Carey Perloff



A young female geneticist, Natasha, sits on a beach in Santa Cruz, California, panicked at the news that she is pregnant. She places a call to her boyfriend Bill, a travelling computer chip salesman, and in the instance of the call, her female ancestors begin arriving to intervene and give advice. Viennese woman from her mother's side and Southerners from New Orleans on her father's side collide, argue, wrestle and cajole as the past exerts its stranglehold on Natasha and she struggles to reckon with her past and decide what motherhood might mean for her own life.  The play culminates in a fractious encounter with her recently dead mother, whose own expectations of Natasha seem impossible to meet. A play about immigration and assimilation, WAITING FOR THE FLOOD asks what burdens of our ancestors we have to carry with us and which we can jettison along the way.

WAITING FOR THE FLOOD

by Carey Perloff

2009


Workshopped at New York Stage and Film, directed by Chay Yew (2009)

Subsequently workshopped at the Roundabout Theater Company, NY  (2010), also directed by Chay Yew,

Workshopped (2010) at Baltimore Center Stage, directed by Daniella Topol