Water Logs: A Study of Global Water Crisis in Three Plays

In order to better understand the current water crisis faced by cities around the world, this thesis uses playwriting, and cultural studies methodologies such as memory work, and archival research to look at the situation in Chennai, India. Historically the maintenance and use of water bodies was serious community-led work with ritualistic significance in India. But today water is a commodity that is bought, sold, drilled for, paved over and polluted. This thesis studies how play scripts might redirect a city's social imaginary to address the water crisis, and how the imaginary which led to the crises came to be.