Binghamton, NY - This October, stories about the 2006 and 2011 floods in Broome County will be shared in a staged reading of a new play produced by Civic Ensemble, an Ithaca-based theatre company focusing on community engagement in the arts. This documentary theatre piece, Living With Water: Stories of the Flood, is a part of the Living With Water Resiliency Summit, organized by Rust to Green Binghamton (R2GB). The play is comprised of the firsthand accounts of the flood by people who lived through it.

Over the past year, Cornell University researchers and students, Binghamton University professors, City officials, and staff from Cornell Cooperative Extension and Civic Ensemble have interviewed and conducted story circles with various populations throughout Broome County who were affected by the recent floods. This summit, organized to commemorate the fifth and tenth anniversaries of the floods, will be an opportunity for many people to come together, learn from past experiences, and begin to plan "rebuilding smarter," based on ongoing research in the area on flood resiliency. Civic Ensemble was engaged to create a play from this work, with Director of Civic Engagement Sarah K. Chalmers leading the story circles and script creation.

The performance will feature Binghamton actors Richard M. Borromeo, Beth Buczkowski, Tom Kremer, Janey Moody, Josh Sedelmeyer, and Crystal Williams. Buczkowski, Moody, and Sedelmeyer are all natives of central New York. Sedelmeyer has performed previously at KNOW Theatre, while Borromeo is a graduate of BU Theatre where Kremer teaches. Chalmers will direct, with Civic Ensemble artists Hana Mastrogiacomo as the Assistant Director/Stage Manager and Lucy Walker as Dramaturg/Assistant Producer.

Binghamton is a particularly apt place for this active community-based research, as a post-industrial Rust Belt city outside of the New York City metropolis. The floods had a severe impact on the city, damaging private and government property. Just in 2011, Tropical Storm Lee inflicted at least a billion dollars in Broome and Tioga counties.

As several Cornell sociology professors involved wrote last month: "The Rust to Green Binghamton (R2GB) program connects academic and community partners on initiatives to foster greater resilience and sustainable development. The Living With Water initiative is the first project of R2GB, and it brings together a collective of government officials, community organization leaders, university partners, and artists to focus on community flood resilience. Living With Water's emphasis on local voice and empowerment as well as its action research methodology has given rise to a project that supports community decision making."

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