Edgemere Farm was born out of climate disaster and community resilience. In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, volunteers transformed an abandoned, flood-damaged plot into a lush organic garden.
One day in mid-September, the half-acre site in Far Rockaway, New York, underwent another makeover: For an hour, it became a chai shop. Two hundred people gathered to watch a performance of Flood sensor auntan hour-long play written by local urban planner and theater artist Sabina Sethi Unni. It plays like a humanized flood sensor – a tool that detects high water levels and provides that data to a publicly accessible map.
Sethi Unni’s anthropomorphized device clashes with his chai-shop colleagues and dreams of becoming a movie star. A pair of Lovelorn town health inspectors, an attention-seeking town council member, and a rain god who leads a cult from a cramped one-bedroom apartment, round out the cast.
Many people associate urban flooding with cities like New Orleans and Miami. But it is also becoming more common in the north too. Thirty-four of the 43 people killed when Hurricane Sandy hit New York in 2012 drowned in storm-land flooding, many in low-lying neighborhoods. Rain that followed Hurricane Ida’s march onto the coast in 2021 killed 13 people, including 11 in basement apartments. Even a heavy downpour like the one New York experienced in July can flood homes and threaten lives.
Flood sensor aunt strives to educate people about the threat by combining absurd comedy with practical advice for surviving future disasters. It celebrates the power of community to overcome crises, while providing audiences with helpful tangible tools like free flood alarms and headlights provided in collaboration with the city’s Office of Emergency Management and local nonprofits. The piece explains how to access 311 and make a disaster plan – through a brilliantly done synth referencing extravaganza performed in parks, warehouses and, on at least one occasion, a boat.
Sethi Unni spoke about his work at Climate Week in September and recently performed his play in Boston. She hopes to tackle other dramatic topics, like community council meetings – and wants to see more artists tackle the climate crisis with humor and hope.
Grist caught up with Sethi Unni to discuss public art as disaster preparedness infrastructure, Facebook pages and chatty families as artistic inspiration, and exactly what a flood sensor is.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: How did you start doing climate change theater?
A: Hurricane Ida was a real eye-opener in terms of the gaps we have in reaching South Asian and Indo-Caribbean communities. People live in basement apartments, which are largely illegal, so people are afraid to reach out to the city. They cannot access tenant protections. They’re just trapped in this net.
People talk about flooding as something that happens when you’re on the coast. But many of the neighborhoods hardest hit by the IDA were inner Queens neighborhoods with high groundwater tables. In the communities we play in, like South Queens, the flooding is so real and the basement deaths are real. And the city historically, even though they’re really trying to take all of these creative approaches, hasn’t done a great job of reaching out to communities that don’t speak English, communities of color, communities that don’t place faith and trust in government.
I was in school planning during Hurricane Ida. A lot of my classes were entirely about how we can tax the city. The answers were very top-down – like, “We need to build a sea wall.” Sometimes it’s the right call, but sometimes more gentle care infrastructure is what we need. What if more people knew what flooding was? What if we change our policy around basement apartments? I saw this as a way to reach the communities where they are, with trusted messengers [and] cultural references.
In the American consciousness, disasters, particularly floods and hurricanes, are considered apolitical. But obviously where people live in cities is caused by reds and segregation. In New York, public housing is often found in low-lying areas. And a lot of Asian American and Pacific Islander immigrants live in these basement apartments.
Q: What inspired this piece – and what exactly is a flood sensor?
A: I’m part of this Facebook page called Community Flood Watch. It’s mostly a guy from Howard Beach posting NOAA reports about flooding in Howard Beach. I’m obsessed with flooding. Normally, people report flooding through 311 calls. But you have to know what 311 is, you have to speak English more or less and you have to have time to call. SO [flood sensors] are a good alternative. They produce another form of data that can hopefully be used for advocacy.
A flood sensor is super cute. It is a device that is placed on elevated surfaces that calculates the distance between the height where it is placed and the ground. When it rains, the distance between it and the ground changes due to the water level. But flood sensors also look like surveillance cameras. So we’re trying to get the word out about this kind of shaky LiDAR technology.
I also think it’s a really good physical way of talking about flooding, because flooding is very fleeting, and a flood sensor is a thing that exists in the here and now.
Q: It’s still there between floods.
A: Exactly. It exists when it rains, it exists when the weather is nice. Interior flooding isn’t something you talk about a lot unless you’re used to your block flooding. But this is a very serious problem.
Q: So what role can art play in educating people about these fleeting but also dangerous things?
A: I think it’s a healthy part of the ecosystem. I think people respond to art – people respond to humor and fun and freshness and joy in their neighborhoods. It’s a way to captivate people. People need information repeated in different ways, whether through singing and dancing or jazz hand and sock puppets. Sometimes a one-page brochure translated into two languages isn’t the best way for people to receive information, but a song about go-sacs played on the synth is.
Courtesy of New York Department of Emergency Management
Q: I was struck by the amount of play surrounding hyperlocal politics. We see people negotiating bureaucracy in order to make a living, to build a community, to survive – the Chai Shop owners fighting a mid-level bureaucrat who very much wants them to close. So, I ask now: as we navigate the climate crisis, should we have sympathy for bureaucrats?
A: We should and should not. The show is in part a suggestion to bureaucrats that we can use creative strategies to inform communities of their risk. It doesn’t just have to be an up-and-down thing or a boring community tour. [Flood Sensor Aunty] is a bit of fun about bureaucrats who are permit sticks, and can cause a lot of mischief by acting like city planning cops.
But it’s also a love letter to our bureaucrats who are trying to make changes and push back against this big, careless system. We actually have a bureaucrat, Jill Cornell, who I contacted for technical assistance. Jill does community engagement with the city’s Office of Emergency Management. And now she has a monologue in the show, and she sings and dances, and she’s maybe a better dancer than all of us.
Q: At one point, your character Flood sensor aunt Says “Gossip saves lives.” Is this true?
A: Gossip totally saves lives. Aunt’s gossip saves lives. In a real sense, people who do domestic work in households do a lot of work when disaster strikes. This awesome civil engineer named Sangamithra Iyer, who gave a talkback at one of our performances last spring, talked about how care is infrastructure, and women’s work in households is climate infrastructure. Gossip can mean knowing which neighbors I’m supposed to check on – this neighbor is always out for a walk at this time of day, and I haven’t seen them; These neighbors are elderly, I should probably call them. This kind of busy body and body work is how we save lives.
I talk about my real neighbors in the show. We share mint from our gardens, feed the same stray cats, check in after storms.
Q: It’s difficult trying to attract attention in a busy public park. How do you get your message across despite all the noise and distraction that being in public in a big city entails?
A: It’s usually just the boldest, brightest thing. When we were creating our ensemble, we were thinking, “What color contrasts best against the green and blue?” But we want to let the place shine – like, if we’re in Edgemere, we’re in Edgemere. The beautiful tomato stems are also part of the set.
There is this genre within public art called “useful art.” Even if you’re not really listening to what we’re saying, we’re giving you a go-bag, we’re giving you a flood alarm, we’re giving you a headlamp, we’re giving you all these resources to protect yourself. Many people think that plays are great opportunities to change hearts and minds, but sometimes people just need to know what’s going on. Maybe they should think about the racial politics of social risk, but maybe they also need a flood alarm for their basement.
There is a general belief in climate policy that we protect ourselves from flooding through Army Corps of Engineers projects, such as a sea wall. But what if, also, the things that keep us safe include knowing our neighbors, loving our aunts, checking on the elderly in our communities? These soft forms of infrastructure also deserve funding and attention, and should also be considered real forms of infrastructure.
