A movie star walks into a bar. Well, a chai shop.
And she’s not really a movie star, just a flood sensor — a tool that monitors water levels — with big dreams.
After a four-performance run in September, a newly revamped version of “Flood Sensor Aunty” is heading to every borough for six free outdoor shows in April.
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.
After a four-performance run in September, a newly revamped version of Flood Sensor Aunty is heading to every borough for six free outdoor shows in April.
Sethi Unni — the show’s creator and director, who also plays the flood sensor — grew up in Floral Park just over the city line in Long Island, where she still lives with her family in a house with a basement that sometimes floods.
“I’m always thinking about flooding,” Sethi Unni said.
Alex Scelso rehearses “Flood Sensor Aunty” in Long Island City, March 20, 2025. Credit: Alex Krales/THE CITY
Hurricane Ida’s record-setting rainfall in 2021 — which killed 13 New Yorkers, including 11 who drowned in basement apartments — was a big moment for Sethi Unni, especially as a member of a South Asian community adjacent to Queens, where most of the deaths occurred.
The storm and its aftermath got her “thinking about city failures and the ways that flooding is intersectional,” she said. “It’s not a natural disaster. It’s because of housing, and it’s because of racial justice, and it’s because of specific roads that you live on.”
With a background in theater and a day job as an urban planner, Sethi Unni, 27, wanted to talk about flooding, extreme rain and climate change in a way that was more approachable, inventive and culturally specific than typical community engagement methods. She fixated on the idea of a flood sensor. The first time she saw one, she thought the lens that captured the depth of water on the ground looked a lot like a snout.
Featuring over-the-top characters who trade barbs and burst into song, the play is wacky, to say the least. The action all takes place against a colorful set, complete with a custom A-frame sign for the show’s chai shop that typifies an aesthetic that Sethi Unni describes as “Jackson Heights uncle graphic design.”
Jess Balgobin, a community initiatives manager at Chhaya Community Development Corporation, a nonprofit focused on the South Asian and Indo-Caribbean communities in Queens, said the play strikes a balance between being silly and taking seriously the harrowing impacts of flooding — fear, displacement, destruction, even death.
“The humor is an easy touchpoint to talk to somebody without forcing them to sit through a lot of heaviness and to avoid retraumatizing people,” said Balgobin, a South Ozone Park resident who also performs monologues in and conducts outreach for the show. “It’s hard to talk about these things when you’re affected by it, so art is a nice segue into having these conversations.”
Jill Cornell, a community engagement specialist with New York City Emergency Management, helped Sethi Unni hone the play’s disaster-preparedness messaging. Cornell made sure it was clear basement residents should go up — not out — in the event of a storm, and pointed out the script should reference clogged catch basins instead of gutters, since New Yorkers can request a catch basin clean-out from 311. She also suggested some zingers that made it into the show.
“We have an all-hands-on-deck approach to preparedness, and also anything that’s generated by community folks, we want to support that,” Cornell said. “This is just a fun way to do it. I’m going to learn more if I’m laughing than if I’m being lectured at.”
At the end of each show, the cast hosts a community conversation,co-led with local organizers, to emphasize the play’s core messages. Audience members can leave with a free headlamp from Sethi Unni and a flood alarm, provided by Emergency Management, which will also be raffling off a go-bag at each performance.
Sethi Unni said Cornell told her the most important thing people can do is know their neighbors, and that’s a central idea threaded throughout the show.
“If you know your neighbors when you’re evacuating, you have someone in your neighborhood whose house that you can go to, you can make a disaster plan,” Sethi Unni said.
In an effort to facilitate neighborly connections, the cast invites audience members to write postcards to their neighbors that the team will then mail out.
Isa Nicdao rehearses the play “Flood Sensor Aunty” in Long Island City, March 20, 2025. Credit: Alex Krales/THE CITY
Amy Chester, director of resiliency nonprofit Rebuild By Design, saw “Flood Sensor Aunty” in Astoria, Queens, in September and was impressed. She proceeded to award Sethi Unni a grant through the Rainproof NYC initiative, which sought to address the urban challenge of extreme rain.
“Even though the characters are somewhat outrageous, they’re also people in our lives,” Chester said. “Focusing on the aunty as the hero and connecting it to knowing your neighbors and having those conversations and the deep ties with your neighbors — it’s a very fresh way of approaching the problem.”
Already, hundreds of New Yorkers have seen the show, but Sethi Unni wants to engage more people. She said she’s especially trying to reach “every Brown girl in Queens,” eldest daughters and aunties of all stripes.
Aunties stood out to Sethi Unni as the female figures in South Asian and Indo-Caribbean communities who are stereotypically wise and well-connected — and perhaps loose-lipped or overbearing. Those qualities also mean aunties (and the equivalent role in other cultures) are well set up to be community pillars in disaster scenarios.
“I love aunties. I love aunty gossip — real hot take!” she said. “You know from disaster coverage that checking in on people, maybe being overly nosy, the domestic labor that aunties provide — the disproportionate domestic labor — is such a value.”
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