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<p class="byline-dateline"><span class="byline" itemprop="author creator" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person" >By <span class="byline-author" data-byline-name="RAJIV JOSEPH" itemprop="name">RAJIV JOSEPH</span></span><time class="dateline" datetime="2017-12-01T02:55:01-05:00" itemprop="dateModified" content="2017-12-01T02:55:01-05:00">NOV. 21, 2017</time>
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                <span class="caption-text">In this snapshot, the playwright Rajiv Joseph captured the flooding outside the Alley Theater, where Hurricane Harvey forced the relocation of his play &ldquo;Describe the Night.&rdquo;</span>
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        <p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="300" data-total-count="300" id="story-continues-1">The best thing about being a playwright is having the opportunity to produce my plays at theaters across the country. I leave my home in Brooklyn and head to Los Angeles or Chicago or Dallas, and over four to six weeks, I get to forge a relationship with a city, the theaters there and the community.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="406" data-total-count="706">The city I have gotten to know best is Houston. The <a href="https://www.alleytheatre.org/">Alley Theater</a> has produced three world premieres of mine there over the past eight years, the most recent of which went into rehearsals in August. Everything was going smoothly until, five days in, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/11/climate/houston-flooding-climate.html">Hurricane Harvey hit</a> and flooded much of the area, including the space where my play “Describe the Night” was to be mounted. Our <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/08/theater/alley-theater-harvey-houston.html">theater was underwater</a>.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="447" data-total-count="1153">Six of us from New York (three actors, the director, the stage manager and I) were staying in downtown apartments where we were dry and safe, but stranded while the rest of Houston was engulfed in floodwaters. There seemed little to do besides use the gym, watch TV and read, but my more conscientious colleagues suggested we volunteer at the Red Cross, which had set up a gigantic shelter down the street at the <a href="http://www.grbhouston.com/">George R. Brown Convention Center</a>.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="334" data-total-count="1487">When we got there, a Red Cross staffer got wind of the fact that we were theater artists and that I was a playwright. This was how I was recruited, along with our stage manager, Lori Lundquist, to draft a public address announcement to provide information to the thousands of people pouring through the doors of the convention center.</p><figure id="media-100000005558995" class="media photo embedded layout-large-horizontal media-100000005558995 ratio-tall" data-media-action="modal" itemprop="associatedMedia" itemscope itemid="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/11/26/arts/26rajiv3/26rajiv3-master675.jpg" itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" aria-label="media" role="group">
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<p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="493" data-total-count="1980">We were whisked away to an office upstairs with windows that looked down on one of the football-field-size rooms that was now lined with cots and their new occupants. An energetic and overworked young employee tried to lay out for us the information we needed to convey in a clear, efficient and attention-getting manner. When is dinner? When is lights out? Where can one find dry clothes? Lori and I had to figure out which questions were most pressing and then craft a suitable announcement.</p><div id="story-ad-1" class="story-ad ad ad-placeholder nocontent robots-nocontent ">
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<p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="515" data-total-count="2495" id="story-continues-2">A quick aside: As someone with an active imagination who frequently considers the possibility of someday having to negotiate his way through a post-apocalyptic landscape, I often worry that I will have no useful abilities when that day arrives, seeing as the only discernible skill I possess is writing dialogue for actors on a stage. So I was amazed and relieved that I could contribute anything at all in the midst of a crisis like this one — which was feeling, as the hours passed by, increasingly apocalyptic.</p>        <a class="visually-hidden skip-to-text-link" href="#story-continues-3">Continue reading the main story</a>
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        <p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="592" data-total-count="3087" id="story-continues-4">I dashed off a first draft and read it aloud to Lori, who gave me a look that all stage managers possess — best described as a blend of compassion, pity and impatience. “It feels like a high school morning announcement,” she said, and I had to agree. Lori suggested a more energetic opening, and she also had a better sense as to what people wanted to hear. So “May we please have your attention for the following announcements” became “Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon, we have some information that may answer some of your questions. … Shower trailers are on their way!”</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="163" data-total-count="3250">The next day we learned that, despite nearly $15 million in damage to the Alley, the staff had secured an alternate space for my play at the University of Houston.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="355" data-total-count="3605">We had nowhere to rehearse, so an Alley board member gave us office space on the top floor of the second-tallest building downtown. From there we could see the whole city and the surrounding suburbs. At a glance, everything seemed fine. But looking closely, you could see the brown waters of the bayous stretching over places that were supposed to be dry.</p><figure id="media-100000005558993" class="media photo embedded layout-small-vertical media-100000005558993" data-media-action="modal" itemprop="associatedMedia" itemscope itemid="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/11/26/arts/26rajiv4/26rajiv4-master180.jpg" itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" aria-label="media" role="group">
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                <span class="caption-text">Mr. Joseph volunteered at the Houston Red Cross, where he helped to write a public address announcement (above) for those seeking shelter.</span>
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<p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="329" data-total-count="3934">“Describe the Night” takes place over 90 years in Russia, East Germany and Poland, and follows the divergent stories of the writer Isaac Babel, who was killed in Stalin’s purges; a love-struck KGB agent in Dresden in the 1980s; and an airplane crash in Smolensk in 2010 that wiped out many members of the Polish government.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="378" data-total-count="4312">We had lost our theater, a week of rehearsals; several of the Alley’s staff members had lost their homes. This was a peculiar world to step back into. Was it wise to continue at all? The question “Does theater matter?” can be vigorously debated in times of peace and prosperity. But in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, putting on a play did not seem like a pressing endeavor.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="254" data-total-count="4566">However, I followed the lead of the Alley’s staff: They wanted to get back to work, and “Describe the Night” had its <a href="http://www.houstonchronicle.com/entertainment/arts-theater/article/Alley-Theatre-s-Describe-the-Night-is-a-12238470.php">premiere</a><a href="http://www.houstonchronicle.com/entertainment/arts-theater/article/Alley-Theatre-s-Describe-the-Night-is-a-12238470.php"> at the Alley</a> via the <a href="https://www.uh.edu/news-events/stories/2017/september/09192017UH-hosts-Alley-Theatre-season-opener.php">University of Houston’s Quintero Theater</a> on Sept. 20, the originally scheduled date of the opening.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="486" data-total-count="5052">I was inspired by the city of Houston. Wherever you went in the days and weeks after the storm, people were kind, openhearted, sharing stories, concerned for strangers. My parents, who through me have also grown fond of the city, came down for opening night. I took them to the Breakfast Klub, a popular soul-food brunch spot, and the elderly woman who greeted people at the door gave my mother a hug for no other reason than that’s just what people do down there in times like these.</p><div id="story-ad-2" class="story-ad ad ad-placeholder nocontent robots-nocontent ">
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<p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="313" data-total-count="5365" id="story-continues-5">I have two prevailing and unrelated fears that dovetailed during this time. One is that the vocation I’ve dedicated my life to is meaningless. The second is that the world might any day experience a cataclysm that alters civilization entirely. This fear is a rather new one, but it grows daily. Who can say why?</p>        <a class="visually-hidden skip-to-text-link" href="#story-continues-6">Continue reading the main story</a>
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                <span class="caption-text">Zach Grenier as Nikolai, Danny Burstein as Isaac and Tina Benko as Yevgenia in &ldquo;Describe the Night&rdquo; at the Atlantic Theater Company.</span>
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        <p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="244" data-total-count="5609" id="story-continues-7">In any case, I left Houston with my fears allayed. Sure, all human activity is meaningless, seeing as the world will probably end one day. But with both theater and human existence, as long as there’s a show to be put on, the show must go on.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="209" data-total-count="5818">As I write, “Describe the Night” continues to. We began previews for the New York premiere a week ago at the Atlantic Theater Company, and I am back in the world of Babel, the KGB and political conspiracy.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="368" data-total-count="6186">The play, in many ways, is about how people determine what is fact and what is myth. In Houston, the plot felt divorced from our predicament, but now, with distance, it feels strangely relevant. There have been two catastrophic hurricanes since Harvey on American soil, and the political response (“Is Puerto Rico America?”) has often felt like Soviet doublespeak.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="306" data-total-count="6492">Three weeks after the floodwaters had receded, a friend and I had drinks in downtown Houston. While we sat there, it began to rain again, violent sheets of rain, and I felt a surge of worry, as if Harvey, like some slasher-movie villain, hadn’t been vanquished after all and was back to wreak more havoc.</p><p class="story-body-text story-content" data-para-count="211" data-total-count="6703">But the rain stopped, and we left the bar to go meet more friends for dinner. The air was crisp and clear, and the sun started to break through the clouds, just over Minute Maid Park, where the Astros play ball.</p><footer class="story-footer story-content">
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                <div class="story-notes"><p>Rajiv Joseph is the author of “Guards at the Taj” and “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo,” among other plays.</p></div>
        
        
        <p class="story-print-citation">A version of this article appears in print on November 26, 2017, on Page AR5 of the <span itemprop="printEdition">New York edition</span> with the headline: More Than the Usual Opening-Night Jitters. <span class="story-footer-links">  <span><a href="http://www.nytreprints.com/" target="_blank">Order Reprints</a><span class="pipe">|</span></span>  <span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/pages/todayspaper/index.html" target="_blank">Today's Paper</a><span class="pipe">|</span></span><span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/subscriptions/Multiproduct/lp839RF.html?campaignId=48JQY" target="_blank">Subscribe</a></span>
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