For the first time, Postmarginal is partnering in the production of a creative work that supports its mandates and aims. In partnership with Toronto Laboratory Theatre and in association with Sort of Productions, Postmarginal presents the upcoming production of Wine & Halva — a narrative theatre style not common to Canadian stages, but widely used in Middle Eastern and Turkish theatre.
More than just a Play
Wine & Halva is more than a play, but an evening to share. Audience members take their place in a cabaret setting with a glass of wine, a taste of halva, a cup of coffee, a light (and dark) laugh, and a play that asks: How can friends do justice to each other when they have almost nothing in common?
Three narrators guide the audience through an intimate epic of an unusual friendship between two protagonists: Farias (meaning Lighthouse) is a white gay man from a fictional North-American city, where he finds himself trapped in a low-pay menial service job with little hope for the future; while Derya (meaning Sea) is a Turkish woman who emigrates to North America to complete her PhD, and, to her surprise, becomes a visible minority. Wine & Halva explores the labour and joy of their friendship as a force of resistance.
Playwright Deniz Başar is an academic, artist, and award-winning playwright, with Wine and Halva being her first fully staged production. As a woman raised and educated in Turkey before immigrating to Canada, her voice is not only important, but is fresh and especially pertinent to the Canadian stage. Her perspective sheds light on relevant interpersonal and social realities through unapologetic and thought-provoking theatre.
Touring
Wine & Halva is currently available for touring. Presented in English with French subtitles, the production is adaptable into non-traditional and traditional theatre spaces. See the Tour Pack for more details.
Presentation: Théâtre La Risée, April 2 – 12, 2024, Montréal, Québec
The play was developed over three years, with workshop presentations along the way with Playwrights Workshop Montreal. Directed by Art Babayants, Wine & Halva was presented for the first time in its entirety at Espace la Risée in Montréal from May 2 to 12th, 2024. The play was presented in English with French subtitles.
Performers / Interprètes: Corbeau Sandoval, Banafsheh Hassani, Esi Callender
Directed by / Metteur en scène: Art Babayants
Designer / Concepteur: Candan Seda Balaban
Lighting design / Éclairagiste: Paul J. Stoesser
Stage Manager / Régisseur: Shawna Blain
French translation by / Traductrice français: Vik Hovanisian
Subtitles operated by / L’opérateur de sous-titres: Amilia Bencherif
Performances: EVENINGS: Thursday-Sunday, May 2-5 & 9-12, 7:30pm
MATINEES: Sunday, May 5 & 12, 3pm
Presented by / Présenté par: Toronto Laboratory Theatre, Postmarginal, in association with / avec Sort Of Productions.
CREDITS
Esi Callender is a writer and theatre artist, most recently appearing in the debut production of Wine & Halva by Deniz Başar. In 2023, they completed a masters in African Studies, focusing on artistic collaboration and political solidarity between Black artists of diverging backgrounds in the perforcraZe International Artist Residency in Kumasi, Ghana. Prior to that, they co-founded Sort Of Productions with Oli Siino, a queer feminist theatre collective based in Tiohtia:ke/Montreal.
Banafsheh Hassani بنفشه حسنی (any/all pronouns) is an Iranian, Montreal-based feminist theatre writer, performer and producer. In their art and life, they are preoccupied with home, memory, dreams, identity, un/changing, relations (blood and otherwise), and all that would happen if only home was not the mouth of a shark.- I’m a Pisces!- My secret power is holding on to my grudges so hard that they don’t dare expire. – my best friend / sidekick is my roommate, Danalie. She taught me to be shameless.
Corbeau Sandoval Born, raised, and based in Tiohtia:ke (colonially known as Montreal), Corbeau is a multidisciplinary theatre artist of mixed identity. Throughout their budding career, they’ve had the chance to expand their craft in several positions, most notably as a writer (It Sticks to the Ryver / Off-ish), director (Who, Me?), and performer theatre, film, and voice-over. It is with abundant joy that they join Wine & Halva as a performer to help tell this lovingly queer and unapologetically political story.
Art Babayants /Արտ Բաբայանց: a Canadian-Armenian theatre artist who has worked with theater makers in Russia, Malta, Latvia, Bulgaria, the UK, the USA, and Canada. His directing career comprises musicals, such as Share and Share Alike (2007), Seussical. The Musical (2009 and 2018), Gypsy (2011), Godspell (2014 and 2021), and Spring Awakening (2019); contemporary Canadian drama, including Couldn’t We Be (2008) and The…Musician: An Etude (2012 and 2014); devised performances, including several presentations of “In Sundry Languages” between 2015-2019; and opera, The Diary of One Who Disappeared by Leoš Janáček. He spent 2010 and 2011 being part of Toronto’s DitchWitch Brigade and performed in the multimedia hilarity called, in 2010, Miss Toronto Gets a Life in Parkdale, and in 2011, Miss Toronto Acts Back, directed by Antje Budde and produced by a leader of Canada’s indie stage – Pandemic Theater. His most recent play Bros/Les gars was produced in Saskatoon by La Troupe du jour (Feb 2023). The text of his critically acclaimed work “In Sundry Languages” was published by Playwrights Canada as well as by the Canadian Theatre Review (Winter, 2019).
Deniz Başar received the award of Mitos-Boyut theater publishing agency’s annual contest for her play The Itch (2014), and won the Derbent Playwriting Contest with her play In the Destructible Flow of a Vast Monolithic Moment (2016) in Turkey which was also read in the 2019 Revolution They Wrote Feminist Theatre Festival in Montreal. She received funding for Autumn in New Stockholm from CCA (2021); the play will be published in a trilingual edition (Turkish, English, Kurdish). She completed her doctorate in Montreal at the beginning of 2021 in Concordia University’s PhD in Humanities Programme with her research on the evolution of the theater field of Turkey.
Candan Seda Balaban is an actress, puppeteer and has designed costumes, masks and puppets for theatre for over 15 years. She has won 9 international awards for best costume designer of the year with 3 of her productions in Turkey. One of her puppet productions was featured in “Woman in Puppetry” (Routledge publications). İnstagram : @candansedabalaban
Shawna Blain is a graduate of the York University Theatre department (BA), as well as the University of Toronto’s Drama Centre (MA) where she specialized in stage management and new-play developmental dramaturgy. She has worked as a stage manager, co-producer, and dramaturge for multiple productions in Toronto since 2012.
Peter Farbridge is a theatre actor and creator working in Montreal (Tiohtià:ke). As founding member and co-artistic director of the Modern Times Stage Company from 1989 to 2022, Peter appeared in, translated/adapted and produced most of its work with artistic director Soheil Parsa. He has recently completed an MA in Anthropology and Theatre and joined the faculty of Concordia University as Artist-in-Residence.
Vik Hovanisian is an Armenian, French and Canadian multidisciplinary artist who works in several languages. Based in Paris, France, Vik is active as a performing artist, writing, acting, directing and producing original works that cross borders and look to the future. A graduate of the Conservatoire Supérieur d’Art Dramatique in Paris, she also studied law and international relations. She takes a physical approach to theatre, a sacred space for questioning par excellence. Music is at the heart of her creative process and structures much of her work. Her favourite fields are classical and contemporary repertoires, theatre of the absurd, poetry and automatic writing, improvised creation, classical and traditional dance and song.
About the Coproducers
TLT was founded in 2012 in order to develop, support and produce artistic work and education projects that explore the “new”, the “unknown” and the “difficult” through practice-based artistic research. Each TLT project is a new adventure, a new challenge, and a new team. TLT’s participants and audiences are always diverse, TLT’s process is always non-linear, and TLT’s results are always unexpected.
