Katrina

A programme text edition of new site-specific play. Major new site-specific production, endorsed and marketed by the Young Vic, mixing innovative staging with a contemporary polemical subject. Brand new theatre company The Jericho House with its radical style of production. "Painful, pungent and bleakly comic" The Independent "Holmes' theatrical sensibility is undeniably powerful " London Evening Standard "The stories build up a staggering picture of official lies and personal heroism " The Guardian

Katrina uses survivor testimonies and the rich musical tradition of New Orleans to tell the story of the immediate aftermath of the 2005 hurricane. Jericho House production at the Barge House, Oxo Tower Wharf Sept 2009.In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina narrowly missed New Orleans. The resulting storms breached rotting levees and emptied neighbouring lake Pontchartrain into the city. Marooned by floodwater that swamped over 80% of their homes, the inhabitants had to wait a week without food or clean water before their own government came to their aid. Katrina uses survivor testimonies and the rich cultural tradition of New Orleans to tell the story of the immediate aftermath of the hurricane. Shedding light on some of the more extraordinary and under-reported aspects of the tragedy, the play portrays an odyssey through a drowned space and a series of encounters with individuals displaced and abandoned within their own city. The plot follows from the death of Virgil, a decadent old New Orleanian, who has been killed by Hurricane Katrina. Trapped by the rising floodwater his partner Beatrice determines to take his body to safety at City Hall. During her journey she encounters a number of other survivors and hears their tales. A Jericho House production, Katrina premiered at the Bargehouse, Oxo Tower Wharf, on 1 September 2009.