Intracultural theatre in Canada: Rahul Varma's 'Counter Offence' and 'Bhopal'

Abstract

Canadian theatre has always been an exercise in inter-cultural negotiation, yet in the past few decades, the official multicultural legislation has provided opportunities for more artists belonging to ethnic minorities to consciously diversify our country’s theatre practice. Montreal based Indo-Canadian playwright Rahul Varma has been a leading figure in creating intracultural theatre, which seeks to question the discourse of multiculturalism. Along with his company Teesri Duniya Theatre, whose mandate is to produce socially and politically minded theatre that reflects Canada’s diversity, Varma has staged plays such as Counter Offence and Bhopal in order to create counter-discursive spaces where the audience may examine ‘benign’ forces such as multiculturalism and globalization. These two plays are situation-based dramas where various socio-political issues collide and conflict, allowing the audience to witness multiple points of view and understand the tensions, power dynamics, and inequalities inherent in negotiations between cultures.