baltimore-based reporter and writer, who is from S.C. and was recently featured in Oxford American’s South Carolina music issue. I Got a Monster, his book on police corruption will be released by St. Martin’s Press in 2020. Love Best of Charleston? Help the Charleston City Paper keep Best of Charleston going every year with a donation. Or sign up to become a member of the Charleston City Paper club.