AN IMMIGRANTS' PREDICAMENTIN THE PLAYS OF RAHUL VARMA

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 playwrights like Uma
Parmeshwaran, Rana Bose, Rahul Varma have been leading figures in creating intracultural theatre, which
seeks to question the discourse of multiculturalism. Rahul Varma along with his company TeesriDuniya
Theatre, whose mandate is to produce socially and politically minded theatre that reflects Canada’s
diversity, Rahul Varma has staged plays such as 'Counter Offence', 'No Man's Land', 'Bhopal' 'Equal
Wages', Land Where The Trees Talk', etc. in order to create counter discursive spaces where the audience
may examine ‘benign’ forces such as multiculturalism. His plays' dealt with racism, gender equality,
identity crisis, Native Land Rights, work-place hazards, wife battering, and environmental colonialism
among others. The present paper ventures to show Multiculturalism in the plays of Rahul Varma.