May 9-23 Theater: Wine & Halva
Sunday, May 10th, 2026You become part of the scenery as you take your seat in a Turkish coffee shop, slowly sipping a cuppa strong Turkish coffee and the namesake halva in the title, Wine & Halvah. In this intimate theatre in the round, the three actors go round and round from east to west covering immigration, fascism, gay rights, democracy, ideology, liberation, activism, freedom of expression and on and on.
Curiously, the performers, Esi Callender, Corbeau Sandoval and Banafsheh Hassani, take turns in the three roles: 1- the narrator, 2- a leftist Turkish academic named Derya and 3- Farias, a white Canadian gay stand up comedian/waiter. In a cacophony of words, each balances and switches parts as smoothly as the modern dance moves they perform. As they physically balance against each other during the ballet-like dance moves, they are as equally balanced in their solid acting.
The playwright, Deniz Basar, a first-generation immigrant from Turkey to Canada, uses the Turkish tradition of Meddah storytelling, which thrived in coffeehouses (kahvehane), markets and public spaces. The stories were typically adapted to the audience, venue, or political climate. As in Meddah tradition, Basar uses props like sheets of fabric which turn into gowns or beds or tents, headscarves and a sea – or eyeglasses, a bowtie and beret to signal character changes, and also engages the audience through questions. She manages to slip in Turkish culture, too, by the art of interpreting coffee grinds, Turkish dining including shish kabob and the politics of reading subtitles.
Director Art Babayants, with his background in teaching acting, movement and dramaturgy, does a brilliant job of directing the characters to balance and lean on each other in their rhythmic moves while spewing lots and lots of words and thoughts. He too has had to follow Meddah, as he needed to adapt the fluid movements of each production into the space he has had to work with.
And the story, of course – it follows Derya and Farias to cities in the east and west as they build an offbeat friendship while challenging widely accepted assumptions about immigration and its impact on human lives.
Location: Teesri Duniya Theatre, Rangshala, Cité-des-Hospitalières, 251 av. des Pins Ouest, H2W 1R6
Date: May 9 – May 23, 2026
Time: Wednesday to Sunday at 7 pm
Matinées: Saturday, May 16, May 23 & Sunday May 10, May 17 at 2 pm
Website: To purchase your tickets, visit: www.teesriduniyatheatre.com
