KING GILGAMESH to be Presented at Soulpepper Theatre This Fall

Following performances in Toronto, New York, Chicago, Minneapolis, and Halifax, the award-winning hybrid theatre-music production King Gilgamesh (and the Man of the Wild) will return to Soulpepper Theatre for a limited three-week engagement, running September 13 - October 5, 2025 at the Michael Young Theatre at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts.

A co-production with Soulpepper Theatre and TRIA Theatre, this audience-and-critic favorite was written by Ahmed Moneka, Jesse LaVercombe and Seth Bockley, and was nominated for five Dora Awards in 2023, winning for OUTSTANDING SOUND & MUSIC.

It stars Ahmed Moneka and Jesse LaVercombe, accompanied by a stunning musical score performed live by Moneka's 2025 Juno-nominated Arabic jazz ensemble.

Directed by NYC-based Seth Bockley, King Gilgamesh seamlessly merges the ancient Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh with a modern story of an unlikely bromance set in Toronto.

In this moving, funny, and music-filled performance, virtuosic performers Moneka and LaVercombe embody the legendary and tragic story of King Gilgamesh (Moneka) and his Best Friend, the "Man of the Wild," Enkidu (LaVercombe). Interwoven with scenes from this ancient tale, which originates in Moneka's home country of Iraq, the two performers enact a modern, fictionalized dramatization of the real-life friendship between Ahmed - a Black, Muslim, exiled Iraqi - and Jesse - a white, Jewish, ex-pat American. As the show weaves between past and present, myth and memory, it explores themes of masculinity, art, exile, sexuality, fatherhood, and mortality-all underscored by Ahmed's 2025 Juno-nominated Arabic Jazz band (with members from Greece, Sudan, Turkey, and Canada).

The project is deeply personal, especially for Ahmed Moneka. In 2014, he starred in The Society, the first Iraqi film to feature a gay protagonist. The film premiered at TIFF, and in response, Moneka was exiled from Iraq and forced to seek asylum in Canada, where at first he spoke no English at all. King Gilgamesh (and the Man of the Wild) was born from that rupture and tells his incredible story of survival.

The politics of King Gilgamesh have only grown more relevant since the show's premiere. When invited to headline the Toronto Mayor's Evening for the Arts 2023, approximately a month after the war in Gaza began, Ahmed addressed the issue head-on, speaking as an Iraqi Sufi Muslim about his friendship with Jesse, an American Jew, the ethos of their play: