Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren, University of Washington, Bothell
Place: Athipatti, a fictional South Indian village
Vellaisamy: Can I trouble you for a little water?
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Vellaisamy: Why do you laugh when I ask you for water?
Kovalu: To ask a man for his wife is not a sin in this village. But to ask him for water is a great sin.
Thaneer Thaneer (Water!) Komal Swaminathan
Abstract
“Dramatizing Water: Performance, Anthropology, and the Transnational” investigates how “dramatizing water” can act as a constellation that links the basic substance of life to translocal performances across a continuum that spans water in everyday life, in ritual, and as it appears on a formalized stage. A brief genealogy of examples is developed across the everyday and ritual, but the primary focus in on the late Tamil playwright Komal Swaminathan’s 1980 Thaneer Thaneer (Water!) and its relevance as a prototype for political drama on water. There is currently a profound global crisis around water distribution and “dramatizing water” indexes an attempt to chart the possibilities of moving toward a differently configured space for our water-practices, toward an alternative and more sustainable performative cartography of water. Keep Reading