Who's the terrorist? by Neil Boyce from the Mirror

Oh this is great, Neil Boyce wrote a long article after a discussion with Arianna and Rahul. It is clear and there's passion in there -Thank you so much Neil. It's so encouraging to be able to be heard and seen. Steph
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Teesri Duniya theatre digs into the
complex politics of the war on terror
in Truth and Treason

Photo Credit: Terry Hughes. BRINGING IT BACK TO FACTS: Abdelgharfour Elaaziz and
Christine Aubin Khalifah in Truth and Treason


by NEIL BOYCE

“I’m not talking about some kind of political change that will occur because of the play. The primary change comes when the audience member becomes an active participant in what he or she has seen.”?

Rahul Varma, playwright and artistic director of Teesri Duniya theatre, is premiering his newest work, Truth and Treason, at the Monument National this week. Along with director Arianna Bardesono, he’s talking about the play and casting, but inevitably, when you chat with people who are passionate about politics, it leads to wider issues.

Part of a three-year cycle of plays called “Staging Peace in Times of War,” the story starts with an incident at a checkpoint in Iraq, when a 10-year-old girl is shot by a U.S. soldier, while her father is detained for an alleged terrorist history.?

“The idea came while I was working on my previous play [Bhopal], which was about an environmental catastrophe,” says Varma. “The events of September 11 had already occurred and our play was about to open. There was a known criminal who had caused the deaths of 20,000 Indians in Bhopal and was living as a free man in the U.S. In the case of 9/11, there were suspected terrorists—nothing was proven at that time—but an entire country was attacked. Where is the balance of justice? So there is a link from one play to the other: a link between the industrial and military complex. And we had to pose a new question: who was the terrorist, and why was it happening in the first place? What about state terrorism—is war any different from the terrorism it claims to be fighting??

“And it’s about getting into a more subtle debate than simplistic slogans about the global war on terror.?

“It’s bringing up what they don’t,” says director Bardesono, referring to the arguments neo-cons proffer for the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. “Their strategy is to stay very much on the surface, with no anchor to what is actually happening. We’re trying to bring it back to facts.”?

The history of Teesri Duniya (“Third World” in Hindustani) is a fascinating arc. Beginning as a South Asian theatre company in Montreal in 1981, where they staged plays in Hindi about the experiences of new immigrants, they later shifted to English-language productions, emphasizing intercultural dialogue in plays like Job Stealer and Divided We Stand, before embracing the more overtly political work of Reading Hebron, Bhopal and Counter Offence (which, as L’Affaire Farhadi, made a splash in French-language theatre).

Varma is already busy getting the new work translated into French for next season and will tour the English version in India come 2011.

“One of the best elements of Rahul’s play is that it’s a snapshot,” says Bardesono.?“And in it, we have nine characters who speak their minds and are in a very complex net.?

“To look beyond, to understand a little bit more of what’s going on in the world, that’s the biggest issue—and that’s why we continue doing this.”

TRUTH AND TREASON, SEPT. 8–19 AT
MONUMENT NATIONAL (1182
ST-LAURENT). TICKETS: (514) 871-2224.
INFO AT TEESRIDUNIYATHEATRE.COM