[Candrama] #ArtApart: Stage Reading of "Wine and Halva"

[Deniz Başar]

*Hello dear fellow CANDRAMA members, *

*I am writing to share the stage reading video of my newest play, Wine and
Halva, which is released through the #ArtApart funds of National Theatre
School of Canada. It is a play about institutional racism and solidarity. *

*Link to the video: https://ent-nts.ca/en/art-apart-wine-halva
<https://ent-nts.ca/en/art-apart-wine-halva>*

*I hope you enjoy it. Please do not hesitate to reach out to me for any
feedback.*

*Deniz Ba**şar*



*About the play*

*Wine&Halva* is a play about the unconventional friendship between Farias,
a white (or white passing) gay man from a fictional Anglophone Canadian
city called ''New Stockholm,'' and Derya, a Turkish woman who immigrated to
that fictional city and needs to deal with many invisible cases of
institutional discrimination alone. *Wine&Halva* is an open and playful
text, with three narrators getting in and out of these two characters
throughout the play to underline the fluid nature of identity in different
contexts. The story focuses on how these two people from very different
histories and struggles learn (and perhaps invent) ways to support and love
each other. *Wine&Halva* is a play that challenges multiple widely accepted
Canadian assumptions about immigration, and represents the nature of
institutional discrimination along with its possible impact on the human
psyche, especially under conditions of extreme precarity, such as the one
we are going through right now.

*About the journey of the play*

*Wine&Halva* had its initial development through Playwrights Workshop
Montreal’s (PWM) Young Creators Unit 2018-2019, and has been selected by
the Artistic and Executive Director of PWM, *Emma Tibaldo*, for further
dramaturgical development.

First public showcase of the play was on April 26, 2019, with the
sponsorship of Mainline Theatre (Montreal). Additionally, *Wine&Halva* was
awarded with two Play Development Residencies, and the first one took place
between 27th of February and 12th of March 2020, at the Theatre Department
of Faculty of Media, Art and Performance in University of Regina,
Saskatchewan. The second week-long residency will take place during the
summer of 2020 at PWM, and again end with a workshop production.
Sort-of-Productions, a Montreal-based theatre collective, has selected
*Wine&Halva* for the full production in their 2020-2021 season.

The Play Development Residency for *Wine&Halva* in the Theatre Department
of the Faculty of Media, Art and Performance in University of Regina was a
specially successful interprovincial collaboration between Quebec and
Saskatchewan. The University of Regina and Concordia University (Montreal)
co-funded the residency. It allowed for the play to grow and develop
through the collaboration of a very diverse group of theatre students at
the UofR: particularly, those enrolled in “THAC360 Scene Study” and
“THST465 Advanced Studies in Dramaturgy: Postmodern, Intercultural, and
Multilingual Theatre” classes. Two student dramaturges, *Hussain
Zaidi* and *Valentin
Camus* worked on *Wine&Halva* to help develop the play through the course
of these two weeks.

A staged reading of *Wine&Halva*, followed by a talkback session took place
on March 12, 2020, Thursday, between 4:30-7 pm, at Shu-Box Theatre, Riddell
Centre in University of Regina. Now looking back, it seems miraculous that
this staged reading happened on the last day of our pre-COVID-19 days, on
the last day before the quarantine started. Student actors, *Michaelson
Musa, Bhavana Kishore-Hariram, Jasey Jacobs* and *Kevin McLaurin* volunteered
to perform in the staged reading, which was directed by *Art
Babayants* (Toronto
Laboratory Theatre). The result was a very enjoyable semiprofessional
production that received an exited and deeply engaged response from the
audience. The staged reading showcased students who are non-native English
speakers, immigrants and people of color, who are often marginalized by the
mainstream Canadian theatre; a reality that was particularly visible in the
theatre microcosm of Regina, Saskatchewan. *William Hales*, the department
head of Theatre in University of Regina, professionally recorded the
production.

Lastly, special thanks to *Sue E* from Sort-of-Productions for their
amazing work in editing the video.



*About #Art Apart*

Art Apart is an initiative by the National Theatre School of Canada (NTS)
that provides support to emerging theatre artists, professional artists,
and the community during the coronavirus crisis. It’s a way to help
minimize the impact of this crisis in the arts community, to provide
much-needed assistance to artists by rapidly injecting funds into the arts
sector, and to continue sharing knowledge and having a dialogue among
artists across Canada.
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