Bhopal, 1984. With the presence of the Carbide International pesticide factory, the city begins to claw its way out of endemic poverty. But what is to be made of the deformed babies born to women living near the factory? And the poison gas explosion that will leave three thousand people dead in just a few minutes—and will kill tens of thousands more in the years to come. How could have this happened?

Rahul Varma is a playwright, essayist, and community activist. Born in 1952 in India, he moved to Canada in 1976. In 1981, he co-founded Teesri Duniya Theatre (Teesri Duniya means â??third worldâ?? in Hindi), which is a professional, multicultural company that produces socially relevant theatre examining issues of cultural representation and diversity in Canada. Rahul became the companyâ??s artistic director in 1986. To advance the companyâ??s mandate, he launched the theatre quarterly alt.theatre: cultural diversity and the stage in 1998. He made his first forays into English language with a series of one-act plays that included Job Stealer, Isolated Incident, and Equal Wages. With Land Where The Trees Talk, in 1989, he turned his attention to the creation of full-length plays. His full-length works include No Manâ??s Land, the radio drama Trading Injuries, Counter Offence, and his most recent work, Bhopal. Counter Offence has been translated into French as Lâ??Affaire Farhadi and Italian as Il Caso Farhadi. Bhopal has been translated into French under the same title and has also been translated into Hindi and Urdu by Indiaâ??s pre-eminent director Habib Tanvir under the name Zahreeli Hawa. Rahul lives in Montreal with his wife and his daughter.

Rahul Varma's profile page

Guillermo Verdecchia is a writer of drama, fiction, and film; a director, dramaturge, actor, and translator whose work has been seen and heard on stages, screens, and radios across the country and around the globe. The author, or co-author, of, among other works, The Noam Chomsky Lectures and Insomnia (with Daniel Brooks); Fronteras Americanas, The Terrible but Incomplete Journals of John D., bloom; A Line in the Sand (with Marcus Youssef), and the controversial Adventures of Ali and Ali and the Axes of Evil (with Camyar Chai and Marcus Youssef). He is a recipient of the Governor General’s AWard for Drama, a four-time winner of the Chalmers Canadian Play Award, a recipient of Dora and Jessie Awards, and sundry film festival awards for his film Crucero/Crossroads, based on Fronteras Americanas and made with Ramiro Puerta.

He lives in Toronto with Tamsin Kelsey, his partner of many years, and their two children.


Awards and Recognition*
Chalmers Canadian Play Award (1997) A Line the Sand with Marcus Youssef
Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards, Community Recognition Award (1994)
Chalmers Canadian Play Award (1994) Fronteras Americanas
Governor General’s Award for Drama (1993) Fronteras Americanas
Governor General’s Award for Drama, Finalist (1992) The Noam Chomsky Lectures with Daniel Brooks
Chalmers Canadian Play Award (1992) The Noam Chomsky Lectures with Daniel Brooks
Chalmers Canadian Play Award (1990) i.d.

Guillermo Verdecchia's profile page

"The characters who inhabit Rahul Varma's play [...] are all seeking the common good. But they are not guided by the same priorities or goals. To get what they want, they must negotiate with each other. Each time they do, something is lost. And these losses ultimately ad up to disaster. This play—a pitiless analysis of the stakes of globalization—explores how this happens."

Paul Lefebvre