(Trying to) Stay Cool grapples with the tension and layered cognitive processes that we collectively face while navigating life in an era of multidimensional crisis amidst the ever-increasingly prevalent climate catastrophe. Playing on the dual meanings of cool as both a temperature easy to luxuriate in and a demeanor reflective of one who is not adversely impacted by difficult situations, the title signals the ethos of the performance as a playful and multivalent investigation into how one might find ways to luxuriate and chill (activities necessary to live) while being faced with the climate crisis. Embracing a need to find leisure and queer communion in the face of what sometimes leads to feelings of overwhelm and emotional paralysis, Paloma and Lehner deploy camp, humor, inflatables, and more to open space to explore how we might, in fact, stay cool in our complex and fraught contemporary reality.