Run-Riot sent our reporter Kerenza Evans on an important mission to investigate London's latest dedications to our trademark weather. Does a downpour count as Art? Do you fancy getting drenched in the front row of the theatre? Or are you happiest sheltering from the storm?

Considering that this year’s “summer” was akin to some sort of punishment from The Wicker Man, it is rare for a member of the British public to wittingly seek out rain. This, however, is exactly what I have been doing this week with visits to The Barbican Centre’s newly installed ‘Rain Room’ and the West End Production of Singin’ In The Rain.

Let’s start with the former. The Rain Room is the brainchild of Random International which was founded in 2005 by a group of students at the Royal College of Art. In essence, it is an installation which exhibits a downpour of water mimicking actual rain. When participants walk into the rain, it does not rain upon them but adjusts to rain solely on the surrounding area. Well. It does if you make sure to move through it slowly and gracefully. If you act as I did and run through it like a puppy on its first day at the beach, I can heartily confirm that you will get wet. The installation works through a number of sensors responding to the movement of your physical presence (not by 'magic' as I made the mistake of joking to a physicist chum who then treated me to a twenty minute lecture on the science behind it. Lucky ol' me.) I contemplated how splendid it would be if normal rain did this - handily watering the greenery around you but keeping you nice and dry. Well. Splendid if you knew about it beforehand. If it just happened, you'd probably be so alarmed, you'd quickly turn psychologically insane, dragged off to the farm dressed in a zebra onesie, muttering 'the rain! the rain!' under your breath. Also the umbrella industry would go out of business. Now there's a thought that's gonna fester.

From keeping dry in the rain to getting soaked in the place you'd least expect it, my second venture of the week was to see Singin' In The Rain at The Palace theatre in Covent Garden. Undeterred by the limitations of the stage, the production featured an impressive 14 tonnes of water to create the famous scene of the title resulting in an absolute soaking of the front row. Thankfully such audience members had come armed with ponchos and raincoats - I presume they had been pre-warned about the downpour. Or, who knows, maybe they're just crazy and wore exactly the same thing to Les Misérables.

I'm a huge fan of the movie and I think some of the dance routines are second to none in the musical genre. The show did not disappoint in this regard - all the numbers were fantastic and I thoroughly recommend it for the rain sequence alone. I felt an almost maternal concern for the key performers in a vague fear that they might slip and fall but thankfully everything ran smoothly. The only negative moment was not related to the performance, but the miscreant next to me who sung along to every song, appearing to have some Ibsen-esque desire to break the fourth wall of the performance. I might do that next time I go to The Globe - 'No, actor playing Hamlet, you put down that skull and take five. I've got this'.

To those of you environmentalists out there who might be tempted to protest about the amount of water being expended here, rest assured - the performance loses less than a bath tub of water each day, the rest is recycled. Also, no-one with a soul could protest a musical. That would be like protesting kittens or Dame Judi Dench.

I also found it interesting that rain creates such parallel emotions in people. On the one hand, people love to complain about it - it prevents you from enjoying a range of outside activities, it's cold and it's uncomfortable. As The Rain Room exemplifies, the only reason people are so willing to leap into this downpour of 'rain' is with the trust that it will not get them wet. Conversely, it is the rain itself that makes the key sequence of Singin' In The Rain so perfect; the fact that when you're happy and in love, splashing around in the rain suddenly becomes hugely enjoyable. If Don Lockwood (played by Adam Cooper) had been skipping around in the sun, the beauty of the scene would not have been nearly as prevalent. And, well, the lyrics of the song would have made him seem nuts.

As a final thought, dear reader, imagine this: You're lying in bed, comfortable and half asleep, listening to the gentle tapping of the rain against the window. You inwardly laugh at those people out there on the streets, who are not in the cosy little cocoon that you inhabit, and burrow further under the duvet like a human mole. Rain, like the existence of Donald 'Twitter Meltdown' Trump, reminds us that things could always, always be worse.

The Rain Room is open for visitors at the Barbian Centre until 3 March 2013

Singin' In The Rain is currently playing at the Palace theatre in Leicester Square

Wayne McGregor's Random Dance takes over The Rain Room in this stunning video.