Change of State Performance Project (San Francisco, CA) requests a two-hour time slot to present the English language, one-hour, original tragicomic play “Take This House (and Float It Away)” to support grassroots water justice movements and catalyze strategies for changing water use practices. Our objective in presenting at the Social Forum is two-fold:
1. To incite creative thinking about strategies for water justice, focusing specifically on the cultural aspects of mainstream relationships to water.
2. To network with community organizers, activists, and students from around the country, offering this play for future performances to strengthen campaigns for water justice.

Our art activates imagination and inspires creative dialogue with the great questions of society. Audience/participants can engage with the issue of bad water management—the sort that led to Hurricane Katrina’s catastrophic effects—through the story of a middle-aged, middle class white couple in Sacramento, California. “Take This House” chronicles their relationship and isolation from each other alongside their futile attempts to “be prepared” at the last minute.
We use “Take This House (and Float it Away)” as in integrative phenomenon—one that entertains, catalyzes, and incites potent and populous movements for transforming the human-to-water relationship in U.S. society. After presenting the play, we facilitate a discussion of the causes of such a disaster and brainstorm how our capacities as organizers, activists, individuals, and place-based community members can transform water management systems and the pervasive culture of gratuitous water use.
The greatest challenge to the movement for water justice may be the severity of pending and volatile climate change. We ask: In the likely scarcity/glut cycle it may create, how will our political system choose to distribute this literally vital resource? How will we prepare for a just distribution and use of water in such times?
The play “Take This House (and Float It Away)” is performed in English. The discussion will be held in Spanish and English, with sequential interpretation, without headsets.
We present “Take This House” and the subsequent discussion in order to catalyze creative thinking about water insecurity. We also offer concrete resources and suggested action through our bilingual Spanish/English broadside, “Homewater Security,” which will be available at no cost to Social Forum audience members.
On the theme of water, we are also the authors of four chapters in Dam Nation: Dispatches from the Water Underground (Soft Skull, 2007) and in that capacity we would like to partner with other organizations at other times during the Social Forum, in panels or strategy sessions, to share our experiences and develop further strategies for water justice and sustainability with allies nationwide.