State of Denial
- Publisher
- Playwrights Canada Press
- Initial publish date
- May 2015
- Category
- Canadian, Middle Eastern
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9781770913417
- Publish Date
- May 2015
- List Price
- $12.99
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9781770913394
- Publish Date
- May 2015
- List Price
- $16.95
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Description
Odette is a young Rwandan-born Canadian filmmaker who has travelled to Turkey to investigate stories of genocide and hidden identity for an upcoming film. When she interviews Sahana, an elderly Muslim woman who has spent her life assisting survivors of the Armenian genocide, she learns a devastating secret about Sahana, one that she resolves to share with the world at any cost, even if it means revealing her own shocking secret.
About the author
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.
Editorial Reviews
"Varma’s work will not be easily forgotten, and it is an important exercise in raising awareness of the story of the Armenians in Turkey. This play humanizes this part of history, and shows us how, in the words of Sahana, 'hatred is an acid that will burn through its container.' "—Chris Lane, Charlebois Post