World Premiere of THE TUTOR Comes to New Conservatory Theatre Center in April

New Conservatory Theatre Center will present a world premiere commission in association with Golden Thread Productions this April. The Tutor is written by Golden Thread’s Founding Artistic Director Emeritus, Torange Yeghiazarian and directed by the company’s current Executive Artistic Director, Sahar Assaf.

Things are looking up for Kayvon. He’s just married Baran, a beautiful young Iranian woman, and brought her back to his Bay Area home. But when he asks his lifelong friend Azar to tutor Baran, all three lives begin to unravel as the two women fall into a passionate love affair. A study of preconceived notions and the hypocrisies that drive them, The Tutor is a provocative look at the cost of owning one’s truth.

Playing Apr 5 – May 11, 2024, the Opening Night for The Tutor is Saturday, April 13 at 8pm. Wednesday and Thursday evening performances will have an early showtime of 7:30pm.  Tickets are $25–65 and are available at nctcsf.org, by emailing boxoffice@nctcsf.org, or by calling (415) 861-8972. Pay-what-you-wish tickets are now available online at nctcsf.org for preview performances at the starting cost of $5, from April 5-12, and can also be booked directly with the box office. An enhanced safety performance with additional COVID safety precautions will take place on Thursday, April 18. 

Audiences can enjoy these special events during the run of the show:

• Pay-what-you-wish Previews: Friday, Apr 5 – Friday, Apr 12, 2024

• Opening Night will take place on Saturday, Apr 13, 2024 at 8pm

• Enhanced Safety Performance with limited capacity seating and additional COVID safety precautions will take place on Thursday, Apr 18, 2024 at 7:30pm

• Onstage Insight, Post-Show Discussion featuring the cast, and moderated by the director will take place after the performance on Sunday, Apr 21 at 2pm

• Additional special events to be announced!

Torange Yeghiazarian (Playwright, pronouns: she/her) founded Golden Thread Productions in 1996 and served as its Executive Artistic Director for twenty-five years. She received a Gerbode-Hewlett Playwright Commission Award for Isfahan Blues and a commission from the Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California to write and direct The Fifth String – Ziryab’s Passage To Cordoba. Other plays include 444 Days, Waves, Behind Glass Windows, Dawn At Midnight, Abaga, Thanksgiving At Khodabakhshian’s, Publicly Resting, and Call Me Mehdi, included in the anthology Salaam. Peace – An Anthology of Middle Eastern-American Drama (TCG, 2009).

Sahar Assaf (Director, pronouns: she/her) is a Lebanese theatre-maker and the Executive Artistic Director of Golden Thread Productions. Sahar’s directing portfolio is eclectic, encompassing a wide range of theatrical styles, cultural influences, and social themes. Recently for Golden Thread, she directed Drowning in Cairo by Adam Ashraf Elsayigh and Stamp Me by Yussef El Guindi. For the Theater Initiative at the American University of Beirut, she directed works by Garcia-Lorca, Shakespeare, Wannous, Mahfouz, and others in addition to site-specific, devised, immersive, and documentary plays addressing pressing social and political issues. She has presented works in the Arab World, Europe, and the U.S. and has authored articles in Arab Stages, PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, and chapters in books, including Theatre in the Middle East between Performance and Politics, edited by Babak Rahimi, Anthem Press, 2020, and The Theatre of Sa’dallah Wannous, edited by Sonja Mejcher-Atassi and Robert Myers, Cambridge University Press, 2021. Sahar is a recipient of the Fulbright scholarship and holds an MA in Theatre Studies from Central Washington University and an MA in Sociology from the American University of Beirut. She is an alumna of Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab in NYC (2014) and of Directors Lab North in Toronto (2017). She is a co-founder and the Artistic Director of Directors Lab Mediterranean. She is mostly proud of her role as a mother to Zad.

The cast of The Tutor includes Debórah Eliezer (Azar), Maya Nazzal (Baran), and Lawrence Radecker (Kayvon). The creative team includes dramaturgy by Becca Wolff, stage management by Atusa Assadi, costume design by Lyre Alston, dialect coaching by Ana Bayat, lighting design by Maxwell Bowman, props design by Jenna Forder, set design by Matt Owens, intimacy coordination by Jeunée Simon, and sound design by Kalon Thibodeaux.

New Conservatory Theatre Center has been San Francisco’s premier LGBTQ+ and Allied performing arts institution and progressive arts education conservatory since 1981. NCTC is renowned for its diverse range of innovative, high-quality productions, touring productions and shows for young audiences; its foundational anti-bullying work with youth and educators through YouthAware; and its commitment to developing new plays through New Plays/New Works to continue expanding the canon of queer and allied dramatic work.

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