About

TLDR: Public theater artist, community organizer, and urban planner dedicated to telling funny stories about our changing climate, covered in Hyperallergic (!!!), NY City News Service, Staff Picks, the Rockaway Wave, and more. Save the date for Flood Sensor Aunty (halfway between funny play about a flood sensor who really wants to be a movie star and community disaster preparedness directed and by me) - which will return April 2025 to chai shops and brown public spaces across Queens, thanks to support from NYSCA (!!), Rebuild by Design, the inaugural Wellesley Repertory Theater Grant, NYC Emergency Management, Culture Push, Huntington Arts Grants, StreetWorks, and you!

TMI: I am the co-founder and artistic director of Fresh Lime Soda Productions, a contemporary South Asian political theater ensemble and incubator. This year, I directed Mehrnaz Tiv’s I AM MALALA BOOKCLUB for the Good Apple Collective’s Rootstock Readings Festival, directed Squishy Emotional Insides for the Tank’s LimeFest and Breaking and Entering Co’s Rooftop Reading Series, assistant directed a play about ecofascism (?!) at the Astoria Food Pantry, directed a one act about the 2003 blackout for the Player’s Theater, acted in Dance Nation for Brooklyn College’s MFA program, and devised an experimental performance art piece for the Brick Theater’s ?! Festival. I’m a member of TAG @ the Tank.

BTW: I see public theater as a strategy for environmental justice: I directed and wrote a Fun Play about How Scary Climate Change Is for the Queens Botanical Garden’s 2024 Climate Arts Festival (and six other waterfront parks with funding from LMCC and BAC). Previously, I was an Artist in Residency at NYU where I directed and co-wrote Rainy Day Play, a devised play about climate change and flooding. I directed and wrote a collaborative performance for Make the Road with workers from DRUM, Local 79, and the Street Vendor Project for their May Day Rally. I was a public space programming partner with the Department of Transportation, performing and directing a bilingual children’s play about composting throughout their open streets in Brooklyn and Queens.

OMG: I like to write about myself (can you tell?) and am an Open City Fellow with the Asian American Writer’s Workshop and a New City Critics Fellow at the Urban Design Forum, writing about (you guessed it) climate change and flooding and South Asian Americana. Check out some past pieces about climate organizing, food justice, archiving, the Zoom chat, hybridity, and mapmaking. I’m a climate planner and I wrote my master’s thesis about vacant lots in Rockaway, and was the recipient of the Charles Abrams Thesis Award. I have also worked writing city council policy in Brooklyn, creating public spaces and open streets in Queens, and tenant organizing at a community land trust in the Bronx.

FAQ: Feel free to peruse this (overly detailed but always under construction) website for more (self-indulgent) parentheticals or send a signal: unnisabina@gmail.com. ✺✺✺