Flood Sensor Aunty is a play about a flood sensor, a tool that monitors water levels, working at her aunt’s chai shop who really wants to be a movie star. Halfway between really funny devised theater and 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. As The City put it, “the show marries the creativity of community theater with the earnestness of an after-school special, rounded out with Bollywood dancing, a tribute to Chappell Roan, catchy original songs, send-ups of out-of-touch elected officials, slapstick comedy and free cups of chai. It’s a zany vehicle for imparting important messages about disaster preparation and response."

In the latest for City Currents, a new weekly series on the public space blog, exploring the contours of water and public life, the play’s creator Sabina Sethi Unni shines a stage light on creative approaches to community organizing:

Sometimes it is a badge of honor to not have a driver’s license, and I feel very righteous in my  utopic-climate-urbanist-state-centralized-publicly-funded-utilities self. Most of the time, though, it  is very inconvenient, especially when you need to schlep props and a set to public spaces in every  corner of the city. 

The footprint for Flood Sensor Aunty, my traveling play about flood preparedness, started very small:  chai carafes from the secondhand restaurant depot near my office; folding metal chairs from  Thanksgiving in my grandparent’s basement; tablecloths shedding rhinestones (on their third show  in a row with me) from the fabric store near my old job as a tenant organizer; and an A-Frame  sandwich sign by DG Design, a Bengali print shop that mostly creates color clashing menus for  Nepali restaurants and jam packed flyers for Jackson Heights based nonprofits fighting for basement  apartment legalization. 

After community groups from Stapleton, Staten Island to Queens College clamored for more  performances and climate organizations offered their critical feedback and funding, the footprint  grew: a sound system (after being traumatized when a wedding baraat parade at the Golden Terrace  Banquet Hall overshadowed our performance with an army of dhols and tassas) to mic actors in  bigger public spaces; a sock puppet held together by a hot glue gun; and oversized foam cutouts of go-bag components like cat food and tampons, which Jill from New York City Emergency  Management suggested I bedazzle. 

The footprint keeps growing: toy pianos and wind chimes and shruti boxes (after a member of  Queens College’s music department staff saw a performance and had to join the party); chai shop  menus with QR codes that sneakily lead to environmental hazard mappers (after a new collaboration  with two health department staff members eager to support environmental public health  communications that reach queer people); metal tiffins (if you know you know) for our new uncle  character who stole the show; and Dramamine, for our performance on a boat. 

I created Flood Sensor Aunty as an alternative to community engagement frozen in the universe of  pink and yellow sticky notes (that never really stick), inaccessible online surveys (that freeze when  you try to translate them into another language), and sprawling community board presentations (that  cram you at the tail end of a packed three-hour agenda). I am of course guilty of this kind of  engagement, and just yesterday requested a reimbursement for an 1,105-pack of ¾ inch color coding  stickers for a dot democracy workshop with middle schoolers. But we need to be creative in meeting  people where they’re at: host workshops in bars and chai shops and community gardens, sprinkle our  public education into plays and open mics and board game nights, and find trusted messengers who  can help us do so with culturally competent approaches. 

Being creative can be challenging when we’re expected to quantify impact. Of course, I can list off  some numbers, like the thousands of audience members in public spaces across all five boroughs  (plus Long Island, plus Metro-West Massachusetts); the hundreds of cups of free oat-milk chai (in  partnership with the Tea Stand) and the flood alarms and go bags that went home with audience  members (in partnership with New York City Emergency Management); the newly activated spaces  that had never seen a play before (especially not one with quite so many dance breaks), like 

Lieutenant Frank McConnell Park in Richmond Hill, the sitting room of PYO Chai in Floral Park,  or the Billion Oyster Project’s mechanical room (after flash floods relocated us from outdoors). But  the truth is, the most exciting benefits of performances like this can’t be quantified, and we do  ourselves a disservice as planners and organizers and artists when we constrict ourselves to metrics incapable of measurement. 

I’m looking forward to more performances reaching even more aunties (and more uncles), greater  language access and translation services during the show, new plot lines and character arcs and dance  breaks (I’m dreaming up a plumber character), and better scaffolding for public safety outdoors in this  time of mass uncertainty and fear for the communities we hold dearest.

About Sabina Sethi Unni, MSUP: Sabina Sethi Unni is a public theater artist, community organizer, and urban planner who tells funny stories about our crumbling infrastructure (and neighbors organizing to save it). You may know her from creating Flood Sensor Aunty, a municipal comedy about a flood sensor desperate to be a movie star developed in deep partnership with NYCEM and Rebuild by Design, but she’s also directed touring public education plays like Rainy Day Play (NYU FloodNet Artist in Residency), Lunch Break (Make the Road), A Fun Play about How Scary Climate Change Is (Queens Botanical Garden), and Pistachio & the Worms (DOT Public Space Programming Partner). Her theater has been covered by Grist, The CITY, Hyperallergic, Spectrum NY1 News, CultureBot, A4’s The Amp, Gothamist, and more. Website: www.sabinasethiunni.com

Next week, we'll hear from the Waterfront Alliance on redesigning "everything" to flood.

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