A Fun Play (about Climate Change)

I wrote and directed A Fun Play about How Scary Climate Change Is, a devised piece about finding hope, not despair, in the face of climate change covered in Hyperallergic (!!!) and the Rockaway Wave (twice). We performed in six community waterfront spaces across the city: the Queens Botanical Garden’s Climate Arts Festival, the Amanda+James Coastlines Festival, (where they commissioned five artists to create public art about and on the coastline), Edgemere Farm, Gowanus Dredgers Community Boathouse, Hunts Point Riverside Park, and the historic La Plaza Cultural. We also made a fun mini-zine (send me an email and I’ll mail you one + stickers!!!). Along with Amanda+James, this performance is supported by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the Brooklyn Arts Council. All performances were free, with food cooked by neighborhood chefs to remind of us of the places we performed in, zines and archival installations about climate organizing and justice around the corner, and a community talk back! The play itself follows two swamp monsters who wash up on the beach, and a Seagull (who’s been to too much therapy), grumpy writer, neurotic makeup artist, and fabulous park ranger who band to return them home to their family (with plenty of music and dancing and songs about rain along the way). There’s also a lot of Japanese synth from 1987 that I got off eBay.

📍 Queens Botanical Garden, Hunts Point Riverside Park, Edgemere Farm, Gowanus Dredgers Community Boathouse, La Plaza Cultural

Director: Sabina Sethi Unni
Producers: Amanda+James Coastlines Festival
Performer/devisers: Saskia Naidoo, Ray Jordan Achan, Alex Scelso, Kshithij Hegde, and Di Lobontiu
Stage Manager: Raine Higa
Documentation: Sonyi Lopez
Dhol: Jagpreet Singh
Choreography: Makayla Peterson and Shivani Naipaul Bhirani
Catering: Doran Edwards
Dramaturgy: Nikolas Michael
Additional support: Kanika Asavari Vaish and Pallavi Sethi
Graphic Design: Kruttika Susarla