Shorelines

In a small community under military occupation, residents wait in a place with no natural water, while levees hold back a shoreline that has risen across the globe. Seventeen-year-old twins Alix and Evan spend their days in a disused, empty swimming pool, making use of whatever they can salvage from the deserted houses nearby. Meanwhile, Portia, a government official, revisits places from her own past, and her history begins to collide with the present.

The long-anticipated evacuation order has finally reached every city, but the twins come to understand that leaving will not guarantee they survive. They hurry to reach their grandmother, a retired journalist living with dementia, whose memories surface in fragments, jumping like a worn recording before the last flood. Written as a non-linear, poetic play, the work reads like a dispatch sent back from the future.

At its core, the play explores family and community in a world reshaped by climate change, and it examines how disaster response tends to fall unevenly, with poorer communities bearing the heaviest burden. Lavigne writes with a sense of urgency, reminding readers that everything is linked and that whatever hope remains rests in the bonds people form with one another.