One Year On: Reflections & the Remounting of Counter Offence at the Segal Centre

Originally posted March 13, 2021

On March 11th 2020, Teesri Duniya Theatre premiered Rahul Varma’s play Counter Offence, directed by Arianna Bardesono. And on March 12th, after its second performance, the run was halted and postponed indefinitely in light of the pandemic that we have been battling for the past year. It has been a long and arduous year, and while no one can deny that the context is exceptional, we must also acknowledge that much of what made this year so heavy was the laying bare of systemic issues, and inequities that long predate the pandemic, and have been sidelined for too long.

An article published by Celine Cardineau (https://montrealtheatrehub.com/2020/03/13/review-counter-offence-inviting-an-intersectional-dialogue-about-power/) on March 13th, 2020 praised Teesri Duniya Theatre for “presenting politically engaged plays that make space for a multitude of cross-cultural perspectives”, and aptly summarized the contents of Counter Offence as “a complex matrix of themes, all at the intersection of race, gender, culture and class.”

In the past year, just about all of us in Canada and across the world have been made increasingly aware and engaged with many of the issues that Varma’s piece brought to the stage for its brief and bright run last March. We have seen how the economic crisis and the shift to at home work has disproportionately strained women, for example, and how the broken policing institution effect state-sanctioned violence against non-White members of our community and the working and lower classes. We have seen institutional patriarchal racism kill Indigenous women through neglect and abuse within the health care system. We have seen violence on many levels, for example in the form of exclusionary laws such as Quebec’s bill 21, in the form of state-sanctioned colonial violence against Indigenous peoples and their lands, in the form of gendered violence in every arena of our society and in the form of carceral violence against migrants who have committed no crimes, and have resorted to hunger strikes at the Laval detention centre to protest their conditions in light of Covid-19 outbreaks, and the list goes on.

In the arts and culture sector we have had to grapple with our equivalent versions of these same issues. How intimate and professional spaces are made unsafe for women and gendered minorities. How monochromatic and tokenized our stages, leadership positions and opportunities are. Who gets to speak, about whom, and how loudly. I can only hope that we can come out of this seeing the past year as a reckoning.

People often ask me, “where do we start?” It is a question I grapple with often. The only answer I have is: anywhere and everywhere. In the ways we think and the ways we talk to each other. With our votes, with our time, with our care, with the work we create, promote, and support.

True to the theatrical form, Counter Offence animates life on stage; it takes a complex, interwoven cross-section of how such issues intertwine and play out in the lives of diverse, multi-faceted characters that make up our communities as much as they make up the play. Looking back at this year, and at the steep road ahead of us, the continued and renewed relevance of this piece strikes me. It makes me eager for the approaching remount of this piece, as made possible by the Segal Centre. I look forward to seeing the troupe:

Maureen Adelson, Amena Ahmad, Michael Briganti, Davide Chiazzese, Alida Esmail, Minoo Gundevia, Amir Sám Nakhjavani, and Arun Varma

take the stage at long last, as well as all the artistry and hard work of the behind-the-scenes crew:

Arianna Bardesono (Director), Alessandra Tom (Assistant Director), Deborah Forde (Dramaturg), Chad Dembski (Production Management), Adam Walters (Technical Direction), Elyse Quesnel (Stage Management), Zoe Roux (Set & Light Design), Sandrina Sparagna (Asst Set and Light Design), Troy Slocum (Sound Design), Erika Parra Bernal (Costume Design), Chloé Giroux-Bertrand (Costume Breakdown), Rachel-Anne Germinario (Seamstress), and Janis Kirshner (Publicist)

and our wonderful community audiences, when we are able to safely convene and to reflect, through politically active theatre, on the unapologetic mirror that it holds up to our noses.

In the meantime we have put together a special trailer to thank you, our audiences, our team, and our donors and sponsors for your patience awaiting the upcoming remount