Rising Water

The first of two plays commissioned by the Souther Repertory Theater about Hurricane Katrina, Rising Water concerns an older couple who wake in the middle of the night to find their house inundated with water. They scramble into their attic, where, surrounded by a lifetime of possessions, they scratch open old wounds in reexamining their relationship even as the water continues to rise. When it finally laps at the attic itself, they claw a hole in their roof to escape. But only one of them is slender enough to squeeze through. The one still trapped in the attic, with just a head sticking through the hole in the roof, debates his beloved about whether they have a future in a world of water where they may be the only survivors.