The Emerging Playwrights Reading Series is back with three new plays! Guided by directors Diana Bentley, Andrew Moodie, and Philip Riccio, the Emerging Playwrights Reading Series is an incredible opportunity for new playwrights to try their hand at the craft while being mentored by some of Toronto’s best directors. This year’s chohort consists of Anahita Dehbonehie, Kian Diab and Alten Wilmot. Anahita Dehbonehie is certainly a name you’ll recognize from your playbills, but not with an author’s credit – she’s made her mark on Toronto theatre in the design realm. Now she’s putting pen to paper with her new play Swallow the Fire.
- Could you please introduce yourself to my readers?
Hi- my name is Anahita Dehbonehie. I am a theatre artist who has primarily worked as a designer in Canada. I came back to Toronto a little over a decade ago and was lucky enough to run into some really brilliant artists who became my friends and collaborators. My design philosophy has always been to find the piece of the play which thrums something central in my understanding. The classics don’t always resonate like classics, and new work sometimes feels like a funhouse mirror rather than an exploration of our shared reality. But in every play I try to find something, whether a sliver or an entire act, that cuts deep and challenges either my understanding or my sensibilities. I am deeply excited by the communal nature of live theatre, not only as an antidote to our increasingly isolated lives but as a call to action against passive experience, and as a revolt in favour of shared space.
- What made you want to start exploring playwriting?
I’ve always thought of theatre making as a holistic act of creation and have always worked as an excavator with my directors and creative teams, sort of carving our version of a play from the bedrock of the text, finding that which feels vital and alive to share in our communication during design meetings. When I became interested in directing, I was fortunate enough to be able to assist some really fantastic friends and mentors and was lucky enough to try it sort of quickly with some decent resources. It was during this experience that I realized as much as I was interested in imagining the worlds where plays could take place and shaping a production- what I really craved was the opportunity to originate a text and to tell a story from scratch. I didn’t really work up the guts to do it until 3 years later.
- What’s been your biggest challenge so far?
I think precarity keeps experimentation in check in our current theatre ecosystem and so we rarely give ourselves permission to try new things. For me this meant, and means, serious imposter syndrome when it comes to practicing a new craft. That’s a continuing challenge for sure. The other sort of challenge and gift of writing is that you have to strive for a certain clarity- at least within your intentions. I find that to be as frustrating as it is exciting. Character intentions are strange, mundane, wondrous things- I find crafting characters is like getting to know new family members for the first time; there’s a wealth to unlock and so much you can’t immediately know. So there are holes in the spaces where there is mystery at first and sometimes it feels like you can’t see how the process runs. But the process is also somehow the best part.
- Can you please tell us a bit about the play you’re writing?
Swallow the Fire is my second play. It is about the world we leave to our children and how we safeguard or pre-empt the looming future. It asks questions about our responsibility what happens when love and legacy meet late capitalism. That all sounds a bit heady and circuitous and there is politics in the play for sure, but it is also very much about the relationships between mothers and daughters. It is very much a play in process. For me, This moment is about the limits of activism and the systems that shape our long-term future collectively and individually. What happens to the Earth happens to us. So, how much of the present will we sacrifice to save the future and what is the terrible intimacy between those who destroy the world and those who try to save it.
- What are you looking forward to the most about the Reading Series?
The workshop! I love workshops. The privilege and horror of having actors read your words during those first days where you’re trying to figure out if what you have is even worth their collective time. And seeing people connect in real time with a phrase or an idea- that’s pretty magical. I’m very excited that the team that the series has assembled for the workshop and the reading and am eager to find the holes and the questions in the play. Because the thing I’m really looking forward to is writing more.
I want to thank Anahita for taking the time to answer my questions. You can check out the Emerging Playwrights Reading Series for yourself on January 24 and 25 at The Theatre Centre. For more information and tickets, visit: https://theatrecentre.org/event/emerging-playwrights-reading-series-2026/
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