'Road' leads to a stormy drama in Brooklyn

'Road' leads to a stormy drama in Brooklyn

Their job’s no walk in the park: Cory Einbinder and Kalle Macrides in “The Service Road”

I t’s a modern-day Herculean saga â€" a Prospect Park nature guide searches for a missing child, while pitted against a raging tempest.

But Erin Courtney’s new play, “The Service Road, ” is stranger than fiction â€" and its genesis predates Hurricane Sandy.

Courtney was in Brooklyn in September 2010 when a windstorm downed trees and devastated neighborhoods. She says the event scared her and changed her take on nature.

So when the experimental, multidisciplinary Adhesive Theater Project commissioned her to write “something epic,” she looked no further than her backyard.

“When I’m writing, I try to walk in Prospect Park every day for an hour,” Courtney says. “It was great to use a location I know very well.”

Her play incorporates characters she has seen along those walks â€" a tree-service worker, a carousel caretaker, a park ranger, and events ripped from the headlines, including the poisoning of park geese and reports of an elusive “Ghost Dog.”

But with a production that includes video puppets, a Greek chorus of tree-climbing children and a gravity-defying set, this is not quite the Prospect Park New Yorkers see every day.

“I collect ideas and images from the real world,” Courtney says. “But then I have to let the real world go a little bit and create a new version.”

“The Service Road” runs Friday-Feb. 2 at New York City College of Technology’s Voorhees Theatre, 186 Jay St., Brooklyn. Tickets: $ 6-$ 12. (800) 838-3006 or adhesivetheater.com.