Teesri Duniya Theatre

Teesri Duniya Theatre is an intercultural theatre company dedicated to producing politically relevant plays that propel positive change. Their productions foster critical thinking and cross-cultural dialogue. They address injustices and enhance the representation of racialized and marginalized artists. Indigeneity, multicultural diversity, LGBTQ+ representation, and interculturalism are central to their work. Their plays and programs infuse art with social responsibility through a decolonizing consciousness

Lib Spry

Lib Spry has been a theatre maker for over 50 years as a director, writer, producer, educator, performer, popular theatre worker and translator. She is a specialist in non-traditional theatre forms: popular theatre, community theatre, site-specific theatre, theatre for young audiences, clown, bouffon, commedia dell’ arte, and is a recognized teacher of Theatre of the Oppressed. 

She has founded and run three theatre companies: Theatre Agile (2011- present), Passionate Balance (1989-96) and with Shirley Barrie co-founded the award-winning Straight Stitching Productions (1986-96). She worked with Odyssey Theatre as the writer and/or translator on Turandot, The Miser, The Raven, and Bungsu and the Big Snake. Other work includes: directing Where the Blood Mixes by Kevin Lorin, and Anusree Roy’s Letters to My Grandma for Teesri Duniya Theatre; directing the Theatre Kingston production of Daniel David Moses’ Almighty Voice and His Wife; writing and performing Trance For Matron – her solo show for old woman, objects, memories, desires, anger and walker; devising and directing a vaudeville entitled We Are Old! We are Wonderful! with RECAA (an organization for seniors dedicated to using theatre to educate communities to recognize the mistreatment and abuse of seniors). She continues to develop ¡Unsettling! – a live event for communities to come together to play, laugh, think, and respond with their bodies as well as their minds to the ongoing revelations of past and present attempts at appropriation, assimilation and annihilation by Canadian governments, churches, and settlers.

Rahul Varma

Rahul Varma is a playwright, activist, and Artistic Director of Teesri Duniya Theatre. In 1981, he co-founded the company with Rana Bose. He co-founded a journal, alt.theatre: cultural diversity and the stage in 1998. Born in India, Rahul writes in Hindi and English, a language he acquired as an adult. His recent plays include Counter Offence; Bhopal; Truth and Treason; State of Denial and Dhara’s Revenge, among others. His unproduced new works include Kali’s Dance, Merchant of God and Talaq, etc. His plays have been translated into French, Italian, Hindi and Punjabi. He is honoured to have worked with India’s pre-eminent artist, the late Dr. Habib Tanvir.

Rahul 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