Audience to flee floods as South Bank play recreates the horror of Katrina

The play, Katrina, by London writer/director Jonathan Holmes, is based on witness accounts of the hurricane and subsequent floods that devastated New Orleans on 29 August 2005.

The show's audience will enter the bottom floor of the five-storey Bargehouse at the Oxo Tower Wharf at what is said to be "a couple of hours" before the hurricane strikes the city in Louisiana.

They will be forced up the building along ramps while the effect of a hurricane is recreated through a powerful soundscape. Strong lighting and sound effects will also be used to mimic the rising floodwater. The six-strong cast will play victims fleeing New Orleans in scenes echoing actual events.

Holmes, 33, said: "This started from watching the disaster unfold on television and affecting places I knew well."

He said he wanted to highlight extraordinary acts of bravery among the people of the city. On one visit, in the aftermath of the hurricane, he found an outpouring of stories from victims who wanted their voices to be heard.

He gathered six witness accounts, with each one offering a different perspective on the tragedy, and incorporated them into a narrative for the 90-minute show.

The main story comes from a woman named Beatrice, who Holmes found through a Louisiana newspaper. "Her story was so epic it could act as the backbone of the play," he said. Holmes, whose previous work includes Fallujah, a play about the 2004 siege in the Iraqi city, also devised from verbatim testimonials, added: "What I want people to take away with them are these astonishing stories of solidarity and hope."

Hurricane Katrina began as a tropical storm that neared the Florida coast on the evening of 25 August.

It strengthened before veering inland towards Louisiana, destroying lighter buildings and causing extensive damage to others.

The storm surge caused more than 50 breaches in canal levees, or embankments, and floodwalls in New Orleans.

By the end of August, 80 per cent of the city was flooded, with some parts under 15 feet of water.

More than 1,800 people died, at least two million evacuated from their homes and the damage to the city was estimated at $81billion. Reports later emerged that two-thirds of the flooding was caused by failures in the city's floodwalls.

Holmes said: "There is an implicit indictment that the system failed. It wasn't an act of God like the tsunami. It was something that could have been mitigated but wasn't. The lessons can be applied to other tragedies. There was a sense that there was a lack of a relief effort."

Cast member Andrew Dennis, 44, of Seven Sisters, recalls watching news broadcasts of the unfolding tragedy with concern for relatives in the city. He eventually learned his cousin had fled the city before the hurricane hit.

His connection to the event drew him to Holmes's show. "It's a story that needs to be told," Dennis said.

Katrina will run from 1 to 26 September. Tickets are available through the Young Vic.