The Question... Rahul Varma on Bhopal

When safety is sacrificed for profit, there must be justice
by Rahul Varma 

[This week The Question... asked Rahul Varma, Artistic Director of Teesri Duniya Theatre, about the background of Teesri Duniya's presentation of Bhopal including their upcoming commemorative presentation at Segal Centre for the Performing Arts January 16 to February 2. Born in India, Mr. Varma is a playwright and artistic director of Teesri Duniya Theatre which he co-founded in 1981. In 1998, with Kapil Bawa, he co-founded the theatre quarterly alt.theatre: cultural diversity and the stage.  He writes both in Hindi and English, a language he acquired as an adult. Some of his recent plays are Land Where the Trees Talk, No Man’s Land, Trading Injuries (radio drama), Counter Offence, Bhopal, Zahreeli Hawa, Truth and Treason, State of Denial and Khamosh Chiragan Di Dastaan.  His plays have been translated into French, Italian, Hindi and Punjabi. He is honoured to have worked with India’s pre-eminent artist Late Dr. Habib Tanvir. ]

On the night of December 2–3, 1984, the Union Carbide Pesticide plant located in Bhopal, India exploded, engulfing the city with a poisonous gas. Small children fell like flies, men and women vainly scurried for safety like wounded animals, only to collapse, breathless and blinded by the gas. By morning, the death toll was over 500, by sunset, 2,500. By the following day, numbers didn’t matter -- Bhopal had become the largest peace-time gas chamber in history. Over 25,000 people have died to date and counting. 

The play Bhopal is about one of the world’s worst industrial disasters located in the city of Bhopal, India. The play derives its title from the city’s name.

The Sunday Read: Rahul Varma on Where The Blood Mixes

For the child taken, for the parent left behind

    “Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada” 

© Rahul Varma, Sept 7, 2012

Kevin Loring’s play Where the Blood Mixes started as a monologue, which he wrote for his theatre school graduation. The original title was The Ballad of Floyd, which portrayed Floyd, an aboriginal man celebrating his lost daughter’s birthday in, of all places, a bar. In 2001, Kevin performed this monologue at the Talking Stick Cabaret organized by Margo Kane’s Full Circle: First Nations Performance to great admiration from the public. But Kevin was not satisfied. He decided to develop the play beyond its form and content. He gave himself a goal: “let this play teach me how to write and produce a play.”  Next, the monologue transformed into a one act play. What remained common between the monologue and the one-act was Floyd’s inability to escape from alcoholism. Kevin had set the play in a bar as a purgatory for Floyd, in which Floyd would go to the bar, lose his senses, and keep waking up again and again until breaking out of the cycle of alcoholism, and leaving the bar never to return again. This version of the play was work-shopped and read at the Factory Theatre’s Crosscurrent Festival of New Works, where highly respected Native actor Gary Farmer was assigned to read Floyd’s character. Which playwright would not be honored to have Gary Farmer read his character? But Mr. Farmer did more than read a character, he gave Kevin a lesson. He slammed the script on the table, “35 years in the business and here I am playing another drunken Indian in the bar. So what? So he is a drunk in the bar. So what now?”

So What Now? 

That day, this highly talented aspiring playwright was told out loud what no one had told him for the 4 years he was working on this play. “So what now?” from Mr. Farmer made Kevin understand what was wrong with the play and what to do about it?  The “so what now?” made Kevin embark on a journey to discover the greater story -- the story behind the story. What was behind the drunkenness, behind the pain and behind the isolation of Floyd? Why was he so damaged? What will happen to him? Audiences will find that out after seeing the play! What will happen to The Ballad of Floyd? It will become Where the Blood Mixes telling us the story behind the story.  What will happen to Kevin? He will go on to win the Governor General’s Award for Where the Blood Mixes.  

Review: (Montreal) State of Denial

Docu...Drama

Rahul Varma confronts the big issues again

by Chris Lane

Denial comes in many forms, and can effectively erase the memories of the oppressed victims of atrocities untold. Local playwright Rahul Varma seeks to uncover the personal stories that have been suppressed and present them in a stark and moving new play, State of Denial. The production is presented by Teesri Duniya, of which Varma is Artistic Director, a theatre company with a 31-year history of  politically relevant plays that depict diverse aspects of Canada’s cultural minorities. 

In writing this play, Varma derived a fictional story from multiple true stories garnered from years of interviews as a part of the research for Life Stories of Montrealers Displaced by Genocide, War and Other Human Rights Violations. State of Denial is being presented as a part of Life Stories Montreal and is directed by Deborah Forde.

First-Person - Rahul Varma on State of Denial

State of Denial: In memories of grandmothers who lived to tell 

© Rahul Varma, March 11, 2012

State of Denial is about Sahana, a Turkish Muslim woman in her nineties, who has devoted her life to assisting Armenian survivors of genocide, and about Odette, a twenty something Rwanda-born Canadian filmmaker, who travels to Turkey to investigate stories of genocide. These two women differ in their nationality, ethnicity, religion, cultural background and age – but they have one thing in common: A well-kept personal secret, which if uncovered, will change their life forever. Initially, the two women are suspicious of each other. They question and quiz, comply and compete, and challenge and contradict each other – and in so doing, they become the best of the friends. On her deathbed, Sahana reveals her chilling secret to Odette and Odette promises to make Sahana’s secret public at any cost. On her mission to make public Sahana’s secret, Odette ends up revealing her own. With that a denial ends and a new life begins.