BHOPAL

Written by Rahul Varma

Directed by Basab Pradhan

Dec 3-8, 2024

Sunnyvale Theatre

Opens on Dec 3, 2024, on the 40th anniversary of the world's worst industrial disaster

"On the night of December 3rd 1984, Union Carbide's pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, exploded, engulfing the city in a billow of deadly poisonous fumes.  Small children fell like flies, and men and women vainly scurried for safety only to collapse, breathless and blinded by the gas. By sunset, the death toll was 2,500. By the following day, numbers had no meaning. Bhopal had become the largest peacetime gas chamber in history."

- from the preface to Bhopal by Rahul Varma

This intense, hard-hitting play brings to life the human stories set against the worst industrial disaster the world has ever known.

English | Age 12+ | 110 min + intermission

The performances on Dec 7 and 8 will be followed by a TalkBack with Rahul Varma, the playwright and Basab Pradhan, the director of the show.

Season Sponsor

Trailer

Cast

Rahul Varma

Born in India, Rahul Varma is a playwright, essayist, activist and Artistic Director of Teesri Duniya Theatre in Montreal, which he co-founded in 1981. In 1998, with Kapil Bawa, he co-founded the theatre quarterly alt.theatre: Cultural Diversity and the Stage.

He writes both in Hindi and English, a language he acquired as an adult. Some of his recent plays are Land Where the Trees Talk, No Man’s Land, Trading Injuries (a radio drama), Counter Offence, Bhopal, Truth and Treason and State of Denial. Counter Offence has been translated into French as L’Affaire Farhadi and in Italian as Il Caso Farhadi. Bhopal has been translated into French with the same title, in Hindi as Zahreeli Hawa and in Punjabi as Khamosh Chiragan di Dastaan.

Bhopal has been included in two anthologies published by University of Indiana Press and the Playwrights Canada Press. Counter Offence is included in the 2nd volume of Modern Canadian Plays edited by Jerry Wasserman.

Under Rahul’s directorship, Teesri Duniya Theatre has radically changed the theatrical landscape of Canada by giving voice to peoples, cultures, communities, languages, and audiences eclipsed by the dominant national theatres.

Rahul is the recipient of a Special Juror’s Award from the Quebec Drama Federation and an award for promoting interculturalism by the Montreal English Critic’s Circle.

[BADCo is proud to have produced Counter Offence, State of Denial and Bhopal, the latter, twice].

Director

Basab Pradhan

Basab is a playwright, director and stage actor. His original full-length plays are Not Equal To (2017), Greater Than (2018) and Divided By (2019). His Indian-American adaptation of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House was staged in 2015.

In addition to directing his own plays, Basab has directed Sonata by Mahesh Elkunchwar, Free Outgoing by Anupama Chandrasekhar and Taj Mahal Ka Tender by Ajay Shukla. His notable work as an actor includes Chandrasekhar in The Square Root of a Sonnet, Imam Saleem in The Invisible Hand, Nath in Kanyadaan, Chairman Rao in Not Equal To, Salman in The Domestic Crusaders, Jairaj in Dance Like a Man and the recently concluded Adhe Adhure, where he played The Man.

Basab is the Artistic Director of Bay Area Drama Company.

Assistant Director

Ram Rajagopalan

Ram has a great passion for theater. He has been a regular in the cast of BADCo plays. These include Our Stories, Water, Our Stories 2, The Cherry Orchard, Taj Mahal Ka Tender and Thanimai. He recently wrapped up a role in Indian Matchmaking.

This is his first time on the other side of the stage facing the cast.

Cast Photos

Photography by Pranav Koundinya
Additional photography of the Chorus by Basab Pradhan