Living together in peace and harmony

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This article was published 01/05/2025 (519 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When civil war broke out in his native Syria, it wasn’t often that Majd Sukar left his Aleppo apartment.

In the fall of 2010, he had moved to the city from a small village called Homs, intending to lead the standard life of a university music student. Sukar was prepared for obsessive solo practice, but not like this.

“I had six months of peace in Aleppo, then the whole country went to protest on the 15th of March. By the end of that year, the country was falling apart,” says Sukar, 33.

“The only certain thing — the only thing I was sure about — was the clarinet.”

Trained as a pianist and as a classical Arabic vocalist by his grandfather, an Aramaic priest who guided Sukar through the intricate melodies of Syriac Christian hymns, the musician gravitated to the clarinet, using the instrument as a reeded passport across war-torn borders.

Under threat of ISIS bombardment, he ventured to internet cafés to watch videos of the Romani-Turkish player Hüsnü Senlendirici and Greek virtuoso Vasilis Saleas.

“I had to teach myself. Most of the time, the clarinet is your friend,” he says.

Fourteen years later, Sukar, who now lives and plays in Toronto, where he trained at Humber College, is still enamored with an instrument that feels right at home whether in Armenia, Tunisia or Krakow.

One never can predict where a career in music will take you — for Sukar, it brought him to Winnipeg to appear in the final production of the Winnipeg Jewish Theatre’s 2024-2025 season.

In casting the role of Simon in The Band’s Visit — a cross-border musical that won 10 Tony Awards in 2019 — director Dan Petrenko needed to find an actor who fit a precise description: fluent in Arabic, fluid in jazz improvisation, skilful and soulful with the clarinet, and crucially, available to work.

“There was pretty much one person in Canada we found who checked off those boxes,” says Petrenko, whose mandate at WJT has been marked by a commitment to politically relevant musicals; Pain to Power, a musical grappling with Kanye West’s antisemitism, had sold-out runs in both Toronto and Montreal earlier this spring after premièring in Winnipeg in 2024.

“It sadly is becoming more and more relevant,” says Petrenko.

Sukar had only appeared in one production as an actor: a November production of Toronto’s Theatre Passe Muraille called Mafaza.

Meaning dry, barren desert and etymologically connected to the Arabic root for “winning,” Mafaza featured four Palestinian and Syrian artists reflecting on the themes of grief, justice and healing in the context of the Middle East. With Abdul Wahab Kayyali, Sukar composed and performed music that drew on his own experience.

Petrenko, who before joining WJT was founding artistic director of Toronto’s Olive Branch Theatre, caught wind of the performance and was confident he had found his Simon.

After reading The Band’s Visit script and listening to the music, Sukar was convinced to let his clarinet carry him to Winnipeg.

“I loved the story, which reflects that in the Middle East there are so many people who just want to live in peace. They aren’t involved in war. They aren’t involved in blood and I believe that’s the kind of message I have in my mind, that everyone could live together in peace and harmony.”

Ditto for Omar Alex Khan, who plays Tewfiq, the stern conductor of the titular band, an Egyptian police ensemble from Alexandria invited to play in Israel at a newly opened Arab Cultural Centre.

“I was struck by the music and the songs, but also I loved that it’s about a group of Israeli people and a group of Arab people, but it isn’t a political show. Yes, it’s about these groups of specific people in this show, but there’s a universality to it. It’s about any group of people, who, like all of us, are trying to figure ourselves out, understand our feelings, figure out the world, trying to survive,” Khan says.

To develop his character, Khan wrote a three-page diary entry as Tewfiq, outlining his multiple motivations.

“A director taught me to make three lists: what the character says, what the character does and what the character wants.”

Tewfiq, like Sukar and the show’s cafe owner, Dina (played by Israeli-Canadian actor Anat Kriger), would like to build a life in music that isn’t defined by conflict.

“I think it’s the perfect show for nowadays because it talks about humanity, not sides,” says Kriger, who studied musical theatre at Toronto’s Randolph College.

But the actors, like the work they bring to the Berney Theatre until May 11, are more than aware of the current political climate in Israel-Palestine and have leaned into the show’s emphasis on shared culture as a hopeful olive branch.

Dina and Tewfiq’s bond is solidified by shared musical and filmic inspiration during the gorgeous number Omar Sharif.

The characters find common ground in their affection for the Oscar nominees’s early films, including The River of Love, a 1960 feature referenced throughout Itamar Moses’s Tony-winning book.

Members of the cast watched the film, based on Anna Karenina, together shortly after they began rehearsing.

“It’s a tragic story, but it’s Dina’s favourite,” says Kriger.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com