Scenes in 'Annie,' pictured here, and 'If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet' have taken on new context in the aftermath of the hurricane. Joan Marcus

Of all the systems that faltered in the aftermath of Sandy, here's one I didn't expect: my own belief in art as a refuge.

We're three weeks out from the storm, and life is back to normal for a lot of New Yorkers—if it was disrupted at all. I fall into that category, but there's been an indirect effect that has shifted my spectrum of emotional responses to art.

Three of my closest friends live within blocks of the shorelines in Rockaway, Long Beach, and Point Pleasant, N.J. For years I've been a first-class freeloader, delighting in the waterfront access, pools, porches and all the sunny glories of having friends at the beach. Now, as those friends call from their cold, powerless war zones, they relay news about the lack of progress, and about mounting decisions and problems they could not have remotely conceived two months ago.

A scene from 'If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet' Joan Marcus

Even as the recovery moves forward, there's still heartbreak on a daily basis from Fire Island to Atlantic City. Be it the elderly displaced by the flooding in Red Hook, or the people living in the tent city at Monmouth Park, the scope is crushing.

Where does all that leave the arts lover, who turns to culture for comfort and perspective in trying times? With feelings of guilt, almost certainly. But then again, the range of human problems is so vast, just wait 10 minutes for your good luck to change.

Whether you engage with the arts to reflect, connect or "to forget about life for a while" (thank you, Billy Joel), Sandy has complicated things. For me, the change has been two-fold. The positive feelings evoked by music and comedy wear off faster, while the jolt of a challenging drama lingers longer and hits harder. I can't measure these things, but most people know their own typical range of responses. I might tear up here and there in the theater. Lately, I've been a sobbing mess.

Yael Farber's play "Mies Julie," at St. Ann's Warehouse in Dumbo, is brutally intense and violent. Maybe I would have been in floods of tears anyway. But seeing it now, I practically had to remind myself to breathe. At one point I thought I might have to exit the room out of sheer panic.

During "Annie," it was hard to be cynical about the sweetness. But the Hooverville scene, with actors huddled in heavy coats and standing in soup lines, suddenly looked a whole lot like Rockaway.

Then I found myself crying uncontrollably during the climactic scene in Nick Payne's "If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet," at the Laura Pels Theatre. The play deals implicitly and explicitly with the potential impact of global warming: Water literally floods the set, so that household objects float chaotically around the stage and an enclosed tank.

Mr. Payne did not originally write the water into the play (it was developed by the show's director and designer), and after Sandy hit, he had some concerns about context. "My initial worry was that it would seem insensitive," he told me in a phone interview. "I hoped that it would hold up, and that if it did work, it would seem very different, darker."

Mission accomplished. But the play is about the human impact on both the environment and on other people. "I tried very hard," Mr. Payne said, "to balance what is the most terrifying thing I can think of—ecological catastrophe—with a small, bungling family unit."

At the end of the play, the human relationships evolve as the environment literally deteriorates. And in a way, that's happening in New York, too: The volunteer efforts have been far more organized and aggressive than any I can remember in the past decade, going back to Sept. 11, 2001—and not just in charity galas, but by people in every neighborhood going to the hardest-hit areas and finding ways to help.

There's a sentiment that fits here, one that I'm taking from the dance world but applies to any line of work—and even to being an arts consumer. The late choreographer Alvin Ailey used to tell his dancers, in so many words: You are a human being first, an artist second.

His point, said the divine dancer Renee Robinson, who is retiring from the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater this year, was to ensure that his artists connected to life beyond their own work. "It's not enough to know your technique and your beauty. That's just what you do," she said. "The more you continue to grow as a person, embrace other art forms, know what's going on in your city, country, world, it will make you a more interesting person. You bring that person to your dancing. We are a reflection of humanity. We all feel joy and love, and we have situations that challenge us to look deeper. We understand through working together and embracing difference, we know in that lies our strength."

Why is Ailey's masterpiece, "Revelations," a hit all over the world? Because it's a work of art that reflects all the highs and lows of the human experience. After years of watching this company perform it, sometimes I skip "Revelations." Not this year.