Rainy Day Play
Sabina Sethi Unni and Nikolas Michael
About
“Rainy Day Play” is a devised comedic show about flooding, climate resiliency, and community. Are you scared of the rain? What’s your first memory of flooding and water? How has your neighborhood’s environment already changed since you grew up? What’s a time you’ve leaned on a neighbor during a disaster? Together with a group of 8 theater-makers, we wrote a play that explores how communities flood, change, and can adapt and be resilient to climate change. This piece is immersive and site specific, and meant to be performed in flood-prone neighborhoods during the rain (although we will create a hybrid set that allows spectators to stay dry, if they so choose). Our project will rotate across Gowanus and Edgemere. Public, free theater is a great way to get communities across the city engaged with important, difficult conversations while still having a good time. This play is immersive, meaning that audience members will be co-creating this work with us, and more deeply immersed into the issues that our characters and narrative faces.
On Flood Data
Public theater is an exciting and rarely-used form of public engagement with flooding. We can’t tell you how many times we’ve sat in boring multi-hour workshops created by city or nonprofit staffers about flooding and climate resiliency. They’re certainly valuable, but also fail to engage people who aren’t already concerned about the climate crisis. Flooding, water, and rain are things that all people understand; we can make art that reflects that reality. No one wants to talk about flooding during a sunny day. By bringing public theater outdoors, during the rain, we will engage with flooding and rain as a physical and material aspect of daily life that people can experience by simply being outside.
Press
