About this event
What: Evening of new literary work from playwrights Marcus Youssef, C. E. Gatchalian, and Makram Ayache
When: Saturday, August 28, from 5pm to 7pm
Where: The back garden at Historic Joy Kogawa House, 1450 West 64th Avenue
Cost: Free (donations to support our writer-in-residence program are welcome)
This month, Makram Ayache, writer-in-residence at Historic Joy Kogawa House, has been working on his first novel project titled The Colonization of the Garden of Eden.
Ayache has spent the month outlining, planning, researching, and beginning major writing on the novel. The work of fiction will be written in tandem with a large-scale, interdisciplinary play titled Jericho: A Mythology of Capitalism.
On Saturday, August 28, from 5pm to 7pm, we are pleased to invite you to an evening of new literary works. Local playwrights Marcus Youssef and C. E. Gatchalian will share new work. Makram Ayache will read an excerpt from the novel-in-progress.
We are excited to gather again as we host guests in the back garden at Historic Joy Kogawa House, socially distanced, with health protocols in place. Guests and readers are encouraged to mask.
The event will include 20 minutes of sharing from each writer’s select work. Afterwards, join us for snacks, alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages, and an opportunity to socialize, connect, and gather in community after a year of being apart far too long!
We hope to see you there!
Makram Ayache is a community-engaged writer, actor, director, and producer who splits his time between Edmonton and Toronto. His playwriting explores meaningful representations of queer Arab voices. He often endeavours to bridge complex and interlocking political struggles to the very intimate and real experiences of the people impacted by them.
Ayache is the 2020 recipient of the Playwrights’ Guide of Canada’s annual Tom Hendry Award for his play Harun. He has also been nominated for four Elizabeth Sterling Haynes Awards for his plays Harun (2018) and The Green Line (2019).
In 2020, he was working with several theatre companies including Factory Theatre’s Mechanical Actors’ Enhancement Training, the Citadel Theatre’s RBC Directing Mentorship Program, Punctuate Theatre’s Partizan’s Creators Unit, Prime Mover and The Musical Stage Company’s NoteWorthy Program, and Generator Toronto’s Artist Producer Training Program. He developed his play The Hooves Belonged to the Deer through the Alberta Queer Calendar Project under the directorial leadership of Peter Hinton-Davis and dramaturgs Evan Medd and Hannah Moscovitch.
Currently, he is beginning the foundational work for a large-scale interdisciplinary project that examines the “mythology of Capitalism” through the Historic Joy Kogawa House writer-in-residence program in Vancouver.
About C.E. Gatchalian
C.E. Gatchalian is a queer Filipinx-Canadian author born, raised, and based on the unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples, including the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tseil-Waututh.
The author of six books and co-editor of two anthologies, he is a three-time Lambda Literary Award finalist and the recipient of two Jessie Richardson Awards for his work as a theatre artist and producer. In 2013 he received the Dayne Ogilvie Prize in 2013, awarded annually by The Writers’ Trust of Canada to an outstanding emerging LGBTQI+ writer.
Formerly artistic producer of the frank theatre company, Vancouver’s professional queer theatre company, his plays have been produced locally, nationally, and internationally.
His memoir, Double Melancholy: Art, Beauty and the Making of a Brown Queer Man, was published by Arsenal Pulp Press.
About Marcus Youssef
Marcus Youssef‘s dozen or so plays – most of which investigate questions of culture, difference, and “otherness” – have been performed at dozens of theatres and festivals across North America, Asia and Europe, from Seattle to New York to Hong Kong to Reykjavik to Berlin.
Marcus is the recipient of the Siminovitch Prize for Theatre, the Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award, Berlin, Germany’s Ikarus Prize, and the Rio-Tinto Alcan Performing Arts Award, among others.
He is currently senior artist at Vancouver’s Neworld Theatre (which he led from 2005 to 2019), international associate artist at Farnham Maltings in the UK, and playwright-in-residence at Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre.
About Makram Ayache
Makram Ayache is a community-engaged writer, actor, director, and producer who splits his time between Edmonton and Toronto. His playwriting explores meaningful representations of queer Arab voices. He often endeavours to bridge complex and interlocking political struggles to the very intimate and real experiences of the people impacted by them.
Ayache is the 2020 recipient of the Playwrights’ Guide of Canada’s annual Tom Hendry Award for his play Harun. He has also been nominated for four Elizabeth Sterling Haynes Awards for his plays Harun (2018) and The Green Line (2019).
In 2020, he was working with several theatre companies including Factory Theatre’s Mechanical Actors’ Enhancement Training, the Citadel Theatre’s RBC Directing Mentorship Program, Punctuate Theatre’s Partizan’s Creators Unit, Prime Mover and The Musical Stage Company’s NoteWorthy Program, and Generator Toronto’s Artist Producer Training Program. He developed his play The Hooves Belonged to the Deer through the Alberta Queer Calendar Project under the directorial leadership of Peter Hinton-Davis and dramaturgs Evan Medd and Hannah Moscovitch.
Currently, he is beginning the foundational work for a large-scale interdisciplinary project that examines the “mythology of Capitalism” through the Historic Joy Kogawa House writer-in-residence program in Vancouver.
About C.E. Gatchalian
C.E. Gatchalian is a queer Filipinx-Canadian author born, raised, and based on the unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples, including the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tseil-Waututh.
The author of six books and co-editor of two anthologies, he is a three-time Lambda Literary Award finalist and the recipient of two Jessie Richardson Awards for his work as a theatre artist and producer. In 2013 he received the Dayne Ogilvie Prize in 2013, awarded annually by The Writers’ Trust of Canada to an outstanding emerging LGBTQI+ writer.
Formerly artistic producer of the frank theatre company, Vancouver’s professional queer theatre company, his plays have been produced locally, nationally, and internationally.
His memoir, Double Melancholy: Art, Beauty and the Making of a Brown Queer Man, was published by Arsenal Pulp Press.
About Marcus Youssef
Marcus Youssef‘s dozen or so plays – most of which investigate questions of culture, difference, and “otherness” – have been performed at dozens of theatres and festivals across North America, Asia and Europe, from Seattle to New York to Hong Kong to Reykjavik to Berlin.
Marcus is the recipient of the Siminovitch Prize for Theatre, the Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award, Berlin, Germany’s Ikarus Prize, and the Rio-Tinto Alcan Performing Arts Award, among others.
He is currently senior artist at Vancouver’s Neworld Theatre (which he led from 2005 to 2019), international associate artist at Farnham Maltings in the UK, and playwright-in-residence at Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre.