May 10 - Jun 17, 2018
by Gabrielle Reisman
Directed by Jenna Duncan
Regional Premiere
“Tall metal beams, endless metal beams, that a dozen men can’t even move that are bigger than any train and we’re all making steel all day and all night in smoke. I know I’m seeing the future.”
In Johnstown, Pennsylvania in 1889, the Great Flood has decimated the vibrant steel town, leaving behind a ragtag crew of survivors, aid workers, and surveyors to assess the damage and speculate what, or who, could be responsible. A century later, at a bar in Johnstown, recently laid off steelworkers ponder their uncertain futures in a town when industry, and the world, seems to have left them behind. Traversing time and space, Flood City is a hopeful dark comedy about disasters, corporate (ir)responsibility, and a community’s resilience in the wake of the unimaginable.
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“Reisman shows her refined and playful ear for language… from clever verbal play to outright slapstick… Reisman’s humor is incisive and biting.” – Theodore Mahne, Times Picayune
“Exciting to watch… A portrait of an excruciating event that changed the way the nation viewed corporate responsibility.” — Mary Rickard, Gambit Weekly
“charmingly off-kilter… a sharp situational comedy” — Brad Rhines, New Orleans Advocate
“The play’s real-world immediacy is striking: Trump-era concerns such as blatant prejudice against immigrants and the loss of jobs to trade deals and cheap foreign labor ripple through the dialogue. Flood City may be set in 1889 and 1992, but it has solid strands of 2016 in its DNA.” — Jim O’Quinn, American Theatre Magazine