SummerWorks Performance Festival: 26 Doctors. Written & performed by Sugith Varughese, Factory Theatre, August 12, 2025.
One of the most appealing aspects of SummerWorks is the hybrid nature of so many performances. Quite often at the festival, we see dance combined with music or photography working with lighting design and choreography in fresh and innovative ways.
Sugith Varughese’s 26 Doctors merges film and video footage with an autobiographical rendition of the actor’s life that falls easily into the festival’s format, but it feels less experimental and is quite heartfelt.
Varughese — he tells us that his last name rhymes with Portuguese — is a veteran actor, writer and director who has made a good living in Canada, a place that normally treats its actors, “as if they’re in a witness protection program.” It’s a witticism that Sugith, whose name was created as a combination of his parents Susan and George, makes during his performance, which is self-deprecating and almost painfully honest.
The sold-out and very responsive audience enjoyed his account of growing up as an Indian boy in Canada’s heartland, rural Saskatchewan.
Storytelling
Being a nerdy brown skinned kid who couldn’t play hockey in the Canadian prairies was only part of Varughese’s problems. Far worse was that he didn’t want to become a doctor, like his father, and grandfather and uncles and — well, you get the picture.
Instead, he wanted to play doctors — and other professions — as an actor, a profession frowned upon in Indian, and, quite frankly, many cultures.
Despite having an awful name for an actor — Varughese has fun telling us about people who changed their names like Krishna Pandjit Bhanji, who is internationally known as Ben Kingsley — Sugith has performed widely on television and cinema for decades.
He has played 26 doctors, the most famous being surgeon Aajay Singh on the long-running CTV drama Transplant.
The Focus
As the one-man show neared it conclusion, the play reached its focus: the difficult but loving relationship between Sugith and his renowned medical father. It’s far too late when Sugith finds out that his dad wanted to be an actor when he was young but gave it up for medicine.
Would the two had been closer if they had been more open with each other?
26 Doctors received a standing ovation at its only performance at the Factory Theatre. Varughese’s play could be tightened, quite frankly, to focus more on the dynamic between an accomplished father and a talented son who chose a different path.
It’s a play that deserves to be revived.
By: Marc Glassman for Ludwig-Van
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