Nautanki Bazaar’s An IMM-Permanent Resident finds humour — and heart – beneath the absurdity of Canada’s immigration process

How much bureaucracy can love withstand? 

Nautanki Bazaar ponders this question in An IMM-Permanent Resident, a new comedy which just premiered at the Theatre Centre as part of Why Not Theatre’s RISER Toronto 2022, and runs until April 10. Written and performed by real-life husband and wife Himanshu Sitlani and Neha Poduval, An IMM-Permanent Resident recounts Poduval’s applications over a three-year period to gain her PR (permanent resident) status in Canada as Sitlani’s spouse.

The show is terrific. Full of humour and heart, it masterfully dissects the process of applying to become a permanent resident, only to suffer repeated rejections by Canadian immigration services. The reasons, we learn, are arbitrary. Especially crushing is the clerk who neglects to read beyond the first page to where the requested document can be found . . . on the second page. The outcome of a review depends wholly on the clerk’s mood on a given day. And for each reapplication, the couple is made to provide more intimate details of their relationship, wedding, families, and backgrounds – right up to and well-past the point of humiliation and exhaustion. 

And then there is the endless waiting. While Sitlani tries to think of “PR” as pyar, the Hindi word for love, Poduval declares that “PR” has become synonymous with waiting without end. While she is stuck in their basement apartment, unable to work and with nothing to do, her husband must work at low-paying jobs to make ends meet. Their aspiration to work as actors is put on indefinite hold, further straining their devolving relationship. 

Through flashbacks, we see Sitlani and Poduval’s romance develop into a relationship and then marriage: poignant moments spent at Juhu Beach during Sitlani’s trips to India; Poduval coming around to the idea of leaving her beloved birthplace of Mumbai to immigrate to Canada, then arriving in Etobicoke, which she insists is not Toronto And the scene where each is introduced to the other’s parents is particularly hilarious. 

But the romantic evenings spent at Mumbai’s famed Juhu Beach seem ever-more distant in the rearview mirror, with their formerly budding romance now choked by an interminable and hostile immigration process. And each time a rejection arrives, the audience feels the couple’s disappointment like a gut punch. Yet the great merit of the writing is that it is neither heavy-handed nor accusatory. Through wry observation, the play mines laugh-out-loud comedy from the absurd bureaucracy that the couple must endure. (If the prolonged process to PR status were not arduous enough, just wait for the immigration lawyer purporting to help them.) 

The play, performed in parts in Hindi, gives an important, moving and funny glimpse into the struggles that many immigrants from India (and elsewhere) endure while establishing their lives in Canada. First-time director Miquelon Rodriguez paces the performances well, and Jung-Hye Kim makes the most of the wide stage area in the design of the set. A few props stored in strategically-placed suitcases serve to set each scene, ably supported by André du Toit’s evocative lighting design. 

Poduval and Sitlani are simply fantastic in these roles. Poduval is a firebrand whose resilience is inexorably ground down by each rejection – and whose growing bitterness stings. Sitlani’s geeky earnestness is endearing, and the optimism that he bolsters through sheer will is at once affecting and painful.

Once again, Nautanki Bazaar has proven itself a much-needed voice for South Asian stories. Their digital presentation of Stories of a Dish – a hit at the Toronto Fringe festival this summer – was a great introduction to this new company. An IMM-Permanent Resident is a worthy second production that should not be missed.

Reserve tickets here.

© Arpita Ghosal, SesayArts Magazine, 2022