At our performance in Richmond Hill, Queens. Photo: Cameron Blaylock
Flood Sensor Aunty is a play, that I wrote and directed, about a flood sensor working at her aunt’s chai shop who really wants to be a movie star. Halfway between really funny devised theater and culturally competent community disaster prevention for South Asian/Indo Caribbean communities, this show is about how the best way to protect yourself from flooding, climate change, and despair is through knowing your neighbors. In partnership with NYC Emergency Management, audiences leave nourished with bellies full of free oat milk chai, laughs, flood protection resources like flood alarms and headlamps, and calls to action. Check out robust coverage on Grist, Spectrum NY1, the CITY (!!!), the Queens Knight, Streetbeat, SI Live, WaterWire, and more.
Our first four performances were supported by NYC Emergency Management as part of National Disaster Prevention Month, FloodNet, Chhaya CDC, Street Works Climate Art Festival, Huntington Art Works, and Culture Push. This show was created with help from a team of almost thirty community organizers, performers, devisers (partly performers with deep experience in movement and theater work and partly community organizers working and living in the neighborhoods we’re performing), designers, and more. After each performance, there will be a structured (by which I mean scripted) talkback featuring a climate communications celebrity helping us host and give a call to action: Matthew Sookram from Chhaya CDC (Richmond Hill), Rana Abdelhamid from Malikah (Astoria), and Jill Cornell from NYC Emergency Management (all). Highlight: our very first performance was interrupted by a wedding, and the groom’s baraat (with a dhol and tassa outcompeting our actors for noise) lasted the entire second act.
Audience of 100+ at Qahwah House in Astoria, Queens. Photo: Jesse Herendon
Our first performance was in Richmond Hill, Queens, as part of the Urban Design Forum’s Local Center - community organization Chhaya CDC has been working with two urban design teams to transform a sleepy park into a new space for arts and culture in South Queens - an area of the city with many artists, poets, performers, musicians, and no community spaces or stages - and we were honored to be the first performance and joined by over 100 audience members. Our second performance was at Travers Park in Jackson Heights, Queens, as part of the Street Works Climate Art Festival, where we were also joined by over 100 audience members crowding into our space. Our third performance was at Qahwah House in Astoria, Queens, where we were joined by community leader Rana Abdelhamid, the rain, and over 200 audience members, and our fourth performance was at PYO Chai in Floral Park, Long Island.
