For Immediate Release
September 6, 2021
Contact: Summer Mahmud
projects@teesriduniyatheatre.com
438-866-3130
After the Occupation: Artists Respond to the Crisis in Afghanistan
Join Teesri Duniya Theatre for a panel discussion to bring awareness to the evolving crisis facing Afghanistan. With the departure and abandonment of US, Canadian and international presence, Afghanistan is being made to confront a cycle of violent uprisings and resistance. The illegal occupation of Afghanistan by the international community during the past 20+ years has failed to bring peace or an end to terrorism in the region. It has only served to bring a deeper period of instability and corruption while placing the lives of women, children, and marginalized peoples such as the Hazara communities at severe risk.
In light of recent events, it is clear more than ever that Afghanistan’s fight for sovereignty must be recognized and advocated for. In this period of time, we are once again seeing a mass exodus of Afghans as a repeated history brought forth by the impacts of imperialism, colonization, and Taliban rule. This panel will look closely at the conditions that internally displaced and migrant Afghans face while providing a helpful guide for the greater public’s support of Afghanistan.
In the words of Afghan poet Qahar Asi: “Until my hands grasp the sun, I battle with all things dark and bleak, no shame in saying no and being stubborn, as this is the zenith of my art and cultural integrity.”
Featuring:
Shaista Latif is a queer Afghan working-class artist, facilitator, and consultant. Her works and collaborations have been presented by Why Not Theatre, Koffler Centre for the Arts, Mercer Union, Blackwood Gallery, AGO, and festivals such as SummerWorks, Progress, and 7A*11D. In 2020, Latif toured her critically acclaimed show The Archivist (co-produced by Ontario Presents and Why Not Theatre). She is a published playwright and voiced the character, Soraya, in the Oscar-nominated animated film The Breadwinner. Her upcoming exhibit How I Learned to Serve Tea will be presented at the Art Gallery of Guelph in October 2021. Latif’s works explore the politics of inclusion and class.
Ariel Nasr is an English-Language Producer in the National Film Board’s Quebec Atlantic Studio. Previous to joining the NFB, Ariel directed and co-produced the award-winning film, The Forbidden Reel, a feature documentary drawing on thousands of hours of film archives to trace the second half of the twentieth century through the lens of Afghan filmmakers (IDFA, Hot Docs). Producer of the Academy Award-nominated independent short drama Buzkashi Boys (2012), Nasr’s other directing credits include the Canadian Screen Award-winning, The Boxing Girls of Kabul (2011) as well as Good Morning Kandahar (2008), the interactive documentary, Kabul Portraits (2015) and the documentary, La Mosquée, which documents the aftermath of the Quebec City Mosque Shooting. A citizen of Canada, Afghanistan and the USA, Ariel lives and works in Montreal.
Rahul Varma is a playwright, activist, and Artistic Director of Teesri Duniya Theatre www.teesriduniyatheatre.com, a company he co-founded in 1981. In 1998, he co-founded the journal alt.theatre: cultural diversity and the stage. Born in India, Rahul writes both in Hindi and English, a language he acquired as an adult. His recent plays include Counter Offence, Bhopal, Truth and Treason, and State of Denial. His unproduced new works include My Father Would Have Killed Me (2020), Dad’s New Wife (2019), and (in-progress) Merchant of God. His plays have been translated into French, Italian, Hindi and Punjabi. He is honored to have worked with India’s pre-eminent artist, the late Dr. Habib Tanvir.
He has received the Quebec Drama Federation’s Juror’s Award (1986), the Montreal English Critics Circle award for interculturalism (1999), META’s Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion award (2018), and a Lifetime Honorary Membership Award (2020) from the Canadian Association for Theatre Research.
Matt Jones (Moderator) (he/him) is a writer, activist, teacher, and theatre creator. He has published widely about the politics of war, terrorism, and racism in performance and is working on a book manuscript based on his dissertation, “The Shock and Awe of the Real: Political Performance in an Age of War and Terror.” He has been involved in anti-war organizing for twenty years, most notably with the Montreal-based Collectif Échec à la guerre. He is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies and he teaches at the Creative School at X University.
Date: Thursday, September 23rd at 6pm via Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87240465125
This is an open event; no registration required.
A very special thank you to our sponsors:
