A Fine Idea

It’s 2024, and Jo has spent her life believing in aid: the practical, urgent, necessary work of helping those most in need. From India to Kenya, from classrooms to crisis zones, she has built a career on doing good. But 75 years after her grandfather helped introduce the idea of “international development” into President Truman’s inaugural speech, global inequality is not only still with us, it is deepening. When Jo meets Kala, a young Kenyan activist risking everything to fight for her country’s future, the certainties Jo has lived by begin to crack. What if the system she believes in is not solving the problem, but helping to sustain it? Inspired by Jason Hickel’s bestselling book The Divide, Christine Bacon’s A Fine Idea is a searching, provocative and darkly witty play about aid, power, privilege and the stories we tell ourselves about helping. Spanning continents and decades, it asks an urgent question: do we really want to change the world—or do we just like the idea of helping? CAST: 4 actors DURATION: 90 minutes.