Moving Water

This Spring, the Museum of Science, Boston is proud to present a limited run of Serious Play Theatre Ensemble’s groundbreaking piece, Moving Water, written by Eric Henry Sanders, with Original Music by Jonny Rodgers, and directed by Sheryl Stoodley.

In the face of rising sea levels, Serious Play Theatre Ensemble’s new devised theatre piece, Moving Water, addresses the global water crisis, climate change & how water fragility shapes our human interactions.

Moving Water is a theatrical call to action. It’s been in development for over 2 years with artistic director, ensemble actors & the collaborating artists: writer, composer, dramaturg & designers. As part of the ongoing development, the piece had a live & virtual premiere this past July in Northampton, MA and played to sold out audiences. (The Northampton premiere was co-produced with the KO Festival of Performance.) This winter, Serious Play has returned to the studio refining & redesigning the piece toward a 2022 New England Tour. Through highly visual staging, with a diverse acting ensemble including some text spoken in Spanish, choreographed movement, onstage rain, large scale video projections augmented with original water glass music, this poetic and visually stunning work will bring audiences to a deeper appreciation for, and understanding of water, and our fragile world.

The beauty of water itself, blind faith in technology to solve global climate problems, the search for a missing friend who had come from Pakistan to study drought and water management to save her family farm, even a darker future where inaction leads to inevitable catastrophic loss, all play a role in the emotional struggle that does not always find friends on the same side of an issue. Points of view collide in this new devised theatre piece from Serious Play Theatre Ensemble, coming to the Museum of Science, Boston this Spring.

The story is set in an older apartment building in a US coastal city. Its imaginative, Davinci-like inventor, the building superintendent, is somewhat detached from reality, but nonetheless extremely concerned with the impending threat of storms and rising ocean waters on the building he sees as his home. He befriends an oceanography student from Mexico City and together they search for a missing resident from Pakistan who has disappeared. The son of the building’s owner downplays the constant dripping, the new cracks appearing in the foundation and the increase in larger storms, denying climate change as a possible cause. The characters each have a unique association with water that drives the overall storyline both real and metaphoric concerning rising sea levels, water scarcity and insecurity, and our unique human relationship with water.