About the Play:

Finalist for the 2015 Governor General's Award for Drama (Canadian equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize)

Winner of the 2012 Best of Toronto Fringe and the 2012 New York Fringe Encore Series.

Mahmoud is a full-length drama by Tara Grammy and Tom Arthur Davis. An irreverent and hilarious one-woman show about an aging Iranian engineer-cum-taxi driver, a fabulously gay Spaniard, and a young Iranian-Canadian girl, all trying to get by the day-to-day grind in a big metropolitan city.

Mahmoud is a one-woman show that explores three Toronto immigrants whose lives intersect – a talkative Iranian engineer who works as a cab-driver because Canadians would not accept his engineering credentials, a flamboyantly gay Spaniard who is in love with Mahmoud's nephew, and a young Iranian-Canadian girl struggling to separate her identity from the stereotypes about Iranian women. Their stories come together over the course of an hour, and through their connections with the audience, themselves and each other, they explore the themes of displacement, immigration, home, and culture. The character of Mahmoud was inspired by the painting "The Dance of the Red Skirts" by Paul Klee and by a colourful Iranian-Canadian cab driver who drove performer/playwright Tara Grammy home one day.

Mahmoud premiered in 2012 at Tarragon Extra Space and won the Best of Fringe in Toronto, the Excellence in Solo Performance Award at the 2012 New York Fringe Festival and sold out at venues in Los Angeles. The international fringe hit was a Finalist for the 2015 Governor General's Award for Drama.

Cast: 1 woman

What people say:

"A knockout." — Time Out New York

"[Mahmoud] expertly manages the tension between the comedic and the dramatic through fine character crafting." — Toronto Review of Books

"The script weaves [the characters'] lives together in surprising ways, with some sensitive and sombre moments mixed with the laughs." — NOW Magazine

"Resonate(s) with such poignant and universal familiarity." — LA Weekly

About the Playwrights:

Tara Grammy is an Iranian-Canadian actress and playwright. She was born in Tehran, but grew up in Toronto, with a time spent in the US and Germany. She completed her Bachelor of Arts with a specialist in Drama at the University of Toronto, and has been performing since graduating in 2010. Her unique multi-national perspective inspired her to create her award-winning one-woman show, Mahmoud, which she co-wrote, produced and starred in.

Tom Arthur Davis is an actor, playwright, and director. He is the founding artistic director of Pandemic Theatre, a theatre collective with a mandate for socio-political work. As an artist, he is interested in elevating marginalized voices through facilitating the creation of new work.