TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS: A CONTEMPORARY COMEDY OF SCARCITY

Four allotment holders. One shared water tank. An exceptionally hot British summer. What could possibly go wrong?

As drought tightens its grip on a community allotment, four well-meaning growers find themselves competing for a rapidly diminishing supply of water. One wants to feed families through the local food bank. One is determined to protect pollinators. One trusts measurement, evidence and restraint. And one arrives with an ingenious solar-powered pump that appears to solve everything.

For a while, the allotment flourishes.

Then the water begins to disappear.

What starts as a simple rule, ONE CAN EACH, soon becomes a battle over fairness, need, trust, technology and who gets to decide what the common good actually means. Private exceptions multiply, information is withheld, relationships fracture, and every character discovers how easy it is to justify taking just a little more when the reason feels important enough.

Funny, humane and sharply observed, Tragedy of the Commons transforms one of the defining challenges of our time into an intimate contemporary comedy about ordinary people trying to live within extraordinary limits.

This is not a story about villains or easy answers. It is about what happens when good intentions collide with finite resources, and whether cooperation, transparency and shared responsibility can succeed where individual solutions fail.

A climate play about scarcity, community, technology and hope, with bees, courgettes, a giant marrow and one increasingly argumentative water tank.