About

I am a public theater artist, community organizer, and urban planner dedicated to telling funny stories about our crumbling infrastructure (and neighbors organizing to save it) in public spaces, recently covered on Grist, NY1, the CITY, Hyperallergic, and more.

My most recent piece, Flood Sensor Aunty, is a play about a flood sensor working at her aunt’s chai shop who really wants to be a movie star. Halfway between really funny theater and culturally competent community disaster prevention, this show is about how the best way to protect yourself from flooding, climate change, and despair is through knowing your neighbors. Created in partnership with NYC Emergency Management (and dozens, hundreds really, of site-specific based organizations, like Chhaya CDC, Billion Oyster Project, and Queens College), audiences leave nourished with bellies full of chai, laughs, flood protection resources like flood alarms and headlamps, and calls to action. We’ve had (17?) performances in different public spaces with audiences of 250+ across all five boroughs of NYC, Long Island, and Boston!

I have a background in climate planning, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat through (or organized!) boring multi-hour workshops about climate change and resiliency. Instead, I see public theater as an exciting strategy for meeting people where they’re at (with resources and information and systemic calls to action), while also having fun! My proudest credentialing (resume available for more conventional credentialing tho) is writing and directing public programming in open spaces in every corner of my city: Hunts Point Riverside Park, Travers Park, Queens Botanical Garden, Qahwah House Astoria, Loisaida United Community Garden (LUNGS) 6B, Washington Square Park, Snug Harbor Botanical Garden and Cultural Center, Newkirk Open Street, La Plaza Cultural, Domino Square, Lt. Frank McConnell Park, Rockaway Beach, Queens College, the Astoria Food Pantry, Gowanus Dredgers Community Boathouse, PYO Chai, Edgemere Farm, Orchard Alley Community Garden, Rockaway Community Park, 31st Avenue Open Street, PS Family NYC, Fordham University, and more if you let me!

Scroll through my website for an exhaustive list (brag brag brag) of past projects, but I’ll highlight Rainy Day Play, a devised piece that I directed and co-wrote as an Artist in Residence at NYU Flood Net Center; Lunch Break, a collaborative protest performance that I wrote and directed for Make the Road with worker-organizers from DRUM, Local 79, and the Street Vendor Project for their May Day Rally; and A Fun Play about how Scary Climate Change is, a devised piece that I wrote and directed and took to six waterfront spaces and the Queens Botanical Garden’s 2024 Climate Art Festival.

I’m the co-founder and artistic director of Fresh Lime Soda Productions, a contemporary South Asian political theater ensemble and incubator, an inaugural member of the Tank’s Writer-Director group (TAG), the Motor Company’s Writing Circle, and a facilitator for the Broadway Advocacy Coalition’s Theater of Change workshop. Feel free to peruse this (overly detailed but always under construction) website for more (self-indulgent) parentheticals or send a signal: unnisabina@gmail.com. ✺✺✺