Internship Spotlight: Aamna Rashid - Teesri Dunya

My internship at Teesri Dunya theatre, a Montréal-based theatre resisting cultural homogenization and utilising theatre for a revolutionary purpose, has been a truly enriching experience. As one of the few theatre companies in Quebec producing multi-lingual plays and headed by people of color, the experience allowed me, a recent migrant to Montreal, to attain an enriching experience within the theatre. I worked under the mentorship of the artistic director and founder, Rahul Varma, and was part of the theatre team for a period of three months. As an English graduate student at McGill University whose research focuses on the positionality of resistance literature within feminist and socialist movements and combines textual and archival research with an understanding of Performance Studies, my experience at Teesri Dunya allowed me the resources to bridge my academic and artistic work and gain practical experience within the theatre industry. Working with Teesri showcased the significance of public spaces to represent marginalised communities and the necessity of showcasing their lived experiences.

My primary project during my research-based internship at Teesri Dunya was working on an academic paper on one of the theatre’s plays— ‘State of Denial’—written by Rahul Varma in 2012 and re-performed in 2015, the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide. The play had emerged out of Professor Steven High oral history project ‘Life Stories of Montrealers Displaced by Genocide, War and Other Human Rights Violations’ and the necessity of documenting untold stories. It recounts the story of a women, Odette, a young Rwandan-Canadian filmmaker who travelled to Turkey to investigate stories of the genocide, one that is still contested to date. It explores her encounters with Sahana, an elderly Muslim woman who spent her life assisting survivors of the genocide, the gendered nature of the violence and the issue of forced conversion for survival. The play is a resounding commentary on the violence of war, the refugee crisis and the significance of oral histories in the face of state-sanctioned denial and amnesia of war crimes.

Within my paper, I engaged with questions of forced ‘un-belonging,’ constructed state of exceptions under oppressive regimes, and the politics of memory and how these histories, denied as they were, should be memorialized. My intention was to utilise the play to demonstrate the importance of survivor testimonies and the ethical praxis necessary in documenting violent histories, and the importance of organizations such as Teesri Dunya Theatre, a Montréal-based theatre resisting cultural homogenization and domination and utilizing theatre for a revolutionary purpose. Ultimately, the paper attempted to place the Armenian genocide within the field of genocide studies and offer a broader critique of the politicisation of the term ‘genocide’ and its application. Utilising the theoretical concepts of the after-lives of trauma (Catherine M. Cole), post-memory (Marianne Hirsch) and the state of exception (Giorgio Agamben), I was able to showcase the continued relevance of the play and the effect of violent pasts. I considered the play’s emergence from the Montreal Life Histories Project to argue the feminist potentiality of oral history and its position in the repertoire (Diana Taylor) while exploring the gendered nature of warfare. The play’s discussion of ethnic cleansing, cultural erasure, refugee status, and the denial en masse, even today, of the Armenian genocide remains resonant within the modern world with the ongoing refugee crisis and the continued anti-Armenian sentiment in Turkey.

My time at Teesri constituted independent research and sourcing and collecting information through paraphernalia, publications, interviews and critical texts/essays in journals and magazines for my paper. My regular discussions with Mr. Varma were incredibly informative and helped me attain a background of the play and get an insight into the play-writing process. I was additionally able to witness the production angle from all three perspectives- creative, administrative and logistical- for Teesri’s production, Tribes: No Matter What! Which was staged at the Montreal, arts interculturels (MAI) from June 8th to 18th 2023 in the honor of Teesri’s founder, Rana Bhose, who passed away on 10th May 2023.

Under the mentorship of Mr. Varma, I was further able to invest in my artistic and oral history background and attempt to take my internship beyond research work. I gave a seminar on ethics and oral history practices to internal and external affiliates of Teesri Dunya in relation to my background and expertise in oral history documentation for the Citizens Archive of Pakistan, an organisation that worked to document the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan. Following my internship, I will be beginning a collaboration with Teesri on an oral history project on Partition, migration and violent histories within the South Asian diaspora in Montreal. Further, for Teesri Dunya’s Breaking Barriers project, I was the core photographer for Dr. Nathraki Natraj’s dance performance and panel discussion regarding trans-activism, specifically in India. The performance and talk are social causes that are both close to my heart and to my research work and were the most memorable parts of my internship.

The Archie Malloch Undergraduate Internships in Public Learning helped me work at Teesri Dunya throughout the summer and helped sustain my living expenses. I am extremely grateful. It allowed me the opportunity to witness the internal workings of a theatre company and how detailed a production process is. I am grateful to both the Archie Malloch Foundation and the Arts Internship Office, McGill for the the opportunity to fulfill my creative ambitions and take my academic work to a sphere of political and community engagement. This was a learning experience that I will forever be grateful for.